Carefully Kept

I recently attended a perfect backyard wedding of a friend (Madame X) and this was one of the readings that was used during the ceremony:
An excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams.
"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."

Lately I feel that I have to be very carefully kept. This disappoints me. I don't know where it is coming from. It is a sort of nonspecific fragility. Is it motherhood and all of the worries and work that comes with it? Is it that there has been a three-year rift in my husband's family that has blasted me so far out of my peace zone that I can only sleep about 10 hours a week? Is it that I am a stay-at-home and work-at-home person and I don't have much adult contact? Who knows. I have already said that I don't like to investigate my psyche too much, but I have to say again I feel really disappointed my new "sharp edges." I think of the people like Snickollet who is a mother of one-year-old twins and is doing an amazing job even though she lost her husband to cancer in April. I think of the family that sits in front of me at church who have three special- needs children, and they manage to show up every week looking thankful and rested. I don't think I am doing a very good job at this living thing. I can think of the countless times I have been patted on the shoulder while someone says, "God only gives us what we can handle."
That makes me mad. I want to be able to handle things. Huge things. I feel like the kid in the back of the classroom, waving my hand wildly, and shouting, "Pick me! Pick me! I can do it!" I want to give big things to the world and not have to be so carefully kept. I want to be so real that my hair gets loved off and I get very shabby.
Last night, during my insomnia (er...in-law-problem-night-sweats), I realized that I was not ready for the big things. I have to be a soldier of the small things until I can make it all fit together. This means that I hold the door for the woman who orders the complicated cup of coffee. This means that I say "how is your day today?" to the crabby check-out lady at the store. This means I smile every time I can remember to smile. This means that I am present for my daughter when she holds up a book that we had just read 100 times. This means that I remember to touch the wilting hands of the hospice patients that I visit every Sunday. Most of all, this means that I listen more and talk less.
A soldier of small things. I can do this. After I decided this during the middle of last night, I practiced a breathing technique that I learned from one of my masters, Pema Chodron: You breathe in all of the pain and suffering of the world and then you breathe out relief for the world. This is a form of meditation, a form of prayer that centers me. I think I did three of these breaths before I fell blissfully asleep.

"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."