Love That Makes Us Real

In Margery Williams's The Velveteen Rabbit, there is a conversation between two nursery toys that contains one of the most profound descriptions of love ever put to paper. The Velveteen Rabbit asks the Skin Horse, the oldest and wisest toy in the nursery, what it means to become Real. The Skin Horse answers: "Real isn't how you are made. 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."

The Rabbit wants to know if it hurts. "Sometimes," the Skin Horse says. "But when you are Real, you don't mind being hurt."

That is the shape of genuine love. It is not a transaction or a fleeting feeling. It is the slow, faithful choosing of another person until something in both of you is transformed. Love wears us down in places. It costs us our polished surfaces and our careful self-protection. But in the losing, we become more ourselves than we ever were.

The Almighty loved us exactly this way. He did not love from a safe distance. He entered the nursery of our broken world. He let Himself be handled, worn, wept over. And through that costly love, He made us Real — not perfect, but genuinely and eternally alive.

Love that transforms always costs something. But once you are Real, you can never become unreal again.