I have been thinking a lot about the undragoning of Eustace in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. I could tell you the whole story but I will let you read it for yourself. The part I've been reflecting on is his description of how Aslan undragons him...As Eustace describes his adventure he tells his cousin of his efforts to undragon himself - his entirely futile efforts to undragon himself.

"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-o but it is such fun to see it coming away...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...And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been."

The dragon skin that Aslan peeled off was thick and scaly and ugly. And it was very much like the skin I find myself trying to shed. But alone, I pick at it and look down and find it back again. How do I lose the stuff of me that is dragon-like? How do I settle for being 'smaller than I had been?'

My best friend had her second baby this past week. He is a beautiful, perfect little guy named Jack (he is the little brother of my awesome godson Declan!). He came home from the hospital on Thanksgiving day and I went over and hung out with him and parents and spent his first night at home with him so his parents could get some sleep.

He is lovely. He just hung out on my lap Thanksgiving afternoon. He is sweet and adorable. And at the same time he makes my heart ache with the acknowledgement that I am going to spend my life holding other people's babies, not my own. And the dragon emerges...I thought I was fine, good with the reality that is my life...and yet the dragon comes back...And for all of my scratching and pulling and longing I can't undragon me. I love this little boy already. And yet that love is complicated and aching and genuine all at once. Yet another example of both and it seems.

I can't shed the dragon-ness...I need an Aslan it seems...can't undragon me on my own...