Becoming "Real"

Aside from the obvious affection I have for "Where the Wild Things Are" (and it will never lose its top spot), I have a nearly-at-the-top second favorite children's book: The Velveteen Rabbit.  I was reading it to Keilana yesterday and remembered all over again why I fell in love with it  (other than transferred affection from when I was a child seeing how much my mother loved it).  Its only been really in the last six months that I could read it to Keilana and she would actually sit long enough to listen, and now she loves it, too, although I'm sure she loves it mostly because I do.

I've been thinking a lot lately about self-consciousness, self-confidence, faith and the Atonement.  It seems there have been many conversations in my life recently about those topics, and then a few weeks ago, for the fifth Sunday combined lesson, Bishop Meik based his lesson on a talk Elder Bednar gave years ago as a BYU devotional entitled "In the Strength of the Lord" (read it if you get the chance, its fantastic).  It is about the two-fold purpose of the Atonement.  He remarks that most of us understand, to some degree or another, the redeeming power of the Atonement, but that too few of us understand the enabling power of the Atonement.  As we come to better understand and use the Atonement, it can bring us not only forgiveness, but power as well.

I spent a great deal of my life very, very self-conscious, with very low self-esteem.  Many people who have known me for a long time have commented on how much more confident and at ease I have been the last few years.  The only explanation I can give is the growth of my testimony.  I don't pretend to believe I am some paragon of spirituality or that I have a much deeper understanding of the Atonement that anyone else who is trying to live rightly and study and grow.  But I do understand it better than I used to, and the result is this:  I don't care what people think.  Perhaps that isn't fair, as I do care to some extent, in that I do desire to be a good friend, wife, mother, daughter, sister and leader, and if someone in my life thinks poorly of me chances are I have at some point failed to be the servant I ought to be and must remedy that.  But other people's perceptions of my appearance, my home, my intellect, my spirituality or what have you don't matter at all in how I feel about myself, and really don't affect my relationships with them much either.  As my relationship with my Savior has grown, his opinion matters to me more and more and everyone else's matters less and less.  At times when I do start to feel self-conscious or low again, it is always because I have done (or failed to do) something to cause me to lose confidence in His presence.

I hate the way the world pushes the value of the phrase, "I don't care what anyone thinks" because of how it is defined by the world.  All too often, it is exactly the people who declare this with pride that care the most what other people think, evidenced by the fact that they care very much that people think that they don't care.  It is all too often used as an excuse to act selfishly and to use poor judgement.  I have watched individuals around me declare, "I don't care what her opinion is of me" and then try very hard, in ways both obvious and subtle, conscious and subconscious, to win that individual's approval or validation.  And we all love to be validated by others, that is human nature, and there isn't any thing really wrong with that.  The problem comes when we hinge how we act or feel on that validation or lack thereof.

Last year the theme for mutual was "let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly, then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God", from the Doctrine and Covenants.  I was so grateful for that emphasis in my life all year.  My whole life I have had a habit of touching my face, playing with my hair, hiding behind my hair, fidgeting and darting my eyes all over the room in conversations because I didn't have the confidence to simply sit still and look someone in the eye.  To be promised that if I keep virtue in my thoughts, and therefore everywhere else in my life, I will feel confident in the presence of God himself is astounding.  But I had the truth of that statement confirmed to me over and over again.

So why did I start all of this with the Velveteen Rabbit?  One of my favorite ideas in all of children's literature (or literature in general, for that matter), is expressed by the Skin Horse.  "The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others.  He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces.  He was wise. . .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. . . .'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse.  'It's a thing that happens to you'. . .

'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 when you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.' "

What a beautiful expression of what we should be working toward achieving in mortality.  In the story, about nursery toys, it is the true love of a child that makes one Real, but in truth it is the Savior's love.   All that growing and learning and changing causes some bumps and bruises and so some people avoid it and never get to that point.  I can think of some of the most faithful and wonderful people I know who have lived long, diligent lives and the scars of the world are plainly evident on them--thinning, gray hair, wrinkles and liver spots, a body that is beginning to shut down.  The world would hardly describe them as beautiful, but that's because the world doesn't understand.   They are not self-conscious because they are Real--even if the world or their friends or even their families don't understand, they do.  They understand that they are loved, and that that is what makes for true beauty.  Righteous confidence doesn't come from a fit body, a great wardrobe, a quick wit, verbal acuity, an expensive education or any other worldly achievement or gift.  It comes from the Redeemer's love, given full force in his atoning sacrifice.  That's what makes us real.