Learn and let go

Got little sleep last night since the dog (who slept in my bed) decided it was "playtime" at around 1 am and was bouncing around and licking my face all night. Still, she is so adorable I HAD to forgive her!

Many of my girlfriends recently had their hearts broken by men. I spent Saturday evening and most of Sunday with one of them, just listening to her story and helping her to work through the pain. One thing I have been realizing is that as women, it is easy for our emotions and hurts to color our perspectives. It is easy to see ourselves as victims and build up protective walls through warping reality until we find meaning and closure in what happened. It is easy to lie to ourselves to make sense of reality and to concoct reasons for the rejection outside of what oftentimes is the truth: you just were not the right person for him (which consequently usually means the reverse is true). But all that does is to leave us bitter, insecure, and angry at half of the population on the planet. Though it is good to learn from experiences, it is not necessary to dwell in them. Though it is good to learn to protect ourselves, it is not good to hold grudges against those who have hurt us.

Yesterday's sermon was on forgiveness, and the pastor shared a wonderful story from the Chronicles of Narnia that illustrated our need for Christ to sanctify us. Here is the transcript from that portion of the sermon:

Eustace is a little snotty kid, he’s mean and bratty and nobody likes him and one day he discovers a cave full of treasures… a Dragon’s treasure. He realizes he’ll be rich and could get back at everyone that’s ill treated him… he’s very excited, but he’s tired and falls asleep. And we all know that if you fall asleep on the dragon’s treasures with dragoness thoughts then when you wake up what happens? You turn into a dragon… He awoke and discovered he was in agony, he couldn’t talk, his friends thought he was a monster. And then Eustace encounters the Lion or Aslan and Aslan is the incarnation of Jesus… he’s the Jesus figure in Chronicles of Narnia.

“Well, anyway, I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly towards me… So it came nearer and nearer… 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.” . . .

“. . . 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. . . . 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.

“. . .The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe, it would ease my pain. But the lion told me I must undress first. . . .

“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. . . . 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. 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.

“Then the lion said . . . ‘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 just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. . . .

“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. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again.”

[C. S. Lewis, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” The Chronicles of Narnia (London: HarperCollins, 2001), 473–75]