It Amazes Me How We Become Real

It amazes me how God uses our life's story. 
It amazes me how He can take our trials and turn them
into something beautiful later. It amazes me how our 
specific story
can touch someone else and help them
to make a life-changing turn for the good in their life.
It amazes me how he can
take someone that is broken and has the
cracks to prove it,
and then mold them, cracks and all, 
into a beautiful vessel. 
  HIS ways are just AMAZING!

So if YOU my friend, are in the middle of a life's trial
that you don't understand, don't loose heart.  
YOU will make it through.  
It will be the beautiful scars in your life that will end up
helping others

in the AMAZING ways that no one else can.

Since a child, I have loved the story of 
The Velveteen Rabbit. 

I love the part when the Skin Horse explains to Rabbit

what must happen in order to become real.

(My favorite quoted part of the book)

"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 your 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'm so glad that being REAL is a
good thing, 

since my hair is thinner and my

joints seem looser than they used to be!

So go out and be the amazing and real

person you were created to be this week.

You might have a velveteen rabbit

watching YOU...