This month a number of lovely students I know will walk a stage, be handed a diploma, have a tassel flipped and smile for the camera. Then they move on to ‘real’ life.
Thirty-seven years ago I was that student. Oh, how I would love to whisper some truths about real life to that eighteen year old! Though, to be honest, I am not sure that younger me would have listened.
Real life … what is ‘real’ life? What makes life ‘real’?
I know this much is true …
real life costs, hurts and has nothing to do with outward appearances.
real life is played out in the long, dark seasons.
real life happens when no one is looking.
Real life costs. It costs money, time and everything you thought were your assets. It often costs more than you actually have at your disposal. It can mean having to beg, borrow or steal to afford such a cost. The price of real life can make the costs of graduation or university tuition seem thrifty. Real life educates you on the lack of value of valuables,
and in the priceless value of health, relationships, purpose, breath.
Real life hurts. It can hurt physically, like when giving birth, or enduring treatments for a disease that can seem harder than the disease … or internally, emotionally when there is separation from loved ones … through distance (physical or relational), or death. Real life hurts can make your insides ache so that you cannot imagine the pain ever dissipating. Real life is when,
the pain you feel is nothing compared to the pain felt by a loved one.
Real life has nothing to do with outward appearances. The freshly cut and styled hair, the the manis and pedis, the elaborate gowns and trendy suits of graduation formals … these are merely temporary decor covering a very real soul. The only makeover for the soul is to live life authentically, truthfully, while acknowledging the handiwork of the Master …
the One true God whose fingerprint is on each soul.
As I look back thirty-seven years, I know now how very little I knew then. How very little of what the future would hold, but also how very little of what would be valuable in life. And now, as I look ahead, the only thing I know is that it will cost, I will learn, be stretched, feel pain and joy.
And may I long more each day to meet my God, one day (no hurrying that, though). In Him is all that is really real.
“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse …
‘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.”
― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit
itsawonderfilledlife 