This happened yesterday, but I wanted to post it before I forgot about it.

While reading The Chronicles Narnia, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader to my kids I came across the passage and had the following epiphany.

The section I was reading is where Eustace had changed back into a boy from being a dragon. Edmund had found him (Eustace) sitting by himself. Eustace had told Edmund that it was dark, but he could see a lion and moonlight was all around the lion. He went on to say that he felt the lion speaking to him, but he didn't think the lion actually spoke to him. The lion took Eustace to the top of a mountain that he had never seen before, and there was a lake. Eustace wanted to take a bath, but the lion had told him that he needed to undress first. Eustace couldn't figure out how or why he needed to get undressed, but he started clawing at the scales on his body. The scales would fall off, and he would step out of his skin but still it wasn't enough. After three times the lion told him that the lion would have to undress him. So the lion undressed him, at first it hurt but it felt so good. In the book Eustace says to Edmund: “ 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 that I had 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, Eustace goes on to explain that the lion took him out of the bath and clothed him. Eustace tells Edmund that he thinks it was all a dream and Edmund says no because you are changed and you have the clothes.

The epiphany was this: God wants to bath us, and wants us to let Him take our “skin”. It may hurt but in the end it is worth every moment. We can peel the layers off, but only He can get to the core.