I cut my hair. Several inches of sunshine locks gone within moments. It took four years for me to grow out my golden hair and it took only mere seconds a breath of my existence to cut it all off. Like a weight I didn’t know I was carrying my head is free from the burden and my shoulders pull back with renewed lightness. I look into the mirror at the barbers shop with reverence at the new girl I see staring back. I smile. I laugh. I consider crying, but it is done. I no longer am what I once was, I am made new. You see, it was only 15 minutes before this moment that I was sitting in my apartment alone debating what I should do with my afternoon. A casting shadow had been over my life the previous days and I wanted – no – I needed a change. I needed something out of my comfort zone. Something that would set me free. I needed something that gave me strength and something that gave me a beauty to unveil. Therefore, within seconds my mind was made up, and I stomped completely determined across the street to the salon in which stood an elderly man who promised to cut the dead ends of my hair off that were no longer needed. He promised to give me freedom of the dead weight I was carrying upon my shoulders. “So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation. All power to him forever, Amen” 1 Peter 5:10.
My hope for the WorldRace is to build a lasting and deep relationship with the Lord who after a while will restore and support and strengthen me and put me on a firm foundation. My hope is to be transformed into a woman of freedom; to cut, snip, and chop off the things in my life that distract me from the woman of God I am supposed to be. I am often reminded of C.S Lewis’s book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader were the character Eustace has been turned into a dragon and desperately rips and struggles at the scaly skin he finds himself in and only with the help of Asland the lion, who symbolizes God, is he able to rip out off the dragons skin and be made new into who he really is. The following passage is an excerpt from the book, “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 thought 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, or 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 very first tear he made was do 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 of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away. 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 I was 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. You’d think me simply phoney if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know they’ve no muscle and are pretty mouldy compared with Caspian’s, but I was so glad to see them. After a bite the lion took me out and dressed me – (with his paws?) – Well, I don’t exactly remember that bit. But he did somehow or other: in new clothes – the same I’ve got on now, as a matter of fact and then suddenly I was back here. Which is what makes me think it must have been a dream.” (Lewis 327)
Eustace had been transformed by that experience and I wish to be transformed as well. I pray that the WorldRace will begin to peel the layers off of me and reach into the heart of my being to transform me. I pray that the WorldRace allows me to reach the hurting people of this world the ones who are in need of a hair cut, the ones who are in need of peeling off the dragon skin. I pray the Lord’s blessing upon me even as I sail on distance seas and look forward to the coming year.
