My name is Sarah. In hebrew, Sarah means "Princess". Growing up it always made me feel special. What girl doesn't want to be able to tell her friends "I'm a Princess!" and then knowing that they're name was not Sarah, I continued to ask...."what are you?". Maybe not the most princess thing for me to do, but I was little. A princess in training really. As I grew older and started to see how popular my name was, I began to lose my pride in the title. I didn't feel special anymore. Apparently, I was not the only Princess in the world, there were MANY! Even in sunday school, I would hear that God is the King and when we invite Jesus to come into our hearts, then that makes us a Princess because now we are daughters of the King! Well now my teacher was telling me that EVERY girl was a princess. My feelings of superiority and uniqueness had been stripped from me and instead of taking pride in my name, I began to hate it. As I grew older, I met so many Sarah's and then to top that off, Sarah Elizabeths, that my name made me fade into a sea of girls who were told they were just as special as me. What's so special about that! What was there left to make me stand out!
We now live in a day where Disney tells every little girl they are a princess. They have so many dresses and tiaras that they can choose from not to mention the movies they can watch of princess' who they aspire to be, but what does the term princess mean to them? Every little girl wants to be one but why? From my "research" of disney princess movies, I've found that they all end with marrying a prince and get to wear a big pretty dress and a tiara. They have reduced being a princess to having everything you want, getting your prince charming and living happily ever after! Reality is, these princess' don't end up marrying a prince charming because they don't actually have princess qualities. They just look like one. In the ending scene of "Tangled", Flynn describes Repunzel as what I feel separates the Princess' from the Posers....
"She was a Princess worth waiting for......"
What makes you a princess worth waiting for? And so I turn to Proverbs 31 (NASB). I won't post the whole passage here but I've gone through and pulled out the qualities it mentions.
A princess worth waiting for is: trustworthy, encouraging, has a good work ethic, eats properly, leads by serving others, knows how to manage money, dreams of the future, exercises, is discerning, prepared for the future, is generous, takes care of her family, is positive, wise, and is kind with her words.
These are the qualities a Prince will look for. You can't have your happily ever after as a Princess if you don't act like one because you won't attract a Prince! If we are going to tell young girls that they are Princess', then we need to be teaching them to act like them. We have to explain that what truly makes them a Princess isn't the title, the dress or the tiara, it's the qualities they possess. If they expect a Prince to wait for them, then they need to be a Princess worth waiting for.
So as I am getting ready to marry my Prince Charming, I will be diving into this passage even deeper. I want to be the Princess that he's been waiting for. I want to have a happily ever after, but wether or not I get that will depend on if I'm truly a Princess, or a Poser. And if God decides to bless me with a little princess of my own one day, I want to be ready to teach her how to be a real Princess like the Bible describes, not disney.
