...nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"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 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."
"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."
~Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
from The Velveteen Rabbit
My earliest bookish memories are curled up at my mother’s side (or in her lap) on the scratchy harvest gold sleeper sofa in our den. That couch became the ship that carried us on adventure after adventure together.
We bade good night to the moon and the big green room, good night to the mouse and the little red house. Good night, bowl of mush; good night, old woman. (She whispered, “Hush.”)
We sailed in and out of weeks to the land where the wild things are. We roared our terrible roars and gnashed our terrible teeth. After the wild rumpus, we retuned to find our dinner still hot.
We made way for ducklings through downtown Boston. We folded ourselves into an envelope and traveled by post to visit Flat Stanley’s family. We bemoaned Peter Rabbit’s lost brass buttons and Geraldine Belinda’s lost everything. (Her purse had a hole.) We laughed at Eeyore’s gloom and Tigger’s bounce, and when we had a rumbly in our tumbly we stopped for snacks.
Together, in the safety of her arms, we climbed the Alps with Heidi, found our golden ticket with Charlie, rode in Caractacus Potts’s flying car, grew up with Laurie and the March girls. We kissed frogs into princes and sleeping beauties awake.
We learned from the Skin Horse about becoming Real, and how it could take a long time, and how it doesn’t happen to people who “have to be carefully kept.”
And always, she thought I could, she thought I could, she thought I could, she thought I could.
Once I could read to myself, my sisters took the best spots on the sofa. Then read-alouds stopped.
In my fifth-grade year, Mom began a new adventure. Somehow or other, she began attending Bible Study Fellowship. In the car or while we worked in the kitchen, she would share with me all she was learning. Then she began bringing study pages home for me to do. It wasn’t exactly a read-aloud. More like a read-along.
She began to change and brought a different sort of book home from The Mustard Seed, a Christian bookstore within walking distance of our house. Eventually, the Lord brought me also to Himself and began to transform me. Soon I was reading along with her, or just behind her, books like Mere Christianity, Hind’s Feet on High Places, My Utmost for His Highest, and the classics of Elisabeth Elliot.
By the time I reached high school, I had followed my parents’ lead into teaching Sunday school, and Mom had become my companion at concerts, Bible conferences, and retreats. We had the privilege of listening to Elisabeth Elliot and Jill Briscoe speak in person numerous times. She took my sisters and me to see Michael W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman in concert, even when it meant staying up way too late on a school night.
For the last decade, Wednesday has been our special Bible study day, the grown-up successor to read-alouds. Initially, we went together to the women’s study at our church. When that became too taxing for her 5 or 6 years ago, we moved our study time to her home, with me planning and leading. The last 2 years, even that has been too taxing, so I started a “Mom time” playlist on YouTube. We usually watch videos from The Elisabeth Elliot Foundation or Joni & Friends. She dearly loves watching the Getty Family Hymn Sings recorded during the first year of the pandemic.
Now I am the one reading to her from the Bible or from a devotional book. Soon we may return to the children’s classics, the one childhood place that seems larger when I revisit as an adult.
This weekend is her birthday. She is not only my mom; she is my best and oldest girlfriend. It is a bittersweet celebration this year. The Skin Horse warned us, but we didn’t really understand how much becoming Real would hurt us, in body and in soul. The very good news is that “once you are real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
We are both one day closer to Real than yesterday. One day closer to seeing Jesus face to face. I grieve my mom with every newly forgotten memory, every realization that we will never do that again or never go there. But today I still have her. We will sit on her loveseat. We will give and receive hugs. The birthday song will be sung. Tears will likely fall.
They will be tears of hope though. Real is coming, and it’s a Realer Real than even the Skin Horse could have guessed. She knows Jesus and I know Jesus. Even as we ache now, we cry our tears knowing that every loss and separation are only temporary, because we have forever together with Him to look forward to. Forever with Him—together. And with Mom in Him and me in Him even now, we can never truly be too far apart, even when “most of [our] hair has been loved off, and [our] eyes drop out and [we] get loose in the joints and very shabby.”
Happy birthday, Mom. Thank you for all the books, all the cuddles, all the adventures. Most of all, thank you for always thinking I can and for pointing me to the Real. I love you.
Love,
Your Sonshine
(With grateful apologies to Margery Williams, Margaret Wise Brown, Robert McCloskey, Johanna Spyri, Ian Fleming, Louisa May Alcott, A. A. Milne, Roald Dahl, Jeff Brown, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Beatrix Potter, Maurice Sendak, and Marguerite Henry. Thank you for all the adventures.)
In the golden afternoon of the last week of summer, a flash of orange movement caught my eye as I toweled off from the day's hydrotherapy session. A monarch butterfly had perched on the bisque expanse of pool deck. Open, closed, open, closed, went its wings, slowly and rhythmically.
How odd, I thought. Why would it land there, so exposed to danger and even our dog, when blooming plants and its favored milkweed were only feet away? Slowly I stepped down and approached, trying with all my might not to spook my little friend.
From a few feet away, I could see something was not right about the wings. A little closer, and a little closer, and oh! Too close.
The butterfly tried to fly away from me but couldn't. Instead, she skittered across the deck into the pool. As she labored unsuccessfully to fly out, I looked around in a panic for something light enough and long enough to help. In the end, I grabbed the grabber I use to reach the pool thermometer. As gently as I could, I slid it into the water just underneath her and waited for her to climb on securely before I carefully pulled her out.
