When Love Makes You Real

In Margery Williams' beloved children's classic The Velveteen Rabbit, a stuffed toy asks the old Skin Horse what it means to become Real. The Skin Horse answers with words that cut far deeper than any children's story should: "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 asks if it hurts. "Sometimes," the Skin Horse admits. "But when you are Real you don't mind being hurt... once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

We spend so much of our lives trying to manufacture an identity — polishing the exterior, curating what others see, stuffing ourselves with achievements or approval. But the Skin Horse knew what the apostle John knew: identity is not something we construct. It is something love does to us.

"See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God — and that is what we are" (1 John 3:1). The Almighty does not love us because we are real. His love is what makes us real. It wears away the velveteen. It loosens the stitching of every false self we have sewn together. And what remains — shabby, threadbare, deeply known — that is who we actually are. And it lasts for always.