Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lives the peace of God.

My friend Sharon and I began a "circle journal" (remember the title of my old blog?). It's a journal that two or more people write in and mail back and forth to one another. I received it in the mail from her yesterday and oh what a confirmation that we are true kindred spirits. The Velveteen Rabbit has long been one of my favorite children's stories. (I am also a big fan of the adult book, The Velveteen Principles, A Guide to Becoming Real. If you haven't read it you should!) I have never in the probably one hundred or more times I have read this story in my life thought of it in the way Sharon shared in our journal. I was blown away!

"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 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."

(So the rabbit becomes the little boy's favorite toy and he even calls him "real." )

. . .Weeks passed, and the little Rabbit grew very old and shabby, but the Boy loved him just as much. He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink lining to his ears turned grey, and his brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit any more, except to the Boy. To him he was always beautiful, and that was all that the little Rabbit cared about. He didn't mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him Real, and when you are Real shabbiness doesn't matter.

(Then the little boy gets very sick with scarlet fever and eventually all his toys must be burned. The rabbit is in a pile in the garden so depressed and lonely.)

. . .Of what use was it to be loved and lose one's beauty and become Real if it all ended like this? And a tear, a real tear, trickled down his little shabby velvet nose and fell to the ground.

And then a strange thing happened. For where the tear had fallen a flower grew out of the ground, a mysterious flower, not at all like any that grew in the garden. It had slender green leaves the colour of emeralds, and in the centre of the leaves a blossom like a golden cup. It was so beautiful that the little Rabbit forgot to cry, and just lay there watching it. And presently the blossom opened, and out of it there stepped a fairy.

She was quite the loveliest fairy in the whole world. Her dress was of pearl and dew-drops, and there were flowers round her neck and in her hair, and her face was like the most perfect flower of all. And she came close to the little Rabbit and gathered him up in her arms and kissed him on his velveteen nose that was all damp from crying.

"Little Rabbit," she said, "don't you know who I am?"

The Rabbit looked up at her, and it seemed to him that he had seen her face before, but he couldn't think where.

"I am the nursery magic Fairy," she said. "I take care of all the playthings that the children have loved. When they are old and worn out and the children don't need them any more, then I come and take them away with me and turn them into Real."

"Wasn't I Real before?" asked the little Rabbit.

"You were Real to the Boy," the Fairy said, "because he loved you. Now you shall be Real to every one."

So, it's an amazing story, but the application Sharon made struck me in the deepest part of my heart. She wrote, "Isn't that such a story of salvation? As I read it I could not help but cry. We are created and beautiful, but not truly alive until we receive God's love. He puts us through trials and often pain, but it shapes who we are. In our human nature we are flawed but His grace covers us. And when He takes us home He makes us complete in Him--TRULY REAL, as He is and how He designed us to be. Once You are real you can't become unreal again. . . What a promise! What hope!"

I will never read this story the same way again.

Thank You for making me REAL through the saving love of Christ. Thank You that I can never become unreal again. Thank You for my friend and the work You are doing in her life and the gift she is to me.