Everything is sacred...

i know i already blogged today, but this really touched me...

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

Eustace, the whiny cousin, has been turned into a dragon and has his first encounter with Aslan. He is telling Edmund the story.

"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. I knew it was a well because you could see the water bubbling up from the bottom of it: but it was a lot bigger than most wells--like a very big, round bath with marble steps going down into it. The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg. But the lion told me I must undress first...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 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...Then the lion said--but I don't know if he 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. [this is the part that really gets me...] 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 I was as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been."

Strange how a simple children's book can get to you sometimes. The pain is worth having the junk gone. DEFINITELY worth it...