becoming real

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but Really loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get all loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

~~

That was from the pages of one of my favorite childhood books, The Velveteen Rabbit, which I pulled out to start reading to my younger boys.

I don't know that I could say it any better--what it means to become real, to be real. How life and love and experience--and even pain--transform us. How you have to be humble and lovable enough to allow the transformation to happen. 

I looked at myself in the mirror this morning. I looked tired. More. Still.  The kind of tired I don't seem to rebound from even when I get a few nights of decent sleep under my belt. Tired not just for lack of sleep but for the weight I carry, the demands that don't stop which I still try to meet cheerfully. And sometimes everything about my face and body just seems to be wrong and I begin to calculate the cost of thinning my nose, lifting my eyes, smoothing my neck. Thinking if I just looked differently, someone would find me adorable. But then, I look again. I mean really look. At what lays just below my skin and shines out. That 'thing' that lights up my whole face when I let it. That fuels my smile and my faith and my laugh and my compassion. 

Look, I know our spirits are ancient. I know we've always existed and always will. I understand this life is really just a blip on the radar of eternity. I know someday everything will make sense, and all the things taken from or withheld from me in this life will be returned an hundred fold.  I do, I believe that all the way to my toes. But, right now--hour to hour, day to day, month to month, year to year--this is all I know. It feels endless. And it can be hard. And scary. Being at the mercy of what feels all too much like chance or luck from time to time.  The wondering, when and if and who and how and why. It takes it's toll in many ways. But they don't all have to be bad tolls, do they? Some tolls are good. Toll House cookies, for example. 

And the good tolls--I think those are the REAL happening. And being allowed to happen. I'm letting life and those I care for love off all my hair and pull out my eyes and loosey-goosey up all my joints..for a reason. Because it feels better than staying shiny and new and untouched. And it feels comforting-- that trusting that the *real* me can never, ever be ugly to those who understand. 

Nothing is too hard for God. He can soften up and wear down the sharp edges on  all situations. All challenges. All people.  Me included. Me included. Me included.