Peeling Away

My heart is like an onion.

Over time, life has made my heart crusted and brown. Touch me, and my skin will crackle. You can't see in to the light; the delicate softness that is inside.

It's safer that way... you can toss me into a bin with a dozen other onions, and I'll stay "preserved" for months, maybe longer.

Somehow, though, life as a crusty onion is lacking. Just because I am less likely to get hurt because of the dried outer skin, I am missing out. My heart, my emotions, my very soul is hidden from the embrace of warm light.

I hear the call, the offer of hope and life. If I am but willing to surrender my heart, to the hands of the One who loves me and has watched me grow from the beginning... He will take away the hardness. He wants to reveal my soft heart.

It hurts when He peels the skin away. And I fear that my hurt is more than one layer deep. I've built up a wall and become hard - I don't know if I want to let Him in. But I know that although He tears away, He will also heal.


Hosea 6 (New King James Version)

1 Come, and let us return to the Lord; For He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. 2 After two days He will revive us; On the third day He will raise us up, That we may live in His sight. 3 Let us know, Let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, Like the latter and former rain to the earth.


It's so beautiful how God can restore. He can deal with any hurt, forgive any sin, restore what has been stolen away.

The more I seek Him, the more I sense the flashlight of the Holy Spirit shining on areas of my life. Even when all seems well on the outside, He requires much more. He requires total surrender, so that His power can work through every part of me. I am His, that is for certain, but the deeper I dive into His grace, the more He wants to re-write and restore the places in my life that are not whole and complete.

I recently went to the theater and watched the latest installment from the "Chronicles of Narnia" series. I was disappointed that they seemed to leave out a crucial element of the book in regards to Eustace coming before Aslan in repentance.

First, Aslan told Eustace that he must undress. Try as he might, every time he peeled one layer of dragon skin off, another layer would be underneath. He was inadequate and unable to deal with this problem on his own.

Aslan could bring healing, but it still hurt.

I'll end my blog with this excerpt from the book:

From "Voyage of the Dawntreader"
Eustace is explaining to Edmund how Aslan changed him back into a boy.


“Then the lion said — but I don’t know if it spoke — You will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was jut the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know — if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” said Edmund.

“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. . . .”