Rabbits and Real Life

One Christmas, the Velveteen Rabbit was given to the boy for a Christmas present. He was a lovely stuffed toy, very nice to look at and soft to touch; but all the mechanical toys were bigger, and more impressive, and were always boasting about how real they were; how they could move and make real noises and do impressive things. Only the old Skin Horse was kind to the Rabbit. He had been around for ever and ever, and seen hundreds of toys come and go, and he knew all about the nursery-magic – all the strange and wonderful things that only wise old toys like the Skin Horse understood.

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, “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 often happen 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.”

***

Somebody read this out in church the other day, which was quite unexpected but also quite brilliant. And if you’ve seen my blogs on Toy Story or the Lion King you’ll probably already have worked out why I love it so much.

I want to be real. I think we all want to be real. I think we all have a desire, somewhere in us, to be who we actually are with each other – to live our real life, and not always have to create a fictional, edited version of ourselves for public consumption. I think this is partly why life feels so exhausting a lot of the time – we’re trying to do two whole lives at once: the real one, which we can’t help but live, but then also the slightly-made-up, nasty-bits-left-out, cracks-painted-over life that we feel we need to live in front of every one else. I could quite easily go on a rant about facebook and stuff at this point, about how we end up feeling rubbish about ourselves because we’re scrolling down the newsfeed, comparing our own real, messy lives with everyone else’s facebook-life – a kind of sepia-tone, photo-shopped, only-the-best-bits version, where we get a status update for every hilarious happening, every big success, and every time a massive thank you is in order to all my amazing friends and my gorgeous boyfriend and my awesome family, but we never get to read the dark moments. No one’s tweeting “I’m really lonely” so we think it’s just us – but it’s not. And at this point, I’d like to apologise for the fact that often I choose to write this blog at the end of a good story – so that every thing that’s difficult gets written about in the past tense, and I give the impression that my life always finds itself at these meaningful, pleasant happy endings. It’s not normally that simple, and I’m sorry.

I was chatting to my mate the other day about this, about what we do to ourselves with the whole facebook comparison thing, and then she said something that really hit me – it’s not just facebook. We live our whole lives like this. She said to me, the only time we ever talk about how we actually feel, is when we’re drunk. And I think a lot of the time that’s true. And it’s tragic isn’t it? And I think it’s because we’re scared that if people see the ‘real’ version of us, they’ll think we’re ugly. They’ll think we’re weird. They’ll put us in the box of people who’ve ‘got issues’ and never look at us in the same way again. Maybe, even worse, we’re afraid that they’ll use our wounds as a weapon and hurt us. So we just never talk about it. We have friends, and they’re good friends, and we love them, and they seem to love us, but we always have this thing in our heads reminding us that they don’t love the real us, they love the version of us that we’ve shown them – the one with all the messy parts and the ‘issues’ edited out, the one without the loneliness, without the fears. And that’s not quite the same. But it’s better than nothing, so we settle for it.

Well, this is me saying, let’s not settle for it. This is me saying – are we not better than that? Can we not all just agree that we will refuse to put each other in boxes, that we will refuse to label our friends as ‘weird’, that we will refuse to think even the slightest bit less of someone because they’ve told us the truth, and they’re life turns out not to be shiny or perfect? Because none of our lives are very shiny once you take the filter off. None of us are actually perfect. If there’s a ‘weird’ box, then we’re all in it. We’re all in the ‘weird’ box together. So why don’t we just stop being scared of it and have a party in the box? Let’s stop pretending so that we can stop being lonely. Let’s stop closing the door on each other. Let’s live our real lives together. Because “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.”

