The Onion Principle

Understanding life happens in layers. I’ll call this the onion principle. You think you know how things work and what is important and then it is disproved or refined by experience, and another layer of the onion is stripped away getting you closer to the truth of the universe. For example, I grew up in an upwardly mobile suburb with the understanding that you are what you do, therefore the goal of life is to achieve academically and succeed professionally.

This was my original onion, problematic for all the years I was a stay-at-home mom because motherhood is unacknowledged work. So, who was I? A nothing? During this time, I became a brand-new Christian. I went to a woman’s retreat, and the speaker said words that struck me as rocket science. “You are not what you do. You are who you are as a result of your relationship with Jesus Christ.” As a nothing, I was thrilled to learn that God had given me infinite value as evidenced by sacrificing his only son on the cross for all my inadequacies. But this new understanding only peeled away one layer of the onion.

When my kids were in middle school and high school, I went to work as a teacher. Now I was doing something. Therefore, I was something, an educator. And when I found a free master’s program, I eagerly signed up to become an even more valuable something. Looking back, even as a believer, I was still conforming to the pattern of this world.

The problem with this paradigm, of course, is who are you when you fail? This is the question I grapple with in my book about teaching in an under-performing urban school rife with racism and generational poverty, Teacher Dropout, Finding Grace in an Unjust School. When my students, labeled under-achievers, failed to progress as I’d hoped, I also felt like a failure. Did this make me an under-achiever too? I cried for myself and my students as if a literal onion had been chopped.

The words from the women’s retreat came back to me. “You are not what you do. You are who you are as a result of your relationship with Jesus Christ. Through the son of God’s sacrifice, I was made the holy, chosen, and beloved child of the king of the universe. Col.3:12. A child is a relationship that can’t be negated by behavior or performance. You can’t stop being a child of God. Not as teacher or student if only you believe.

The thing is, you can know a truth in your head. It sounds logical. You accept it, but it is another thing entirely to have to trust that truth when all hell breaks loose. But this is often what it takes to loosen another layer of the onion.

Memoir is my favorite genre because it tells the messy truth of our lives. I love to read it, and I love to write it as a way of peeling the stingy, tear-soaked onion together as we get closer and closer to living the truth that God’s grace is the only thing that can set us free no matter what we do.   

Here is the link to Teacher Dropout