My friend Emily Tuttle quoted in her blog that the World Race sometimes seems like the Chronicles of Narnia. 11 months ago I stepped foot into a wardrobe. Inside this microcosm I lived an entire lifetime that people back home might have trouble even imagining. And now, almost a year later, it’s time for me to emerge from the wardrobe and rejoin the normal world.
The more I think about it, the more I like this analogy.
I go off on an adventure into a whole different world. I meet new and unique people. I learn a whole new culture. I have all these adventures, and the whole time learning more about God and developing an intimate relationship with Him. Then, after time has passed, I leave the wardrobe and go home.
I think I started off this race as Susan. Susan had heard all about Narnia from Lucy, but didn’t believe in it until she was there. I had read all the blogs about the world race before leaving, but I don’t think I fully understood what the Race was until I was here. But pretty soon after starting, I think I transformed into Lucy.
Lucy starts off the series as a young girl seeking desperately for more time with Aslan. She is drawn into this strange world full of adventure and new things, and wants to get everything she can out of it. Most of my readers probably already know, but in this series Aslan represents Christ. On the World Race I tried my best to see the world as Lucy saw Narnia. I tried to give it my all every day; to live the adventure, to see new things, and to build a personal friendship and relationship with God.
There is also another aspect of Lucy’s character I identify with. When Lucy first went to Narnia, she came back after a long day to reassure her siblings she was okay, only to find out that they hadn’t even noticed she was gone. Sometimes racers feel a bit like Lucy. Except that instead of time pausing while we were in the wardrobe, lives kept moving forward. People kept going with their lives, of course, while we were gone. Our friends and family lived an entire year without us, just as we have lived a year without them. There are new friends, there are new relationships, new babies. There have also been heartaches, deaths of loved ones, and bad days. And, just as it should, lives have moved on, and now that we have left the wardrobe, it’s time for us to find our place once again in the lives of our families and friends.
And I know that the response I get from different people will be varied. I know that there will be some Mrs. Macreadys out there, who just don’t quite understand what I’ve been doing. But then I know that there will also be some Professors that somehow will know exactly what I’m talking about even when I don’t have the right words.
Now that I am leaving the race I am feeling a bit like Peter at the beginning of Prince Caspian. In this book Peter has been back in England for a while, and is struggling to find the balance of being who he was in Narnia, and who England expects him to be. He is trying to figure out how to be the man he became in Narnia in a world that is not ready for it. Going home for me I will be trying to figure out how to live out this new life that God is revealing to me, and to walk in the new identity God has given to me. God has transformed me this year, and now I need to figure out where I fit at home.
But I hope that soon I will be Edmund. Despite a rocky start, Edmund is a character that I love by the end of the series. He seems to be almost making up for lost time. He had a rough past, with the betrayal of his family to the witch, but he puts it behind him and moves on. He becomes one of the strongest characters, and one of the most secure in his identity.
In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, he experiences grace and has to come to terms that Aslan died for him. And that even after he rose from the dead, Aslan still loved him. In Prince Caspian, this time it’s Edmund who is the one strong enough to withstand the spell of the White Witch. And in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Edmund begins to share his story with others, telling Eustace about his ugly past in order to help Eustace deal with his own problems.
Edmund has to come to grips with the high price paid for his salvation, but in the end triumphs over evil, knows who he is in every situation, and then helps others with his testimony.
My prayer for going home is to be able to be more like Edmund. I pray that I will be able to stand firm in my identity that I know Christ bought for me with His blood. I pray that I won’t dwell on the past, and that I will know who I am now, and I pray that God will put me in situations where my testimony will be able to help others.
