Undress My Heart.

Past week,
I've been meditating on
The Heart,
And I got reminded
How many layers of walls and dirt
Our hearts accumulate
As we live in this brokendown world.

In different seasons,
We realise and deal with different layers.
We realise how awful we can be -
We want to be good girls and boys
But we can't seem to do it right -
So many times!

I remember some days...
When I try so hard on my own,
And think I didn't want any help.
I get busy,
But ironically become less productive.
I lose myself in a viscious cycle
Of doing the same thing I didn't want to do,
And even try to hide it.

*

Eustace Grubb,
An obnoxious boy,
Always demands his own way
And is certain everyone is against him.

One day,
He stumbling across a great pile of treasure
In an abandoned dragon's lair.
Eustace stuffs his pockets with jewels and gold
And then falls asleep.

As he sleeps,
Dark dragonish thoughts fill his heart,
And Eustace wakes to find himself become
A dragon.

Frustrated by unresolved hurts and memories,
Eustace wants to be different.
He tries to be.
But no matter how hard he tries,
He remains the same -
A boy trapped in a dragon's body.

One night,
Eustace meets the great lion Aslan,
Who leads him to a clear pool.
Eustace can't wait to plunge into it to ease the discomfort.

But Aslan tells him he must
Undress first.
Three times Eaustaces scratches at his scales
And sheds his dragonish skin.
But each time he does,
He finds yet
Another layer beneath.
'You have to let me undress you,'
the Lion tells him.
And Eaustace describes the experience:

'The very first tear He made so deep Tha tI thought it had gone right into my heart. And when He began pulling the skinn off, It hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to beart 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 in the grass: Only every so much thicker, And darker, And more knobbly looking Than the others had been.'

Naked and strembling,
Eustace bathes in the pool and
Is once again a boy.

Aslan gives him a new set of clothes
And leads him back home -
Where a new, transformed life waits him.

[The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - C.S Lewis]

How we all need de-dragoning,
Everyone of us.
Doing it yourself,
You can only scratch and claw at the surface.
We make small amounts of progress,
But little change,

Until we lay our lives before
The great Lion of Judah,
Asking Him to do the transforming work,
Our efforts at self-improvement
Will only yield one layer of
Dragonish skin after another.

*