I'm not a Princess

I watched the recent video craze of the little girl –maybe 4- telling her daddy that she wasn’t a princess.  He couldn’t call her a princess. It was cute.  It called me back for a second and then a third viewing.  She was totally convinced and nothing her daddy had to say would convince her that she was a princess.

“I don’t have princess dresses.  Them have prettier, dress-up dresses.  This isn’t a princess dress.”

“Them have bracelets, sparkly bracelets. I don’t even have a bracelet.  I’m not a princess.”

“Them have sparkly, really sparkly princess headbands. I’m not a princess.”

“Them don’t take showers. Them don’t go in the sand or dirt.  Them do clean things.  Them don’t take showers.”

“Them’s just in movies. Them’s not real people. You need to watch the videos so you will know.  I’m not a princess.”

                                                                                    

It was probably after I’d watched it the 4th time that a certain realization began to settle in.  It’s cute.  That’s the draw.  And it’s familiar.  The second time I watched it, I thought “I know that little girl’s mama: the roll of the eyes, the way she silenced her daddy’s arguments, the hand gestures, the ‘don’t try to fool me’ look picked up and endearingly translated by the child.   But it’s also very real.  It struck a clandestine chord with me and, I think, with most people out there.  How do you define yourself?

Her daddy said she was his princess, but she knew she wasn’t a princess.  She had seen the movies.  She didn’t have the sparklies.  She didn’t have the clothes.  She didn’t have the environment.  Therefore, she wasn’t a princess.

I think one deterrent to us accepting who we really are is expectation.  First of all, there is the “I’m not all that” side of expectation.  The criteria becomes too great.  Even if we’d like to be all that or think we might be all that, it isn’t right to admit it. So we move way to the conservative side of our gifts and callings in our personal evaluation for the sake of humility and possible rejection. Second, there is the disappointment factor.  Something about being all that creates a pressure to maintain which many of us don’t want, especially after seeing others blow it.  After all, we get dirty.  We have to take showers, so we might be caught without our sparklies.

Another deterrent is perceived inadequacy or undeserving.  To quote Anastasia, “When your sleeping on a cold stone floor, it’s kinda hard to think of yourself as a princess.” It’s easy to let our present circumstances define us and sometimes even deny our birthright.  We forget that Cinderella was noble born and not just a house keeper.  She wasn’t the commoner who made good. She was the duchess forced into servitude by circumstance.  Sometimes things can go very wrong in our lives and destroy our hope in who we can be, yet deep inside we still know it’s there waiting on the day and time.

It’s time to start believing a different voice, a different memory.  There are people who were so close to realizing the dream that is a birthright, but it’s hard to believe when everything falls apart.  It’s not a fairytale to believe in new chances.  It’s not wrong to believe in our personal gifts and callings.  It’s not a weak dream to believe in the destiny promised by God even if it takes a long time to materialize.  If God says you are a princess, you are a princess, even if you’re sleeping in someone else’s attic.

Society wants to define who you are and what you can be, based on its own market value.  We’ve seen the movies; we don’t have the sparklies.  But there is a point where we know who we are and what we should become and we stop taking our worth from what others value.  The book you are to write has not yet been written.  Learn from others, but don’t let what they wrote define your story.  Maybe you are younger or older than the norm for a certain accomplishment.  Who knows what you can really accomplish when your effort and belief meet the power of the one who created the ability and desire within you.  Don’t discard what you know for what you are being told by others.  The sparklies won’t make you more of a princess than you already are.  Nor will their absence make you less of a princess than the Father says you are.