On becoming "Real".

One afternoon a few weeks back, I sat down with Ambrose to read a story before he went down for a nap. Bored of the usual books we read, I'd pulled "The Velveteen Rabbit" off the shelf--a book I haven't read since, well, childhood. I didn't get further than a few pages before I found myself so touched by how relevant the book's message was to me now. And for that reason, I'd like to share a couple excerpts from the book here. "What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came in 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 often happen to people who break easily, of have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of you hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get 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." And: The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him. And as I sat on the floor that afternoon, wearing a pair of tattered sweatpants and a stained t-shirt, reading this as my son pulled fistfuls of hair from my already half-hearted ponytail with one hand and tried to poke my eyeballs out with the other, all while I tried my darnedest to keep down my lunch of wheat-thins and sprite...I realized something. I realized that when St. Timothy told us that women shall be saved through childbearing, he wasn't kidding. Not even a little. And I realized that these days--and the many days to come--that I spend changing diapers and fishing newspaper out of tiny mouths and wiping snotty noses, the days that I spend miserably nauseous because of the brand-new life residing in my womb, and the nights that I spend sleepless are not for nothing. They're God's gracious gift to me--they're opportunities to become "Real"...the means through which God is saving me, and is making me Holy. They're my opportunity to work out my salvation--bit by bit, with fear, with trembling, with pain and with joy, and with the sacrifice of so many personal luxuries. And you know, I am so, so thankful for that.