The Onion, A Toxic Beauty

When I was still enduring a very bad marriage several years ago, God gave me the analogy of an onion when it came to forgiveness; in my particular case at the time, forgiving my husband for everything. Initially, I could not believe that the Lord was pointing out to me that I needed to forgive my husband while I was still in the midst of this very destructive relationship. I know that God wants us to forgive others and that He will not forgive us if we don’t forgive others, but the timing here seemed all wrong to me. In the heat of the difficulty, God was showing me that I needed to forgive my husband, right there and then and that forgiveness was like an onion, with many layers. When you peel one layer, another one is right beneath it.

What I mean by many layers is that many times when someone has wronged us, especially when it cuts deep and/or that person was very abusive, there are many layers below the main hurt. For example, while my husband was becoming physically abusive at this point, I also had a few years of verbal abuse to forgive (just under the layer of physical abuse, which was right there, right then and the most obvious). Then, there was the constant flirting and always looking for someone better than the “old bag” he married (another layer). Keep peeling away and there were all of these girls he had “friendships” with and who were having him take inappropriate pictures of them for their modeling portfolios, whom I also needed to forgive (them for getting too close with a married man and him for constantly searching for a “thinner, better looking” woman than the one my husband committed to on our wedding day). Ouch. He also made several snide remarks to me over the years and cursed me under his breath, thinking I couldn’t hear them, but I did. Again, ouch.

With each layer peeling away, it got more painful but it was extremely important to revisit those things and forgive everything, no matter how small or how big it was. If I was able to peel the entire onion and forgive each “layer,” complete forgiveness and healing would surely come.

Maybe it was a parent who did not want you or a best friend who stabbed you in the back and the feelings ran deep, all the way to your core. You never thought you could get over it. Different situations, same concept. It’s one thing to say, “Yeah, I forgive them,” but another to truly forgive from the heart to the point that you can once again face that person without the feeling that you want to hurt them back or without the anger and pain being recalled that once came with the sight or thought of that person.

I am living proof that complete forgiveness of the ones who have hurt you the deepest and greatest can be done, though it takes time and help from God. I could not peel those layers back on my own; I needed God’s help peeling each layer, as it was painful revisiting each thing as I forgave it. I did not want to let my husband or my parents “off the hook” that easily because I thought that by forgiving them, I was saying that what they did was okay and that God would sweep it under the rug, forgetting about what they did.

At first, I even questioned God about why I had to forgive my husband when he did all this hurtful stuff. I asked the Lord, “Did you not see all my husband has put me through??!!” For the first few minutes I even thought, “Surely God has not seen all of what has been going on and He was mistaken.” But, he did see everything and He also knew that I would be set free from the devastation that my husband’s actions caused when I forgave him. When I was down to the core, or nub, of the onion I was completely set free from the anger, hurt, bitterness and the pain of rejection I felt at the hands of both my parents and my ex-husband. Then, I was able to move on and grow in every way to my full potential.

I read a very interesting fact about onions a few weeks ago. Did you know that if you leave a cut onion out in the open air when someone in your household is sick, it will soak in all the “poisons” or sickness and the sick person will recover much sooner? By the same token, however, it also said that if you leave onions or something with onions in it out long enough, especially in the heat outside, that the onions will turn toxic and make you very sick? These articles that I read said that while most people blame the mayonnaise or something else in the potato salad, etc. for making people sick if left out too long, it is actually the onions in it that are the culprit. Onions are also very toxic to dogs.

So, onions can get rid of toxic things (by unpeeling the layers and forgiving, therefore getting rid of your toxic feelings towards the one who hurt you, or can rid the air of “sickness” and pull it into the onion so you recover faster) and they can also create toxic problems (getting very sick from eating one after it has been left out too long). When I “peeled away” layers of the “onion” that God was showing me as a metaphor to forgiveness, I became better, or, less toxic shall we say.

Just like we would not want to hold on to the onion and then take a big bite out of it several hours or days later (due to the consequences), we should not want to hold on to the toxicity of the words and actions others have done towards us, because they too have the power to become toxic to us (if we do not forgive them).

So, get peeling those onions…but just don’t wait too long to take a bite!