Living a Life of Fairy Tales and Happily Ever After
Fairy tales and happily ever after. In a world full of anxiety, fear and uncertainty about the future, we long for a happily ever after. Seeking respite from our stressful lives, a Disney movie is sometimes just what we need. The Disney movie, Tangled, based on the story of Rapunzel, will not disappoint. In fact, it confirmed to me that as Christians, we are guaranteed a happily ever after.
My husband and I just saw Tangled this last weekend. It’s the story about Rapunzel, the princess who was taken from her parents as a baby and held captive in a tower until her eighteenth birthday. Along comes Flynn Rider, a dashing, handsome bandit on the run who finds the tower escaping from the guards that were chasing him. Rapunzel schemes to use Flynn to carry out her dream of leaving the tower for a day to visit the source of the lights that she sees every year on her birthday.
As with every Disney movie, good triumphs over evil, dreams are fulfilled and there is always a happy ending with the guarantee of life happily ever after.
Real life isn’t depicted after the closing credits. There is no sequel – Tangled 2 – tangled in bills, making ends meet, and finding energy to remain close long after the relationship begins. Of course, princesses may not have to worry about such concerns. The majority of us have many stressors in “real” life.
Like Rapunzel, escaping from her tower, we do our own escaping by being entertained for a few hours lost in dreams of fantasy free from worry.
But I got to thinking about happy endings and happily ever after and thought that as Christians, we know the end of our story. We have a happily ever after.
When Jesus was on the cross, he said to the thief beside him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” And in the Gospel of John, “In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”
So, the happy ending is already written for us. It’s the middle of the story that is up to us to write. We write our story by having goals and dreams, making good choices, using our talents, serving others and trusting God to guide us. The happily ever after is coming. It’s the living in the present moment that is up to us to make our lives happy and purpose driven “now”.
Rapunzel fulfills the barter arrangement she makes with Flynn. It is a classic Disney moment of a stunning, visual, romantic scene when the boy will kiss the girl. I was sitting with my arms crossed because it was kind of cool in the theater. At that moment I took my husband’s arm in mine and put my head on his shoulder.
Our lives have changed a lot in the seven years that we have been together. The most dramatic change has been the loss of his job eleven months ago and us starting a consulting business together. We are literally together around the clock. The stress of lack of income and the struggle of starting our business has been intense. But in that moment of watching Rapunzel and Flynn, it brought back the feelings of newness and connection that we had in the beginning of our relationship. We still have that connection. It just takes being conscious of that and not letting the sometime stressful details of life crowd out what is most important.
Living a life of fairy tales and happy endings – As Christians, we are assured of a happy ending. It’s up to us to fill in the rest of our story.
