Being REAL
I read an article today that quoted lines from the book “The Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams. It struck me as being the very thing that many of us are looking for but afraid to actually BE or go after.
We all want REAL relationships, a place where we are accepted for who we are even when it looks like failure and sounds like defeat; a place where we can be REAL and find encouragement to be better. Yet somehow we find ourselves putting on the mask and playing the game because fear of rejection is just too much of a risk…
Being real is not easy… it is not pretty all the time and it hurts most of the time. But in the end when you find that place where you can be who God created you to be and you find the people who challenge you to be more…it is worth the pain. That is my prayer for all of us…
Here are the lines from the book that have challenged me to strive to always be 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 loose in your 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.”