My Cinderellification

Image credit: Nikita Gill

Until the age of seven, I wanted to be a Disney princess. Now, I don’t mean that I wanted to work at Disney World or something, I mean I actually wanted to be a singing, dancing, mice befriending Disney princess. And I wanted a prince. Not just any prince, but one who would sweep me off my feet, take me back to his castle, and live happily ever after with me.  I wanted a fairytale. Unfortunately, I started to grow up. In doing so, I began to care less and less about my prince and my happily ever after. Now, I had media, and the views of a fallen society, and even other misguided females feeding me falsehoods. The world lied to me and caused me to believe that the only way I’d ever find my prince was by me actively seeking him out. I thought that the girls who waited for their prince never got one. Fortunately, this isn’t true, but because I believed it to be so, it damaged my views on life, views that I’ve taken a long time to fix. I am, apparently, not the only woman who dealt with this.

See, in the beginning, woman was a mystery, hidden and set apart. As God is sacred, woman (made in His image and likeness) was also considered sacred. She was a mystery worth pursuing and as God wants humanity to desire and look for Him, to seek Him out on our own because we want to, because we love Him, and not out of some sense of obligation, like it’s something to check off on a list and not something one does out of a desire to be with Him above all else, so do women. Women long to be cherished and loved and respected We desire flowers and love notes and hand holding. We long for a prince charming. And men were happy to comply. They recognized that as God reveals Himself little by little, a woman’s modesty would only allow her to reveal parts of herself as the relationship progressed. There were certain things a godly lady didn’t do and rather than trying to challenge that, men encouraged it. They wanted to be princes.

Then somewhere along the line the fall happened. Like me, that little girl who wanted to do nothing more than ride into the sunset with her prince, women became rather disillusioned with their own mystery. We were led to doubt that we’re sacred. Strikingly, we now believed that being desired was the most important part of our existence. This wasn’t a holy desire, either. And so most women gave up on the belief that they were worthy of being pursued. Instead of being the enigma in a mystery novel, we were the idiot in the end of the Nancy Drew novel who gives the whole plot away and confesses everything. Because women still had that desire to be loved, to be cherished, we still looked for love, but now in the worst ways. We forgot how God wanted it to go. And so we dressed (and still dress) immodestly, we gave (we give) away the things one should only give to her husband, and we forgot (we forget) that our virtue was anything at all worth protecting. We forgot about Prince Charming. That he’d wait for us. And because we stopped holding men to a high standard, because we opened the door to the bank and gave the thieves everything the vault held, they stopped rising to that previous standard.

However, it doesn’t have to stay this way. The fact remains that woman still is worthy of love and honor, of not pursuing, but of being pursued. Because when Jesus died for us, by His blood and by His cross we have been redeemed. We are made clean. And by His redemption, we have been given the opportunity for change. Are we able to go back, to change where it went wrong and destroy the mistakes that led us here? No. For one, that would be a paradox. If our sins never existed, how could we know to go back and change them? For another, our souls have already been marked. We can, however, be absolved of our sins, “resolve to sin no more, do penance, and amend our lives.” Modesty, guarding the treasure like this is Raiders of the Lost Ark, it’s the Ark of the Covenant, and the wrong person getting to it will melt people’s faces off, waiting to be pursued --these are all still viable options. No one is irredeemable and if we as women resolve to be held and cherished as we once were once again, then we can change things. I myself have in recent times been trying more and more to commit to living life better, living it, well, like this. With chastity and grace. And I am so much happier for it. I am waiting for my prince again.

Living as a mystery isn’t popular today. Our society is so oversaturated with sex in the worst context that we no longer as women feel we are able to wait and be pursued. We think if we don’t do the pursuing, we’ll lose out on love. This couldn’t be any further from the truth. If we are willing to live with the risk, to put ourselves on the line and demand something better, then men will rise to the challenge. So women, let us be pursued. Let’s be a mystery once more. Let’s wait for Prince Charming and not settle for less. For that little girl who wanted to be a princess, I know I will.