Hey guys, reposting tonight!

Hope you’re encouraged by this to keep going. . .

 

ONIONIZED

I’ve heard that ogres are like onions, they have layers. . .

and I guess people are kinda like that too.

We ebb and flow, we have seasons of triumph, seasons of what feels like defeat, we have these high seasons with God where we touch the miraculous and then, wham!

We are thrust into a season of onion-ness.  Where we have a layer pulled back and we are exposed.  Motivations, fears, struggles all right there out in the open.

And like any onion – it makes your eyes water, vision momentarily blurs, and you’re left sobbing like a girl.  Saying things like, “I’m not crying, my eyes just sprung a leak.”

I’ll be really honest here and say, I’m not a big fan of being peeled back like an onion.

It’s like being sat down on an old musty couch while loved ones sit around you in a circle.  Corralling you in like cattle. . .just in case you wanted to escape, meanwhile you’ve been cornered in your own personal intervention.

This is how God does that.

He onionizes you.

You find yourself in situations you’d rather not be in and you get to watch as your fears, trust issues, thoughts and behaviors all rise to the surface.

And it’s really hard to take an honest look in God’s mirror, especially if you’ve been walking with him for a while.  There is a naive part of me that thinks this part of the process will somehow get easier, but the truth is it doesn’t.

How’s that for a ray of hope for your 2014?

But it’s true, at least for me.  When life is sorta predictable, it’s easy to settle.  To stay on this side of the Jordan (check out Numbers 32).

But it is hard to be vulnerable with God sometimes.

Maybe harder still to be honest with ourselves.

I mean, after all I totally trust God to provide for me, to protect me, to heal me, to comfort me . . . you know, that is until I don’t.

Onionizing – totally effective at showing us what we really believe.

And the truth is that nothing else will heal those areas.  We can slap a bandage over them but now that they’ve been onionized, we’ve got to bring it to the Healer.

And then we’ve got to stay there.

I’ve tried the whole, lob a quick prayer up, “God, I’ve got issues.  Heal me.” and that’s an okay start but sometimes he wants us to linger in the healing with him.  You know actually, park ourselves before him and listen to what he might have to say about our wounds.

Some might require forgiveness.

Some a change in the way we think.

Some might be allowing God to take you back into childhood memories to face old fears.

The thing is, only the Healer knows.

And how, he knows.

He knows us through and through.

I feel God tugging gently on my heart to allow him to go places into my memories.

Places in my heart.

Places that hide dark monsters from my past.

And I know he wants to walk with me there.

Because these monsters of fear and mistrust keep me from him.

And here is what has come to the surface, I am afraid he really isn’t the protector the Psalms claim he is or that I don’t quite fit the mold of what he’s looking for or that he will just tell me to just stop whining and suck it up. . .and so I unknowingly (okay sometimes knowingly) hesitate to bring my onionized self truly before him.

But here I am once again.

I’m hearing the quiet whisper of God across my heart saying there are some deep places of fear and mistrust.

Places he wants to heal.

Places he wants me to trust him with.

And inwardly I hear myself let out a little bit of a groan.  Partly because he’s right, I need healing.  It’s a cyclical process, just as the human body is constantly healing itself from scrapes and paper cuts, we need that in our souls too.  Not only is it okay.  It’s necessary.

But mostly I groan, because the last 5 years have been an intense season of discipline.  Seriously, someone hand me some Ben-Gay because my faith muscles are sore!

Transitioning from discipline to healing sounds brutal.

But as I pull myself up from the trenches and haul my carcass off to God’s infirmary, I’m sane enough to know it’s necessary.

 

Photo Credit: “Food” by Pentapfel, permissions through C.C. by 2.0