Being Real

"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 loose in your 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 am on a quest to learn to be REAL. This has been a several years' journey for me, I don't profess to have accomplished it entirely. I'm still learning what this means, too. What I know that it means is this:

• I am who I am and I don't have to try to be anybody else.
• I am a worthwhile individual based solely on the fact that God created me a unique individual with a unique set of strengths, weaknesses, interests, and abilities...and "He desn't make junk!"
• I have feelings and emotions. It is okay to acknowledge them and experience them. Joy, fear, anxiety, love, frustration and more...I am to control them, not the other way around. God designed feelings and emotions to ENHANCE our experience of living.
• The people I know who Iconsider "REAL" aren't always the most visually appealing or articulate and they are without pretense. They are usually the people who are less than dignified in their deportment--my 5th grade teacher in her 50's playing softball barefoot! They have the time to cry over a dead puppy with a child or listen to an elderly person's litany of ailments, again.
• The person who is real respects herself enough to study out her purpose and priorities in life then does what she can to accomplish them. AND she does not berate herself when she chooses to decline the ten thousand offers to volunteer for various positions that are always begging to be filled.

There's more, I'm sure. I may share more another time. I would love to hear your thoughts on being REAL. Leave me a note in the comments, check back for my response.