The Rebuilding

"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."

-The Velveteen Rabbit


Sometimes, I imagine myself like a small bird. Small, and gentle, and delicate. Easily broken. And where I should be flying with other birds, and protecting my tender neck, I've descended amongst a pack of wolves.

That's how I see it. I'm a tiny bird amongst wolves.

You may think it's ridiculous, but I'm pretty confident that we all started off that way. Naive, gentle, whole, and then we were being gnawed, and torn, and broken by circumstances, and words, and actions. And unfortunately, our delicate wings grew claws, and our beaks turned to snouts, and we became the wolves, and we tore the delicate hearts of others.

This is life. Eat or be eaten. Break or be broken.

It's ugly, unforgiving, hard...And every morning when I wake up, I know to my soul that I wasn't made to live here. I was made for something beautiful, and it is by grace and incomprehensible love that I know this. I was not made to be a wolf, I was made to fly. I was made to be tender and gentle and kind. I was made to give love, not take it away.

I don't have the slightest clue about what God is doing with me. But whatever it is, it's changing me. Sometimes, I'm scared it's for the worst, but as of now, I have this strange feeling its for the best. I feel strong, which is ironic considering the circumstances, but despite the breaks in my metaphorical wings, I'm flying better than I was two weeks ago.

I think to become who you want to be, and who God wants you to be, you have to hurt. I don't know why, I don't get it, I personally think it seems backwards, but it seems to me that when we're broken, but we're still breathing, and we're still moving, and we're still changing, we know it's something beyond ourselves.

Break a bird's wings and drop it in a pack of wolves, and it's dead. But when, despite broken wings, the bird flies...I have a feeling that it wasn't the bird's own strength that got it back into the air, and the scars, and the pain are just another reminder that something greater is at work.

 Being hated by the world is hard, because it breaks down the soul and the heart. And being loved by God is hard because He wants to make us better than we think is possible. And though sometimes things happen outside of Him, and outside of His Will, I think He cares to make it beautiful, and to redeem us.

 There are two sides to every fence. Be in the world, or be something outside of it. Eat or be eaten. Break or be broken, but know that the broken side is not neccessarily the losing side, though it may be the harder side. On this side, you have to have something beyond yourself to keep going, to keep the broken wings moving, and to keep the heart soft.

God breaks to destroy the wolves in us, but he also breaks to rebuild the gentle, delicate, and hopeful hearts in us. And I don't know how He does it, but he doesn't just rebuilt the heart, He sustains it.

And I'm being rebuilt.


 "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 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."