Real

So it wasn’t until several weeks after I hung up the phone that I really understood the significance of our conversation.  It was sheer genius, the life truths we discovered that day.

In the midst of our chat, I mentioned some of the reasons I had for her awesomeness.  She denied being anything but normal.  She said something like “Oh, that’s not me.  I do at least three embarrassing things every day.” (She knows the average because apparently her kids keep a tally.)

Here is a soul sister!  There are days I say or do something embarrassing ON THE HOUR!  Thankfully, most days include only one or two mishaps.

Like the time I couldn’t see over my pregnant belly to properly dress myself so I showed up for work wearing one tan shoe and one blue shoe.  Yeah, they noticed.

Or the time my Bishop asked if I would serve as the Primary President of our ward to which I promptly retorted, “Have you been drinking?!”  The look on his face told me that’s not a question one normally asks a Bishop.  In the same meeting, I referred to a couple in our ward several times as “The Butts”.  I found out over a week later that when Erin and Jason got married, Jason changed his last name to “Botz”.  Again, “butts” is just not something one repeatedly blurts out when meeting with the Bishop.

Or the time we were at a beginning-of-the-semester work party and I slid my hand up the underside of what I thought was my husband’s arm.  My mind always replays what happened next in slow motion…

Daniel’s arm is soft.

Odd, Daniel’s arm isn’t normally soft.

Hey I see Daniel clear across the circle.  Hi Dan!

Hmm…how exactly can I have my hand up Daniel’s sleeve and yet be facing Daniel who is standing four feet away across the circle?”

After twelve eternal seconds, it registered.  I was actually feeling up my boss’ husband’s arm.  Embarrassed to no end, I laughed loud and hard.  He didn’t crack a smile.

Or the time I…

You get the idea.

So you can see how I could relate to my amazing friend.  I’ve been there.  I mean really been there (and still visit ‘there’ pretty much every day).  I wanted to disclose all of my own daily mishaps and misadventures, but I didn’t.  I simply said “Yeah, but you’re Real.”  Without thinking, she replied “That I am…very real”.  Her comment was so endearing to me because I’ve always loved Real people.  Not real as in non-imaginary, but Real as in genuine.

It’s taken me several weeks now, but I think I’ve finally figured out what Real is and why I love it so.

 

Much of what I know about being Real comes from a conversation between the Velveteen Rabbit and the Skin Horse.     

“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,” 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 those things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

There it is.  Just about everything there is to know about being Real hidden in a children’s book about a talking stuffed animal.  Genius.

Real is not perfect.  It’s not perfectly non-mussed.  Real has flaws and defects and shortcomings.  Real botches stuff up every once in a while.  Real trips over things and slips sometimes.  Real is not perfect.

And it’s not superficial.  Real has a certain depth.  According to the Skin Horse, “Real isn’t how you are made.”  It doesn’t mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle.  Real isn’t shallow or pretentious, shiny, showy, brand new, or brand name.  It can’t be purchased and it’s definitely not decorative.

In Little Women, Mrs. March tells her three girls, “If you feel your value lies in being merely decorative, I fear that someday you might find yourself believing that’s all you really are.”  I want to give Ms. Alcott a high five on behalf of those of us who are not all that into being decorative.  Those of us who heavily rely on the belief that some days pulling your hair back in a ponytail is the same thing as taking a shower.

Sometimes it’s more comfortable to be superficial, to take care of all the surface stuff.  I think that might be because being Real often hurts.  It’s uncomfortable having all your fur loved off.  It takes a great deal of quiet strength to be dragged, dropped, squeezed, repeatedly broken and repaired again.

Real is all worn down and loved up.

That being said, Real is beautiful.  The kind of beautiful that comes from way down deep inside.  I found some Way-Down-Deep-Inside Beauty Secrets originally discovered by Sam Levinson:

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his or her fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge you’ll never walk alone.

He adds, “The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair.  The beauty of a woman must be seen from in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides.  The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mode, but true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul.  It is the caring that she lovingly gives and the passion that she shows.”

Sister Hinkley is someone I want to be when I grow up.  She wrote, “I don’t want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails.  I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor’s children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping weed someone’s garden. I want to be there with children’s sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.”

The secret to becoming Real is right there in the middle of the mud and weeds and sticky kisses.  It’s forgetting ourselves and looking after others.

President Spencer W. Kimball said, “The more we serve our fellowmen in appropriate ways, the more substance there is to our souls.  We become more significant individuals as we serve others.  We become more substantive as we serve others — indeed, it is easier to ‘find’ ourselves because there is so much more of us to find”

More than anything, Real loves.  Even when it’s inconvenient – especially when it’s inconvenient.  Mother Teresa had a good grasp on being Real.  She said, “You must live life beautifully and not allow the spirit of the world that makes gods out of power, riches and pleasure make you forget that you have been created for greater things – to love and to be loved.”

And so it is with the Real people in my life.  They live beautifully.  They are gentle and strong.  Tender and kind.  They have not forgotten the reason they are here – to love and to be loved.  They are Real. 

That they are…very Real.