Andrée Seu, "Alice's battle":
You have never seen a struggle like Alice's struggle against joy. The doubting Narnian dwarfs were preemptively miserable, and so is Alice. The girlfriends' counsel of lowered expectations mounts a new offensive in her mind. (There is no force so powerful as error in a godly person's mouth.) But just as Alice starts to sink again, the Spirit counters with this coup de grace:
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding" (Proverbs 3:5).
Alice perceives in a hot instant that this is not only where the present battle is joined, but where every battle is joined—against the counsel of one's saintliest friend, against the received wisdom of one's generation, against the carnal instinct to protect oneself. There are only ever these two—the Word of the Lord; your own understanding.
It dawns on Alice that at any given moment of the day she has a choice of which thoughts she may entertain—those of her friends and "her own understanding," or the word of the Lord. All that is not the latter is the former, no matter how sweetly wrapped.