The Painful Side of Growth

One of the most powerful moments in "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" is missing in the movie.

It is the part where Eustace changes from a dragon into a boy...with the significant help of Aslan.  If you will remember, Eustace was turned into a dragon after succumbing to greed and putting on a magic circlet on his arm.  He is miserable as he realizes this selfish, sinful choice has possibly separated him from humankind forever.  He cries himself to sleep one night, resigned to this awful fate and then has the following experience.  This is in his words as he retells it to his friends:

“Then 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 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 jut 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.”

“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 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. . . .”

I read these books several times in my youth and the imagery of this scene has always remained with me, the painful peeling off of layers to the tender, smooth, delicious self.

Through the past few months, as I have struggled with facing the probing question "what lack I yet?" and God's merciful yet often painful answers, to my mind has come this image: “The very 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 jut 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.”

The process has been painful--it hurts like "billy-oh!"--but has been such fun to see it coming away. I am still peeling and know I have far to go to be like my Savior, but the layers underneath are looking beautiful.  I am so grateful for my Savior who is doing the peeling...who knows just how much I can handle and who sends me refreshment to restore me through the mercy and forgiveness of Him and others around me, others whom I have hurt or offended.  I pray He will remain with me to shape me into the tender, new creature that is His.