Hidden Pearls

She awoke to a toad sitting on her pillow. His morning song was enchanting. It was just short of something familiar. When he added words to his melody, he sang of her beauty and he enticed her to listen to more. As he continued, he crafted a story about her cunning and boasted of her perfection. She needed to hear what he said and she begged him to return each day to sing his song of herself. Each day he returned and his tune was what woke her up and set her on her course for the day. He fed her what she needed, in order to win and succeed in all of her pursuits. As her reliance on him increased, he began to grow, spending more and more time, entreating her hunger for greatness and purpose. Soon he was so large and bloated that his wart covered skin tore, and from it crept a rat. Despising rats, she began to shoo him away. Just before his tail left her pillow, he stood up on his hind legs and with his back to her belted an Italian aria that was so captivating, she stopped and listened and fell in love with the very love he professed to have for her. He revealed to her that she was a temptation that no one could resist. With each look and each move she learned the power to destroy a man’s heart. This became her new weapon, as she went out to win and succeed in all of her conquests. He fit in her purse and she carried him everywhere with her, keeping him close to her side. He in turn showed her the ways of temptation and desire.

It was an autumn morning and he sat on her windowsill singing his rhythmic chant when a midnight colored cat jumped onto the windowsill, slapped him down and ate him for breakfast. She went into an immediate rage chasing after the cat to seek her revenge. The cat laid down, unafraid and laughed at her. This emboldened her fury. This cat did not sing, but instead, taught her strategy and how to taunt the mice of men. She became an expert and a complete package, beauty, seduction and precision. She was designed for a king. Just as the toad grew, so too did the cat, with each mocking laugh she laughed and each superlative thought she concocted about herself.

The cat grew so large, he began to take on the appearance of a jaguar, with yellow eyes against his black fur. He began pacing the room and staring at her. He finally came out with it and said, “If you run, I will pursue you and tear you to pieces. I have taught you how to be perfect for a king, you belong to me. Apart from me you are nothing. I am the king of the Indian jungle and you are my hare. I am the author of your cunning and I have groomed you to be mine.”

The girl, trapped and panicked, rewound her years in fast motion and realized this had all been a ruse. She had listened to the toad and the rat and the beastly feline and now became the muse of the jaguar. She recalled all of the lies she believed and fell into a heap on the floor. She wept for her innocence and the girl she used to be. When she stood up, she saw her reflection and she was horrified. She had warts on her skin, a long hairless tail and sharp and pointed teeth. “What happened to me?” she cried. “I used to be beautiful!” When she had taken on the lies she transformed into those lies and embodied them.

There was a knock at her door, and there stood a man, covered in a cloak. He said, “If you will, please, give me some water from your jar, that I might drink.” When she brought him the water, he removed the cloak from his head and the room filled with light. The jaguar hissed and cowered in the corner. The girl pleaded with the man to rescue her from her captor. When she pointed back at the jaguar, in its place was a small black kitten, mewing for a bowl of milk, stripped of its power. The man showed her his scars and said, “Your ransom was paid long ago.” By her faith she was healed and as she walked away from her past, she learned real truth. Her tail shrunk, her warts fell off and her teeth became like beautiful pearls. She regained her beauty and purpose, as it was intended, in the garden. As her truth increased, so too did her beauty and soon it was as if nothing had happened. A past dissolved and rewritten. Standing before her mirror, she saw her perfection, in Christ, and realized she was designed by and for the King of kings.