peeling an orange...

"How do you peel an orange?" her question came as quite a surprise to me, and at first I thought she was kidding. But her facial expressions gave away that she was serious. "How do you peel an orange?" she asked me again. I was confused. Is this a rhetorical question? Or a trick question? She continued, "Do you use a knife? Do you just dig your fingernails into it? Do you slice it? Do you bite into it? How do you peel it?"

"Sometimes I use a knife and sometimes I don't," I answered rather matter-of-factly. "Sometimes I just dig right into it. Most of the time."

I had just entered the little wooden chapel and sat down with the prayer ministry team earlier this afternoon. The smell of cedar came off the walls and pierced my nose as her question pierced my thoughts. In the back of my mind I was thinking, I have to make sure I give the right answer.

That's when she said, "I don't know why but God gave me this image of an orange being peeled and prompted me to ask that question. I don't know what it means to you right now but I am pretty sure we'll get to the bottom of it today."

"Okay," I mumbled meekly. Still not sure if I should stay put or run far, far away from the crazy lady.

"And do you know that there's no wrong way to peel an orange? You can just rip into it or you can use a knife. Do you know that any way you do it produces the same result?"

"Sure. I know that."

"Okay. Do you have any idea why God would have given me this image to give to you?"

When I answered, "no," they led me in prayer asking God to reveal to me the insight behind it. It was then that I remembered a big ol' wound from a few years ago that had been bumped into recently. I had been working at a well-known outplacement consulting firm. I had a boss that would give me a project and say, "Okay, go." Five minutes later I would get an email, a phone call, or a view of her face peering into my cube asking me what I was doing, how I was doing it, etc... Anything I did was wrong. She had this nagging tendency to micro, micro-manage every little detail about every project of which she put me in charge. Repeatedly, I went to her asking her if she could please compromise and back off and give me some room to manage the project like she had asked me to. "Trust me just once with a project and if we don't get your desired result, then we'll go back and do it your way," I proposed.

She clenched her jaw and through her thin, terse lips she said, "I just can't do that."

This scene replayed itself at least once a month between her and me. Finally, I got tired of it and left knowing that if I didn't leave of my own free will, she would ask me to leave anyway. Better to leave than get fired, right?

So, today I recounted the situation to the prayer team. "And have you forgiven her?" one of them asked.

"For what? I don't really see how she wronged me," I answered.

"You don't see it? You don't see how you were designed for leadership and how she robbed you of using your gifts?"

I just about choked on the water I was swallowing. I had been thinking a lot recently about designing my own major in Leadership and had silently prayed for some affirmation of that.

I then shared with them how the wound had been reopened and was festering a little bit. I was a little embarassed because my actions in the recent situation seemed childish and over-exaggerated. They reassured me that I need not feel shame in the situation and reminded me that shame is one way the devil keeps me where I am and prevents me from seeing the beautiful truth in things.

I prayed a prayer of forgiveness for my former boss and for the more recent perpetrator. I asked God to reveal to me any others that I needed to forgive and I prayed through that.

And then one of them spoke the beautiful truth into my heart, the truth I most needed to hear: "The truth is, you felt devalued back then when your boss wouldn't trust you to complete a project of which she had put you in charge. She doubted your competency. You accepted the lie because she was someone you looked up to and respected as your boss. The truth is, Christina, that you were designed for leadership. It's a passion and desire of your's. I sense that about you. And the truth is that you are brilliant and vibrant. You are more than competent. You are more than enough." I nearly choked again because she had used a word that has meant so much to me the last couple years. "Enough. I am enough. No, I am more than enough."

All that from an image given to my friend of an orange being peeled. The exquisite simplicity yet surprising profundity of it all is so beautiful to me. God is truly awesome!

So, in the spirit of "fruitfulness": how do you peel an orange? Remember, there's no wrong way.