23/01/2026
From Prison to Praise — From Lizard to Stallion
My story is a story of transformation — from prison to praise, from mess to message.
Some time ago, I encountered a piece of literature that is a mirror to my own life story.
The book is The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis.
It’s a short allegory about people travelling from a grey, empty town toward the very borders of heaven. When they arrive, each traveller is confronted by an invitation — a moment of truth where they must surrender the one thing holding them back from entering life in its fullness.
One unforgettable scene features a man with a small red lizard clinging to his shoulder.
The lizard represents his addiction (or that thing that enslaves) persistent, whispering, familiar, and so entwined with his identity that he believes he cannot live without it.
Then an angel appears and gently but directly tells the man:
“May I kill it?”
The man panics.
He thinks that if the lizard dies, he will die too. That’s the power of addiction — it convinces us that it is our life.
So at first he refuses.
He bargains.
He delays.
He tries to quiet the lizard without losing it.
But the angel insists with both firmness and compassion:
“I never said it wouldn’t hurt.
I said it wouldn’t kill you.”
That is the turning point.
The man realises he cannot kill the lizard himself—he does not have the strength.
So with trembling surrender he finally pleads:
“ Kill it… just kill it!”
The angel reaches out.
There is a cry of pain.
The man collapses to the ground, believing he is dying.
This is the first transformation — the death of the false self.
But he does not die. He rises.
He is made stronger, more solid, more alive than before.
Then something unexpected happens.
The lizard, now lying lifeless, begins to change.
It grows. Its body stretches, straightens, strengthens.
And before the man’s eyes, the creature that once tormented him becomes a magnificent stallion.
This is the second transformation — the redemption of what was once broken.
The very thing that once enslaved him becomes the very thing that now carries him forward.
He climbs onto its back, and in a final image rich with sacramental breath, the man and the stallion breathe into each other’s nostrils — the life of God filling what was once twisted and making it whole.
When I surrendered my addiction — when I finally let God deal with the thing I thought I could never live without — He did not annihilate me.
He resurrected me.
What once was my shame became my testimony.
What once isolated me became a bridge to others.
My burden became a blessing.
My mess became a message.
My prison — literally — became the place where God planted the first seeds of praise.
So as I come to the end of my cadet reflections, I set this final one gently onto the shelf, trusting that in God’s timing, the imagery of lizards and stallions, death and resurrection, surrender and breath, will weave together with the story of a blueberry bush, the rhythm of pruning, and the quiet work of holiness.
Because holiness is never loud.
It is slow work. Patient work.
Transforming work.
And like the man in Lewis’s tale — like the blueberry branches I have tended, rooted, pruned, and carried — I am learning that everything surrendered to God is transformed. Everything laid down is raised again. Everything breathed upon becomes new.
This is my final reflection as a cadet. But it is not the end of the story.
The Gardener is still at work.
And the stallion still runs. And the best is yet to come.
