“You have made us for yourself Oh Lord, Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
St. Augustine
As the Lord has been pressing me forward to share the journeys of brokenness that I had to walk through. He reminded me of something I had written down. I am not really sure where I got it from, a book or message from our Pastor, or a ladies meeting? “people won’t believe your message, until they know you are real.”
Reminding me of the childhood story, The Velveteen Rabbit.
The questions between the Skin horse and the rabbit in the nursery full of toys and blankets and childhood magic. Read with me:
“For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like Skin Horse understood all about it.”
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were laying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that go 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 a 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.”
“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 believe the only way to be real is to be transparent and open.
Allowing others to see us and love us, in and through our brokenness.
As the Lord dislodged the pain that I carried, my ‘real self’ began to emerge.
His love saturated my heart and the woundedness of my soul.
I could never go back, to where I was or who I was.
Just as the Rabbit said. When we know He loves us.
It frees us to be, ‘who we were meant to be’.
The restless heart that was within me for most of my young life, could only be filled and calmed by the Love of God.
Our Pastor once said; “It is not knowing about Jesus, it is understanding through Him.
Fully grasping His love for Us.”
So God is showing me through this new transition of my life, the need to allow Him to help me to become who I was created to be. If it is through my writing that I am able to bless others.
Then I will write. If it is in speaking and sharing my story. Then I will do that also.
He will give me the strength and the words when the time is right.
The Lord said,”I will show up in your midst, my presence will be upon you, as you follow me and encourage others.”
Psalm 101:1-3 “I will sing of your Love and justice Lord. I will praise you with songs. I will be careful to live a blameless life – when will you come help me?
I will lead a life of integrity in my own home.” vs 6: “I will search for faithful people to be my companions”.
Psalm 95: 1 The psalmist says :”Come, let us Bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for HE is God. We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care. If only you would listen to his voice today!”
I encourage us all… as we journey through this thing called life, may we earnestly seek to listen to his voice. We must stop, and listen, for it is often in the stillness of the moment when He will whisper.
