WARNING: This may be a little lengthy!
I am currently in the process of reading through all seven books of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. I just finished book five which is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and came across a passage that depicts what this year has been like more than anything else I have come across. I am going to enter an excerpt from the book, but first need to set the scene:
Eustace is the snotty, bratty cousin whom Lucy and Edmund have been sent to spend the holidays with. During their time there, Eustace is nothing but rude, annoying, and impossible to please. One day while looking at a painting of a ship, everything from the painting becomes real and all three children are launched onto a ship into the world of Narnia. This is a world very familiar and loved by Edmund and Lucy, but completely foreign and downright nonsensical to Eustace. The ship stops at an island and to get out of work Eustace wanders off by himself only to find and try on a golden bracelet that turns him into a dragon. The excerpt below is the process of Eustace being transformed back into a boy.
“Well, anyway, I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly towards me. And one queer thing was that there was no moon last night, but there was moonlight where the lion was. So it came nearer and nearer. I was terribly afraid of it. You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough. But it wasn’t that kind of fear. I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it–if you can understand. Well, it came close up to me and looked straight into my eyes. And I shut my eyes tight. But that wasn’t any good because it told me to follow it.”
“You mean it spoke?”
“I don’t know. Now that you mention it, I don’t think it did. But it told me all the same. And I knew I’d have to do what it told me, so I got up and followed it. And it led me a long way into the mountains. And there was always this moonlight over and round the lion wherever we went. So at last we came to the top of a mountain I’d never seen before and on the top of this mountain there was a garden–trees and fruit and everything. In the middle of it there was a well.
“I knew it was a well because you could see the water bubbling up from the bottom of it: but it was a lot bigger than most wells–like a very big, round bath with marble steps going down into it. The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe, it would ease the pain in my leg. But the lion told me I must undress first. Mind you, I don’t know if he said any words out loud or not.
“I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly though that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that’s what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, of as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.
“But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.
“Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.
“The 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 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 just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know–if you’ve ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is 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 as 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.”
The excerpt from C.S. Lewis accompanied with the scripture from I Peter more beautifully wrap up what the past nine months have looked like than any words I’ll ever be able to find. In the story I am Eustace, and as the trip started I was very aware of some layers that needed to be stripped away. With good motive and a desiring heart I was trying my hardest to strip each layer at a time, but the more I thought I stripped away, the more I realized was still there to be stripped away. It wasn’t until I came to the realization in Africa that it was no longer I who needed to do the stripping, but my Savior Jesus Christ. Just as Eustace allowed Aslan, the lion, to peel the rest of the layers off, I began to learn how to throw my hands up in surrender allowing Jesus to strip away the layers of me that were not bringing Him any glory and that He desired to replace with healing. And though Eustace is correct in saying that the process is painful, for me it is worth it, especially with the promise and desire in I Peter for my faith to be “proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” There are a little over two months left of this incredible journey and my prayer is that I remain here in the present continuously surrendering my life and my rights and my expectations over to Jesus who will continue stripping away the layers of my life that don’t bring him glory, replacing and inserting healing, joy, and confidence in who He desires me to be.
