Peeling Layers

" 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, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana... But just as I was going to put my foot into the water I looked down and saw that it was all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as it 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 under skin 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 my leg. 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 - 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 just 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."

- Eustace, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

Some days it seems like the layers won't ever come off. When for what feels like the twenty-millionth time I find myself looking at the same ugly patches of my heart and mind, I can get downright discouraged. I look, and I see no progress and think, "What is the point of this? Why can't I get better? Why can't I be better already?" 

I have a drive for perfection. I want to be good, to be excellent in both heart and action. The only problem with that is, I'm not perfect. (Figures. I'm sure you're shocked.) I fall into the exact struggles that have followed me for years. And when my eyes see only failure, I am tempted to give up on seeking the good that Someone planted in me long ago, when He first made a garden and commanded it to bear fruit. That seed of longing for goodness is a gift; the yearning has weight. It carries life. Prying and prodding and peeling off ugly skin, I can dig deep in search of that sweetness. But I have discovered that once a layer of lies falls off, a new one waits underneath. 

Of all the things about growth, this may be the one I hate the most: that I can think I have learned a lesson, passed a test, and moved forward, only to find that in one month, two months, a year, two years, the very same struggle pops up again in a new form - or even (heaven forbid) the exact old one. Failure after a supposed victory has its own peculiarly beastly bite. When that dreaded foot or face or forearm sheds its scales reveals only another layer of scaly filth, the hard weight can ache. 

So I scratch and scrape and scramble to get it off, off and away from me, but there is always another underneath. And I cannot remove so many skins. Only the Lion can.

I may have quite a thing for C.S. Lewis, but I sincerely believe he had a thing for truth. And here, through the mouth of Eustace Clarence Scrubb, he found a keen one: when I reach a task too big to handle and am ready to give up on myself, the Person who knows me better than I know myself never, ever gives up on me. What I cannot do, He will, if I only let Him. That is His promise. 

Sometimes the skins seem so disgusting I don't even want to look at them. If I my own sunburned skin peeling off my shoulders grossed me out just this morning, am I really ready to deal with the even grosser prospect of a sinburned heart? Not really. Still, I want the ugliness gone more than I want to avoid it. If I face it, I can ask for it to be taken away. So I'll face it. And I'll ask. And I'll believe that the One I ask will do exactly as He has promised.

I can feel layers weighing heavily on me right now. Silly things, mostly. Mannerisms. Habits. Thoughtlessness. Daily failures - forgotten chores, impatient words, unsatisfactory work. Shoot, a virtually dead blog I never write on and nobody ever reads, without a post for a year, for Pete's sake! ;) Other things are less trivial. And yet, when that ache weighs almost unbearably, perhaps that is simply a call telling me it is time to peel.

Hope revives in this: the smaller I shrink, the closer I come to my true self. If I humble myself... If I ask... then the pain will be deep, but the relief will be sweeter. If I can learn to keep asking and trusting and watching as those skins fall off, then maybe I could live that way, with layers peeling and claws deep-healing and self shrinking all the while, asking as many times as needed for Him to continue stripping down the excess. One day, at the core of it all, I may just find the me I was made to be. 

For now, it comes in layers.

And when a layer peels off, oh, it is such fun to see.