My Dear One,

What do you find comforting in life?  A summertime storm rolling in through the valley?  A hot cup of coffee?  A warm cat cuddled in your lap?  Snuggling under warm covers while the snow falls outside?  I’m sure many of us could make long lists of things which give us comfort.  They are usually referred to as “creature comforts”, those things which bring comfort to the body.  But how long does that comfort last?  The storm rolls past, the cup of coffee has been consumed, the cat moves away, the snow stops falling.  Comforts which are extraneous and fleeting.  Such comforts are necessary and provide relief in the moment.  They have a useful purpose.  However, if we find ourselves constantly seeking comfort in the external, it’s a sign that we need to look to the internal, because the internal is seeking.  Searching for true, lasting comfort … where can it be found?  To find it, you must first understand this:  true comfort really has nothing to do with our exterior world, but everything to do with the interior.

When I was very young, I was given a stuffed owl as a gift.  The tag on his side declared his name to be Obie.  I could have changed it, given him a name of my own choosing, but I’ve always loved alliteration, so Obie Owl he stayed.  Someone told me if you made a wish on the first star of the evening, it would come true.  So every night I saw that first twinkle in the sky, I made my wish.  It was always the same wish, night after night.  My wish was for Obie to become real.  In my child’s mind, I knew he was limited.  He was stuck in his stuffed body, unable to fly with the other birds of the night, unable to do what owls do.  I loved him fiercely, his well-worn fur proof of my love, but my love for him desired his freedom.  I wished and wished, so much that the memory of all that wishing is still with me, decades later.  I suppose at some point, I stopped wishing.  Obie is still with me.  I guess he refused the gift of freedom to spend his life ministering to a child who needed the comfort of a stuffed toy.

And I needed comfort.  As a child, I couldn’t voice it out loud, but what child can?  Parents are supposed to know these things.  So my anxiety over this lack of comfort leaked out in other ways.  Always in the night.  Going to bed was a fearful event.  I could not sleep.  I remember lying there, listening to the house shut down for the night.  My parents’ voices, the drone of the television … the voices ceasing, the television turned off.  Fewer cars passing by on the street.  The world grew silent.  I heard it all.  My sisters’ slow breathing, signs of slumber.  I watched as the numbers on the digital clock clicked past.  My anxiety grew.  I could not sleep.

My body would eventually succumb to the exhaustion, but my mind never did.  It woke my body up, carrying myself all over the house, sleepwalking from room to room.  I would hear my mother calling my name.  I was in my parents’ bedroom, staring at them, not remembering how I got there.  One night, my father was out at a party.  In my sleep, I dragged the covers off my bed, and took them downstairs to the kitchen floor, where I made my temporary bed and waited for him to come home.  When he walked in, he was angry.  I awoke to him yelling my mother’s name, asking what her daughter was doing on the floor.  Her daughter.  When I displeased him, I was her daughter.  The anxiety grew.

I was never given true comfort in childhood.  It took me years to discover what true comfort meant for me.  Do you know what true comfort is, my dear one?  Let me tell you what I have learned.  Let me tell you what true comfort is for me.

True comfort is to be real.

It was my wish for Obie.  I knew it in my child’s heart that to be truly seen for who you are is lasting comfort.  For some, finding out who they are is not so difficult a process.  For others, finding out who you are is a long arduous road.  Such has been my experience.  Like Obie, I only ever wanted to be real.  But what was real?  Who loved me enough to make me real?  By the time I was old enough to venture out into the world on my own, I had built up the walls of self-protection so high that it seemed hopeless anyone could ever knock them down.  They were necessary, those walls.  I had to protect myself, since nobody else stepped up to do it.  But those walls weren’t meant to be necessary for my entire life.  At some point, they had to be destroyed so I could be real, who I was meant to be.  But now the problem became one of trust.  Who would I trust to love me?  When you spend years protecting yourself, trusting the walls, it’s a tough task to let someone else in.  Those walls become comfort.  But walls are forged from hard things, brick and mortar or steel and nails.  I didn’t need more hardness in my life – I had received enough of that to last a lifetime.  I needed tenderness.  I needed compassion.  I needed understanding.  I needed warmth.  I needed empathy.  I needed protection.

I needed true love.

The Velveteen Rabbit, a much-loved childhood classic.  A rabbit neglected in youth, forgotten in the nursery toy cupboard, he was not able to become real until someone truly loved him.  Until someone saw him as real.  As a young rabbit, he desired to be real more than anything, but he didn’t know how to make it so.  He posed the question to the Skin Horse one day, hopeful to find the answer to this mystery.

“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 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.”

“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.”

It lasts for always.  Read the story – the Velveteen Rabbit got his wish.  He became real because of the love of a boy.  When someone loves you enough to help you discover who you are, when someone sees the real you inside, you will begin the journey of discovery.  The discovery of you.

All my love,

Your Never Sleeping Beauty

Comfort is not soft, weakening commiseration; it is true, strengthening love.  ~Amy Carmichael