Velveteen Rabbit

This week my granddaughter Aiden will turn two. I am holding out hope that the arrival of her little cousin Anderson will bring her to me soon but I don't want to wait to mail her gift. I want to give her the book The Velveteen Rabbit. I have always liked the story but it didn't really mean as much to me until now. There is a part in the story where the old rocking horse tells the rabbit what it means to be real. He says that real is a thing that happens to you when a child loves you for a long, long time. He goes on to describe what happens to you before you are real and the kind of people who never become real, "people who break easily, or have sharp edges or who have to be carefully kept." He tells the rabbit that 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. Yep, I'm real. I didn't know it until I got the book out for our little Elle at five. I was reading this part and started to choke back tears, she asked me if I needed to just stop reading, she's a compassionate one. I finished the book but I kept thinking about it.
What is real? My Raggedy Ann was real. She was my friend when I was a child. I suppose she was my security blanket, my one thing that helped me go to sleep when I was afraid. She went with me to college, took her place on my bed with the pastel pillows. It sounds silly but I couldn't leave her behind just yet. I would trade her soon enough for a grown up life.
I believe we are real because God wants us to be. I believe he puts children in our lives to teach us what that looks like. We teach them to be honest; they test us when we are in situations when a lie might be easier. They watch us in our relationships with others. They ask themselves if they are loving like mommy or truthful like Daddy. It is their love that makes us want to be those things. We start to look worn out and frayed to the world but we are more precious to them when we lose all pretenses and become who we were meant to be.
It is in our frailties we discipline them. We are not perfect, we can't expect them to be perfect, we can only hold them up to God and ask for his wisdom in our ignorance. Unfortunately many parents don't become real until it is too late for their own children. It is most often grandchildren who take on the job of making us real. I am thankful that God gave me young children at my age. I feel very honored
and blest to have them in my life. And when they tell me I'm soft in the middle or my hair has silver in it I smile. They aren't trying to hurt my feelings they are telling me what I already know, I am becoming shabbier and loose in the joints, they have loved me into real.