It’s Thanksgiving and I made the executive decision to take my 3 munchkins to see “Frozen” on it’s opening night, because honestly, I have great memories of the holiday movies my family and I saw on Thanksgiving years ago. You honestly cannot go wrong with a Disney or Pixar movie on Thanksgiving. So, to keep that tradition alive, I took the kids, bundled all up and slightly loopy from all the turkey and pie, to the gas station for cheaper snacks and then off to see a Princess movie.
It was the best decision ever.
”Frozen” is the VERY Disney-fied fairy tale about 2 princess sisters. Elsa, with the power of cold and frost who accidentally injures her younger sister, Anna, and then has to hide her power until it is unleashed at the wrong time. And it’s EVERYTHING that a good Princess movie should be. It’s jam-packed with love and BEAUTY and Idina Menzel singing her heart out and magic and music and a happy ending…it transported me. I just want to LIVE in the music and the world it created. I want the dress (and hair) that Elsa wore, I want the heart of Anna, I want music all around me and swirling Disney magic….it took everything I had to get all the kids re-bundled up to go back to reality.
I get teased an awful lot about how passionate I am about the Disney Princesses. I love each of them. I love their hair of course, but also their kind spirits and inner beauty and wide-eyed optimism and faith in beauty and love and the way they seem to attract good (and repel evil) with just their pure-heartedness. I get teased relentlessly, because I think most people look at the Princesses as a deceptive and false promise of how life should be. The movies can give girls absolutely crazy ideas about reality and love. I am not an idiot, though. I know that there is no way after the shoe fits, after true love’s kiss, after the beast is a prince again that life stays perfect forever after. I am NOT teaching my daughters that. And puh-lease, who WANTS that?? I love the craziness of life, because MY “happily ever after” is more like “joy ever after.” A life full of challenge, but of MOMENTS. And of joy that comes from trusting the Lord through it all.
I do have a faith in life and in the Lord that is completely full of hope, beauty, and magic. I believe with all my heart in the power of love, the power of kindness, and the power of the Word of God.
I am teaching my daughters, from my own REAL experience, that it’s fine to sing as Cinderella sings: “…Have faith in your dreams, and someday, your rainbow will come shining through. No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dreams that you wish will come true.”
But I stand on this promise: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
AND HOW.
Tonight, I sat in the theatre, one blonde princess on my right and one on my left, laughing and crying and thinking about sisters and FEELING the music and beauty and love and magic….I wish I could share the joy I felt with you. It’s the same way i feel when I spend time with Jesus. Music, and beauty and love and magic are just palpable in his presence sometimes. Maybe someday I’ll find a way to bottle it up like Disney does, because it’s so worth sharing…..
So, bring on the teasing. I can take it. :)
