The girl walks back into her bedroom, and closes the door behind her. She searches for the mirror that promises connection to the world she just recently came back from.
She gazes into it, the scenes and people there, seeming further and further away.
She looks back at the door.
She glances at the wardrobe…the closed double doors to the world she lived in for the past year…her Narnia.
When in Narnia, she remembered the people outside of her bedroom. They even poked their heads in a few times to check on her…
And now, she was back in her bedroom.
She wandered over to her chair…replaying what had just happened outside of her bedroom.
They were thrilled she finally came to join them…they wanted to hear all about the adventures of the wardrobe…and the girl was relieved to see the ones she loved so dearly and had longed for while she was absent…but things were different.
When conversations subsided, it was clear that things were different.
Life had happened beyond the wardrobe…beyond the walls of her bedroom.
Life had gone on, and the spaces she once filled had been filled with other things…as they should’ve been. An irreplaceable role is not one that she wanted to occupy anyway…
Yet here in her room, in her chair…she pondered what to do.
She couldn’t go back into the wardrobe. What had happened there was finished and closed. That wasn’t an option.
Her role was missing from beyond the bedroom. Obtaining that in its former form wasn’t an option either.
Nothing seemed to be connecting between what was then, what was recent, what was now, and what was to come.
And in her room…it was silent. She hadn’t let it be silent since her return. She had run straight out of the wardrobe, through her bedroom door, and straight into the world she had said good-bye to a year prior.
And now it was silent. Silent in the place that lies between where she came from and where she was going.
And for a moment it was terrifying.
Then she heard a stirring in the silence.
She looked over to see a man sitting in the room with her. She was startled at first, but comforted beyond reason at His presence.
“Where have you been?”
“You ran, my girl…you ran straight out of the wardrobe and into the world you left behind…you ran on without Me…”
He had the mirror in His hand…He looked down at it…He looked back at the girl…
“I am the only one that will connect that world to this one…the only one…I walked you out of the old…I walked you through your Narnia…and I am your only hope of connecting with this world again.”
“I don’t know that I want to leave my bedroom again…”
“I know you don’t…it’s easier here…but I have a world for you to step into…a different one than you left…one that I have equipped you for…”
Staring at the ground, the girl wept…
“I have to trust you again, don’t I?”
He smiled, “Mmhmm…we’re not going back out that way,” He said pointing at the door she had closed, “We’re going through there…”
There was another way out of her bedroom. It was a long hallway, a dark one. So dark, that the moment you enter it, you can’t see even an inch in front of you. She never went that way.
“Not that way…”
“It can only be that way…that’s the way of trust…you believe there’s a door at the end of it, don’t you?”
She muddled over her response…if she answered yes, then He would question her hesitation. If she answered no, she’d be lying, because she did, in fact, know that there was a door at the end of that hallway…even if she’d never been through it. So, she closed her eyes and sighed.
He smiled again and took her hand, “I just knew you’d come back to the bedroom.”
And He led her into the darkness.
