Pinocchio

This past year I've felt a lot like Pinocchio. He wanted to become a real boy, I want to become a real girl. A real human. There is so much I don't know. Old married couples, parents, soldiers, those who've experienced the deep hurt, poverty or loss. I'm humbled in their presence and I assume they live lives of more significance. But C.S. Lewis said in The Great Divorce that even our strongest human loves are not holy in and of themselves. Most of my ideas and loves and sentiments are still so small. Almost like play-acting. So much that I take so seriously, that I pride myself on, is like a puppet version of what is true. It makes sense that we have to pass though death into the Spirit filled life in order to become real. I think in some ways it's a process. I'm tired of my own take on love, beauty, pain, sacrifice, work. I'm extremely tired of the criterion by which a judge and value people and events. I'm so relieved about His promise to make us real some day.

Here's a slightly unrelated quote from The Great Divorce. I've got to fight this tendency.
"Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to the love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all, but only in what they say about Him."