Now the defect was obvious. Her wings were bent like dog-eared pages. Of course the poor dear couldn't fly!
Hoping against hope that she had recently emerged from her chrysalis and her wings simply hadn't had time to expand and harden, I placed her on the milkweed where she would be safer and have nectar for strength. That evening, Amore fished her out of the pool again. And again the next morning. Her wings remained bent. Do butterflies have birth defects? Did something interfere with her eclosure?
We kept her as safe as we could for as long as we could, until we couldn't find her any longer. We groan with Creation in the knowledge that she likely became food for some larger creature, perhaps one of the murder of crows that haunt our block.
Earth has many sorrows, beloved, but you hardly need me to tell you so. Some are as light as a butterfly wing; some are as heavy as a granite boulder that could crush you if the Lord didn't hold it back.
Earth has many sorrows,
Many and variegated sorrows--
Lame butterflies, lame wives,
Fractured minds and bodies, relationships and promises,
Paychecks landing in purses with holes (or not coming at all),
Thorns and thistles frustrating our labors,
Churches wandering from Truth or disrupting Love with petty quarrels,
Prodigals remaining in the far country,
Disasters, disease, dissension, and despair:
Earth has many sorrows. Where is peace to be found in this groaning world, where not even butterflies escape the pain Adam and his sons and daughters have brought about?
Peace is the benediction resting on those who are not offended by Christ (Matt. 11:6; Luke 7:23). Peace is the beatitude for those who look about at all the brokenness in the world-- the lame who don't walk, the ill still unhealed, the wombs that do not bear, the tornadoes that don't change course, the thorns not removed, all the light and momentary afflictions that pave our path toward glory--
For those who look about at all these things,
Yet still confess, "He is good, and His love endures forever."
Peace is the dividend reaped from treasuring God's promises in our hearts:
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers (Romans 8:28–29, ESV).
For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Corinthians 4:17, ESV).
And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you (1 Peter 5:10, ESV).
Peace derives from the trustworthy character of the person of the Triune God:
God who never lies;
...in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word... (Titus 1:2–3, ESV).
God who cannot lie;
So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul... (Hebrews 6:17–19, ESV).
God who keeps steadfast love in abundance.
The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6–7, ESV).
Peace leans its weight upon the power of God:
God who spun galaxies, oceans, butterflies, and birches into existence with the words of His mouth (Genesis 1-2);
God who commands wind and wave, whales and worms (Jonah);
God from whom no one can snatch His sheep (John 10:34-35);
God who raises the dead (1 Corinthians 15, all 4 gospels).
Peace fixes its gaze forward to the purposes of God:
Resurrection and reunion with the saints of all the ages (1 Thess. 4:13-18);
Recreation of a new heaven and new earth (Rev. 21-22);
Redemption of our bodies (Phil. 3:20-21; Romans 8:23-24).
Finally, peace abides in the presence of God who dwells in us and in whom we dwell,and who will be the crowning glory and light of the age of ages when all promises are consummated and all purposes fulfilled:
"Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me" (John 15:4, ESV).
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you (Isaiah 43:2, ESV).
fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. (Isaiah 41:10, ESV).
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:3–4, ESV).
We could not ultimately rescue or heal our bent-winged butterfly, or so many other people and circumstances, but we can have peace because of the promises, person, power, purpose, and most of all the presence of God. We can breathe in peace now, in the battered and broken, because of our sure and certain hope in a day when there will be no more butterflies with broken wings, wives with broken bodies, families with broken homes, or children with broken hearts.
Come, you disconsolate, where'er you languish;
come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel.
Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish;
earth has no sorrows that heaven cannot heal.
Joy of the desolate, light of the straying,
hope of the penitent, fadeless and pure!
Here speaks the Comforter, in mercy saying,
"Earth has no sorrows that heaven cannot cure."
~Thomas Moore
A different monarch butterfly: a foretaste of good things to come
“For we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you. Indeed, everything is for your benefit so that, as grace extends through more and more people, it may cause thanksgiving to increase to the glory of God. Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
2 Corinthians 4:14-18 CSB
Years ago,
When I was able to (gasp)
Go to a store,
Load up a cart,
Unload it into my car,
Move the bags and boxes into the house,
All by myself,
In that time so different from my present,
An odd thing occurred
Enough times
That it earned itself a name.
In the vast chasm of a warehouse,
I would add to my cart some throw pillows,
A doormat perhaps,
A box of frozen chipotle black bean burgers.
Among the lofty rafters
Where a helium balloon would be lost forever,
Among the aisles long enough to cheer
Any fitness tracker,
The things in my cart seemed perfectly Goldilocks in size,
Just right.
Somewhere between the store and home—
Did I pass through a magic portal?—
Those perfectly normal items transmogrified.
When I brought them inside,
They were too big for the sofa,
The freezer,
The front porch.
How had this happened?
We finally concluded
Context was key.
The warehouse dwarfed the purchases,
Making them seem smaller than they were.
Our home shrank the context
And expanded our perception of size.
An elephant overwhelms a powder room
But finds room to roam on an African savannah.
This phenomenon we dubbed
“The Costco Effect.”
These last few months,
One idea I’ve been preaching to myself,
Overwriting the false story with the True,
Is that the Bible presents a reverse Costco Effect
