Becoming real

If you have never read Kisses from Katie, you are truly missing out. It will change your life. A popular, cute little 19-year old girl from Tennessee moves to Uganda and ends up a mother to 14 girls and starting a ministry that saves the lives of hundreds, all because of  Jesus. I can't stop reading it. Do you ever wonder if your life is all it was meant to be? Are you doing what God is asking of you? You would think someone who left all comforts for a life of service would write a book that would fill you with guilt or make you feel helpless or discouraged about what you could possibly do. Not Katie. I feel challenged, yes, but not helpless. One of the things I was reading this last week was about the Velveteen Rabbit, and in it is such a profound truth.

The following was written as she was back from Uganda living with her parents and brother, missing her adopted daughters in Uganda.

During the time I spent in my parents' house, I remembered a favorite story, The Velveteen Rabbit. It begins with a rabbit, fluffy and beautiful, "just as a rabbit should be," but all the rabbit wanted was to be real. The boy who owns the rabbit loves it to tatters; his velveteen fur becomes worn and his stuffing starts to come out. "So much love stirred in his little sawdust heart that it almost burst. And into his boot-button eyes, that had long ago lost their polish, there came a look of wisdom and beauty, so that even Nana noticed it next morning when she picked him up and said, 'I declare if that old Bunny hasn't got quite a knowing expression!'

...I was like that velveteen rabbit. When I first went to Uganda, I felt sparkling and beautiful, as a teenage girl from Brentwood 'should' be. But now I spent my days without makeup, getting my hands dirty and doing hard but meaningful work. I was tattered and worn out. The beautiful, dirty people who populated my life had loved all the polish and propriety right off me.

I'd been hurt and scarred and banged around a bit in the past year, but God was using all those things to help me become real. My stuffing was coming out because I'd been loved to tatters. I was coming to understand that what it means to be real is to love and be loved until there is nothing left. And when there's nothing left, and we feel we're all in pieces, God begins to make us whole. He makes us real. His love sets us free and transforms us.

Yes, this is exactly it. From my mission to the Dominican Republic, Jim's sermons this year on grace, more and more I'm being challenged to experience more of who God really is and what He is calling me to do and be. I've learned that I struggle with judging instead of serving those who most need God's love. I've also learned that it's easier to show God's grace when I am serving those in need and when I remember how much of it I need myself.