In C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I’ve always been moved by one moment, and by Edmund, especially. Yes, that Edmund — the mouthy Judas with who took a hit of something sweet and sold too much to chase that high.

I know his character isn’t clean.

He lied, he snuck sweets, he sold out his siblings for a throne made of frost. He said yes to the witch who dressed her lies up like belonging.

To most, Edmund was a hot mess.

But to me, he felt real — or at least realer to me than his brother, Peter.

Peter was too symmetrical for my liking.
He looked like he flossed and never broke curfew
and got a haircut that took its cues from authority.

He was the golden boy with a birthright. The world already loved him.

He wasn’t bad, he just wasn’t me. He wasn’t Edmund.

The story says that in the moment before this moment that I set out to capture above, Edmund didn’t walk back into the Lion’s camp with his hands up in surrender, noble and changed.

He was rescued.

A carcass dragged out of the wreckage, not like a hero, not even like a prodigal — just a kid who’d been the steamroller and now the steam rolled. He was brought back bruised and silent, body all soft edges avoiding eye contact. He didn’t say much. He didn’t need to. Every step was a eulogy for the kid they thought he was. Every breath carried the coppery aftertaste of regret.

You don’t come back from something like that clean, but cleanliness isn’t the point. It’s not about purity, it’s about possibilities.

That’s what the Lion — Aslan —seemed to be about at least.

When the Lion sees the carcass dragged back into the camp, he meets the mess in the mud. He lowers himself. Not to dominate, but to see and be seen. Power that needs to loom or get loud is brittle. It's already afraid. Mercy that gets low, however, is feral — that’s the kind of wild that’ll undo you.

We don’t know what was said between the two of them. Lewis understood the weight too much to not tell. But we do know a few things:

We know that there was a boy in the dirt who knew he should be erased and a Lion who refused to pick up the chalk.

We know that whatever happened in that space didn’t require humiliation in order for it to work. There was no ledger. No replay reel. No SAY IT AGAIN SO WE'RE SURE YOU MEAN IT.

And we also know that in the wake of this moment, the Lion walked the boy back to his family and said this is not your betrayer, “this is your brother. And you don’t need to ask him about the past.” Like when Jesus let Judas kiss him and still calls him friend.

Edmund doesn’t come back clean. Again, nobody really does.

Edmund comes back claimed.

And I think that’s worse, in a way. Because now you have to live as someone who isn’t allowed to hate himself anymore. You’ve got to hold your own hand and say who you are without spitting after it.

Grace is a dirty thief like that. Takes your excuses, your self-loathing, your right to spiral as performance art. Grace will hand you a sandwich and say, "Eat up, kid. You don’t get to die just to make a point."

The Lion lowered himself, not to test the boy’s strength, but to refuse the boy's shame—lifting him from the ground like a vow that your worst chapter is not your whole book.

And when a truth that heavy is spoken without witnesses or wounds attached, you either let it name you—or you spend your life running from a mercy that refuses to lose your scent.

Edmund was Lifted by the lowering.

• Ayous wood .75″ (1.9 cm) thick frame from renewable forests
• Paper thickness: 10.3 mil (0.26 mm)
• Paper weight: 189 g/m²
• Lightweight
• Acrylite front protector
• Hanging hardware included
• Blank product components in the US sourced from Japan and the US
• Blank product components in the EU sourced from Japan and Latvia

How to attach hooks on 24″ × 36″ horizontal frames:
Place each of the mounting hooks 1 inch (2.5 cm) from frame corners when hanging horizontally.

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