But the problem is, that I type this, and I hope that lots of people will read it and be nodding and saying ‘Yes, that would be so much better’, but at the same time I know that its not that simple. You can’t just become Real all at once, just because you’d like to be. But here’s the thing, the one thing that gives me so much hope:

“Real is a thing that happens to you. When someone loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

Here’s what I want to say, and you’ve probably heard it a hundred times, but I hope you’ll hear it differently this time. Jesus loves you. And I mean really loves you – not just to play with, not just because he pities you, not just in a generic, ‘God cares about people’ kind of way, he specifically, especially, loves you. He knows your name. I remember someone saying once, that if he had a wallet, your picture would be in it. And it would. And even better than that, he loves the real you. He loves you with all of your issues and your mess and your loneliness – he knows exactly how you feel, all your thoughts and fears and worries and the stupid things that you’d never say out loud, and he utterly, utterly loves you. He longs for you. He thinks about you all day. And that seems ridiculous to us because we can’t imagine someone being able to think about every single person at once – but this is God, he can and he really, really does. He smiles when you smile. He weeps when you weep. And my point is this: when you realise that he loves you, and he’s loved you for a really, really long time, something changes. You’re willing to admit to him that you’re not shiny and you’re not perfect. You start to tell him that you need him - that you need him to forgive you, and heal all the bits of you that are broken and that you don’t like to show people. You start to open the door, and uncross your arms, and let him come in and pick you up. And it’s then – when you admit that you’re “loose in the joints and very shabby”, and you need a God that can see past that and love you anyway – that he can start to set you free. When you let him love you, when you let him tell you what he thinks of you and how much he thinks of you; then you become Real.

And once he’s made you Real, its not so scary to be real with other people – because the idea that people will think you’re weird is a lot less frightening when you know that God himself calls you his child, his beloved, and his delight. And it helps you to let other people be real as well – because when you’ve admitted how shabby you are, it gets easier to love shabby people. It gets harder to judge them, or put labels on them, because you know that God loves this person as fiercely and completely as he loves you. And sometimes being Real will hurt, like the Skin Horse says. But then again, “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

So really, this is just me saying, can we be real together please? I think it would be better. And this is me promising that I, for one, will never think less of you if you’re real with me; I’ll never think that you’re weird or that you’ve got issues and I’ll never put you in a box and stay away from you. Because I’ve got issues, and God did not stay away from me, he came and he picked me up, and told me that he loves me anyway. This is just me, asking you if you want to come with me, and try to start living Real life.

Why Man Flu is Great (and why I don't need to prove myself)

I haven’t written a blog for a very long time – in fact as my brother pointed out today, this last few weeks has been the longest gap since I started it in Malawi. I would love to say that I’ve just been too busy, but looking back, I was always too busy to do this really this but I did it anyway – because I love it. Honestly, I think the reason I haven’t written anything for a while is because I haven’t had anything much to say! Not that nothing exciting has happened – lots of exciting things have happened. Since I last posted on here I’ve had one of the most epic experiences of my life: seeing one of my friends come to believe in Jesus, and getting to be there as he starts to enjoy Him. That has been an utter delight, and a ridiculous privilege – and it makes me grin and get excited just to think about it. I’ve also received a surprise visit from my girlfriend, started spending a unusual  amount of time on the roof of a bike shed, and become an expert in the manipulation of sock puppets. So plenty was going on, I just didn’t really have anything profound to say about any of it – but I’ve decided that it’s time to break through and write something anyway.

I want to write about something that I’ve known for a long time, but seems to be one of my favourite things to forget. It’s about proving myself.

It is exam term at the moment, so I have a lot of friends who are, shall we say, not feeling as zen as they might like. I am also not very popular this term, because us marvellous English students don’t actually have exams in first year. So what should be the case is that everyone around me is going mental and getting exhausted, and I’m just strolling around feeling chilled and peaceful, sipping on a can of Lilt. Sadly, what’s actually happened is that I’ve found myself with quite a lot of Shakespeare to think about, tonnes of rehearsals to be rehearsing in (that’s where the sock puppets come in), and many and various God-based activities to be doing. So much so, that by last Sunday night, I was genuinely really exhausted, and stressed, and I was definitely considering throwing a temper tantrum until someone brought me a time-turner. I also, ironically, felt guilty because I was supposed to be the one with no exam.

