What is Real?

My favorite book as a child was “The Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams. It is still at the top of my list today. If you have not read this book, I strongly urge you to find it, read it, and think about what it has to say. It shouldn’t take you very long – and it might resonate with you the way it has with me through the years. My favorite passage is a conversation between the old Skin Horse – a rocking horse that had been in the nursery for generations, and the Velveteen Rabbit. Let me quote it for you:

"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."

“I suppose you are real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

“The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,” he said. “That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real, you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

I love this! And I want to be REAL! I want to be REAL in my relationships – with God, with Dave, with my family, with my friends, and with my co-workers. I want to be REAL in my day-to-day life. I want to be REAL in everything I do. But I think REAL is much more about BEING than about DOING. As humans, we like to see accomplishments and credentials. We like awards. We like letters after someone’s name. There is nothing wrong with that – but those are certainly not things that God looks at. He sees the heart – the very core of who we are and who we are becoming!