It’s easy to pity Lucy. She knows she isn’t making up the kingdom in the wardrobe. She is beset on all sides with siblings who minimize, call her foolish, or even go so far as to outright lie when she finally proved her experience true.
As a Christian, and especially when we are following our natural bent towards becoming a Christian mystic, this is so ridiculously relatable.
One of the things I admire most about Lucy is her bravery to stand firm in the face of criticism, ridicule, and betrayal. She knows what she has experienced. For her, what others call fantasy and farce she is certain is Reality and Truth. She knows what she has experienced. She rests in that conviction.
From the chapter “Back on This Side of the Door” Lucy says, “I don’t care what you think, and I don’t care what you say…you can do anything you like. I know I’ve met a Faun in there and – I wish I’d stayed there and you are all beasts, beasts.”
She’s endured ridicule, mockery, and, probably worst of all, misplaced pity. Remember back when Peter said, “Poor old Lu, hiding and nobody noticed,” after her first adventure. She’s only saying this because she wants attention and nobody gave it to her, poor thing.
I don’t doubt that she questioned and doubted her experiences because I do it all the time. Did I really hear God here? Did that heavy coincidence truly happen? Is there any other way that it can be explained? I’m protecting myself when I do that. I try to rule out any hint of wish fulfillment. Thankfully, the vast majority of experiences have been as cut and dry for me as it was for Lucy. Why would she make up a Faun, a creature she didn’t know of before? Why would she wish for snow in the middle of summer on the school holidays when she would be delightfully running down a path, soaking up the warm sun, and playing in the streams. Snow means indoors, for goodness sake. And then there was Edmund too, no matter what he said. He saw it.
All around us there are skeptics to our experiences with the LORD, and right they are to doubt. The wardrobe isn’t constantly open, is it? God doesn’t always feel as close or as chatty. Sometimes we reach through the fur, that which caused us joy and pleasure in His presence before, and instead of the wood we find wood; a flat panel that bars our way. We have to endure days without Narnia. Some of us for weeks or years.
I’ve been told by fellow mystics that have gone on before, “Write that down!” when I share an experience with them to be sure that I’ve got my head on straight. A memorial has to be made for us just like with the Israelites. Why? Because the mundane mind rebels, minimizes, and chokes the life out of any experience we could call mystical. “God doesn’t belong here,” seems to be it’s rebellious refrain.
It takes at the outside six weeks for the miraculous to become mundane to us. It takes quite a bit of effort for me to remember on my own that God took away my social anxiety completely in a single moment, because it’s a “natural” part of my life now. It’s woven into the fabric of my daily existence that I can talk to complete strangers, make phone calls, and send back my food at the restaurant if it was made incorrectly. We have to write these things down lest we forget what God has done. This helps us to keep Lucy’s courage.
Can we really blame Peter and Susan? Countries in cupboards, indeed.
This side of the Chronicles we know why Professor Kirk insists that it logically follows that it is true. He is, in all likelihood, the first human king of Narnia. He has been there. How wonderful it must have been for him to hear that his own experience wasn’t a fantasy or fever dream. How often had he gone up and looked at the wardrobe to remind himself? When was the last time? It had only happened when he was a far younger man; a boy really. There was someone else who had gotten in too!
This so perfectly describes my feeling when I find others who have “gotten in too”.
One thing that amazes me about Lucy’s courage and stalwart insistence, is how it affects the others after the meeting with Professor Kirk. Suddenly, with an adult’s opinion in hand (almost permission really), they are allowed to open the crack in the door of belief. It isn’t madness, it isn’t attention seeking behavior, she isn’t normally known for lying. So what is it? Maybe…just maybe, it’s the real thing.
As followers of Jesus, and especially as followers who are of a mystic bent, we are going to look crazy. There is a power in the insistence of our belief. When it’s clear that it isn’t a fad, an “attention seeking behavior”, and it doesn’t just disappear when times are hard and situations are painful, the wardrobe opens a crack for others. When things are easy and good anyone can dismiss our faith as fantasy and God as our imaginary friend. When things get real, I guarantee that the Peters, the Susans, and the Edmunds (especially the Edmunds) all look at the Lucys to see how deep the Truth actually goes. Some will be excited when it is revealed, others reluctant, and still others ashamed.
Regardless, life has a way of herding us towards Him. We cannot avoid encounters with Him in our life, only reject or dismiss them. It’s almost like, “…some magic in the house had come to life and was chasing them into Narnia…”. Oh, yes. He hounds us down until, as Peter says “Quick!, there’s nowhere else.”
One of my favorite things about the movies is Lucy’s delight that they had all been herded to the wardrobe, to the only place left in which to hide, the only place left to put their trust. She doesn’t know that it is going to be open, that the wood will be there, but there is a chance. And she can’t wait to see what happens next.
I wish I could say that I’ve been Lucy in the current struggles of my life. The walls are closing in, shaking my faith or reliance on man made structures, and I’m panicking. I want to be like her, with “the Macready” closing in, everyone stressed, and wondering what magic just might happen.
How can she be like that in the face of pressure and ridicule?
“Courage, dear heart,” Aslan will later say in “Voyage of the Dawn Treader“. He’s not saying it because she doesn’t have any. It’s a reminder that she has had such courage from the beginning.
Finding Narnia 
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