And then on Monday, I got man flu. And this man flu turned out to be surprisingly helpful. (Just to clarify, I don’t think that God mystically gave me a cold, but I think that He is exactly the sort of legend that will take anything, if we’ll let him, even annoying things, and turn them into something good. Like those people who make flip-flops out of old tyres.) The metaphorical flip-flop which God made out of my cold was basically this: it forced me to admit to myself and to Him that I was not actually capable of writing a brilliant essay, running several prayer meetings, having a spontaneous DMC with every single one of my friends, being funny with sock puppets for several hours, saving the world and getting some more milk from Sainsbury’s all in one day. I was obliged to abandon my semi-well-intentioned plan to do every single thing that God likes us to do all at once all by myself. Instead I switched to Plan B: do everything you actually have to do, and spend some proper, good time alone with God – then see what else you feel up to. And you know what? Plan B turns out to be pretty good.

The funny thing is though, that I’m still on Plan B, but I’m feeling quite a lot better now, and I’m actually back to doing pretty much exactly the same amount of stuff as I was before. But I don’t feel like I’m dying so much anymore. In fact, to extend the metaphor (as I love to do) I feel like I’m coming alive. And the differences are two things…

Thing One is that I’ve gone back to carving out time to enjoy God. That might sound a little bit silly if you don’t believe in him, but it is what I mean. Because the whole thing is pretty epic really – and by the whole thing I mean my current state of existence – in that God – as in ‘I AM’, the Creator and Holder-Together of the universe, the Epic Poet who spoke the stars into existence, the Author who invented us, the Craftsman who created us, the One True King, from of old, the Rightful Heir to the Throne of Everything – in that that God knows my name, and he smiles when he hears it. And even though I broke his heart but he actually likes me, he loves me to death. And I get to call him Dad, and he listens when I talk to him, and he does incredible things just to show me that he loves me, and the list goes on and on really. And since the man flu, I’ve been putting a bit more time and effort into enjoying that. Into reading about him, writing about him, talking to him, singing songs and doing silly little dances for him. Sometimes just being still and knowing that he’s right there with me.

And in that time, He’s started to remind me about Thing Two – and, as promised, it’s about proving myself. There’s a lyric in a song we were singing at church recently that starts to express it:

Jesus, you’ve nothing more to prove,
So what could separate me from your love?

(I love the attempt to make ‘prove’ and ‘love’ rhyme – tis pleasantly Shakespearean.) Anyway, I love the lyric, and it keeps on moving me every time I sing it. So then I was thinking about why, and this is my best guess…

I don’t just get exhausted because I do a lot of stuff. That’s why I get tired, but then there’s another type of exhaustion, something a bit deeper. And that deeper kind of exhaustion happens when I’m doing all this stuff that I do in an attempt to prove myself. When I’m doing it to try and demonstrate – mostly just to myself – that I really am a good Christian. That I really am ‘committed’. That I really do care about all the things I’m supposed to care about. That I really am following Jesus with my whole life. That I really am a good student. That I really am a good friend. A good boyfriend. A good person. To prove that I am who I think I am, that I am who I want to be. And that is exhausting. Like I say, not the things themselves – the things themselves I really love doing, they just get tiring if you do too many of them in one go without sleeping – it’s just this need to prove myself that eats me up.

And then I remember. I remember that Jesus didn’t say, “I’ll teach you the way to be as good as you need to be, if you’ll try hard enough, and then I’ll be pleased with you.” He said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” I remember that he can give us rest because he has done all of the work that we needed to do. He has put in all of the effort, and he nailed it. And the pun there was unintentional, but actually quite relevant – because instead of taking all the glory, all the praise that he had earned for himself, he let people spit on him, and kill him – because he was saving that glory. He was saving that glory so he could share it with us. So that we can boast, we can glory – I love that verb so much – we can glory in how much he loves us, the what he thinks of us, in the names that he calls us. He calls us friends. He calls us brothers and sisters. He calls us children of the living God, and he tells us that he’s proud of us. Not because of all the impressive things we did today, but because we’re his kids now. I remember that he loves us because he loves us, and there’s nothing we can ever do to stop him. I remember the prodigal son wandering home, literally covered in crap, and the Father running out and down the street and wrapping his arms around him and beaming at him and saying, “This is my son!”

I remember all of that and I realise that I have got absolutely nothing left to prove. I know who I am, and it’s never going to change. He’s proved it to me. So I’m still tired, but I’m not so exhausted any more. And it’s really good.