Jackson Greer shares how he found solace in C.S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy
By Jackson Greer
The floor was hard and cold to the touch as I knelt beside my wife, who muttered between sobs that she would never be a womb but instead a tomb. What we had hoped for—to grow our little family—continued to elude us.
Our prayers had been answered a few short weeks before—we were finally pregnant. God had seen the beauty and honesty of our desire. But praise and joyful acclamations were short-lived when grief visited us again as our precious little one miscarried.
I remember our church flooding us with love and support. It provided great comfort. But something else happened. The snatching away of something longed for left nothing in me but despair. I grew indifferent to God. I stopped opening the Scriptures, praying, and singing. A bleak coldness took up residence in my heart.
As time marched on, though, I sought fortifications. One day, I found solace in a children’s book from a series that I had long hoped to read to my children one day. My inner child knew that I needed The Chronicles of Narnia—in particular Aslan, as he appears to Shasta in The Horse and His Boy. I also knew which part that I desperately needed. However, I took my time reading through the book. For whatever the reason, I needed it to take a while, but one day I arrived and Aslan was waiting.
Aslan spoke to me in the moment after Shasta finds out that Archenland and Narnia are under threat, and he begins his lonely journey in the fog. He reflects on the griefs that he has experienced and finally gives himself over to tears. Then he becomes aware of a Presence beside him. When Shasta asks who is beside him, the reply comes, “One who has waited long for you to speak.”
Shasta discovers comfort in the darkness. That’s when my own tears began to roll as well. Then the Presence, Aslan, does a remarkable thing: he breathes on Shasta and says, “There, that is not the breath of a ghost. Tell me your sorrows.”
Aslan reveals to Shasta that he has never once been far from him but instead has always been working in his life every step of the way. Soon the fog clears, revealing the great Lion. Shasta beholds the King of Kings. A comforting silence envelops Shasta, similar to the one that Lewis later describes in his book, A Grief Observed, as he processed the death of his wife, Joy.
When I lay these questions before God, I get no answer. But rather, a special kind of ‘No Answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand.’[1]
Even when eventually Aslan disappears, Shasta is full of joy. Through this story, I was brought back to God. I realized my God never left us, He was always near. Suffering and grief still exist in this world, for it is not yet as it will be. But Aslan revealed to Shasta what Christ has revealed to us: that He has overcome the world (John 16:33).
God is found in the dark, difficult, and lonely places of our lives right beside us, and one day every tear will be wiped away as all things are made new.
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Jackson Greer teaches history at New Covenant Christian Academy in western Kentucky. He writes at Reading Jack with Jack, a substack dedicated to the writings of C.S. Lewis. He and his wife have three boys. Jackson can be found appreciating treasures found in local coffee shops and bookshops.
[1] C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (HarperCollins, 1961), 69.