The Scales of a Dragon

My friend, Lindsey is also a leader in our Celebrate Recovery Group. She is awesome and I love her spirit and her heart. She sent the ladies we are working with in CR the best letter and I asked her if I could share it on my blog...it is such a powerful image.


Ladies:

For those of you who were there last night thank you so much for sharing and for those of you who were not we missed you badly and need your voice in our group. I receive so much healing by listening to others stories. I just wanted to share a little something this morning too. Several years ago I read C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader... its one of the Narnia Series. We mentioned The Screwtape Letters last night... C.S. Lewis is one smart guy. Anyway, There is a passage that has been on my heart from that book for the last couple of days, so many of the images from that book speak to me at various times. Anyway, let me give you the back ground in case you have not read it because I want to share with you an excerpt... it's so beautiful and relevant to our work @ CR.

The character's name is Eustace and he is a brat. He is a cousin to the crew of kids from the movies ( cause this one is later in the series) and he is whiny and annoying and ....you can get that image in your head no problem. They land on this island to explore and he finds a dragon. He watches it a first. Goes back again to watch it a little closer. Sneaks into it's lair, plays with it's stuff, puts on his bracelet, and slowly begins to realize he is growing scales. He continues to visit the dragon, never associating his scale growth with the dragon and long story short over a period of time grows more and more scales... isolates himself from the group because the whole scale thing is a little hard to explain and, well, embarrassing and eventually just disappears and becomes a dragon. In the story you hear all of this from his own mouth.. as a testimony, and only after he is found by Edmund one morning sitting by the fire. Edmund asks how he became un-dragoned and here is the story.... He keeps trying to "wash off the scales" one night he is so fed up and tired and looks at himself and does not recognize who he is. He hits bottom. He tries to remove the scales three times himself. Each time he does it it comes off and then right back on. He is frustrated. Finally, Aslan who is waiting patiently on the bank thru this process says.... I have to do it. Isn't that beautiful? Aslan is the God figure in the book, just FYI. Here is the passage.

"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. There 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 phony if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know they're no muscle and are pretty mouldy compared with Caspian's, but I was so glad to see them.
"After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me . . . in new clothes -- the same I've got on now, as a matter of fact. And then suddenly I was back here." [116-117]

Oh man I love that picture. I have prayed it lately. God, please peel this mess off. Forgive me for playing with that dragon. Remove my scales and chunk me in the water... naked and pink with new baby skin and all.... and let me swim until the pain is gone. You can do this for me. I'm tired of pulling off my own scales only to watch them re-appear. It's a waste of time. You do it. You are the only one who can.

Well that was a long intro and a whole lot of words but I just wanted to share with you that picture and invite you all back to CR next week, baby skin and all. Maybe that picture will help you think thru the week about your dragon and remind you that God is the only one who can peel those scales off.