"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."--Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

Last night I read this story to my daughter before bedtime, and the section above stood out to me. For all the trials we've been through in the last nine months, J.J. and I are becoming Real.

I often get frustrated with people who treat J.J. like he is dumb or somehow less capable because of his aphasia. My husband is brilliant, and the fact that he sometimes has trouble finding the words to express his thoughts doesn't make him any less so. I know this, and the people who truly care about us know this...why should it matter what the rest think? They just don't understand, so they don't know that J.J. is Real.

We all have our challenges. J.J.'s struggle happens to be more public than the struggles that some people have to endure. As the Skin Horse said, sometimes being Real hurts.

This is where the rubber meets the road. It's easy to swear to love someone in good times and bad when you've never had to experience those bad times. We've been through the bad times now, though, and it's made our marriage stronger. Are we perfect? No. Is our marriage perfect? No. Do we have trials? Sure. Because we are, and our marriage is, Real.