Little girls love to play "princess." There's just something ever-so-delightful about donning a crown and being a princess or queen, and acting all stately, regal, and beautiful!
Five-year-old Sharnessa in a princess costume – 35 years ago!
Seven years later, she still loved being a princess, and now had a little sister to dress up, too! Carlianne (age 3) is wearing my bridal veil, and Sharnessa (12) is wearing a crown and one of my old hot pink negligeés.
Four years later, on her 16th birthday, we took Sharnessa and her three closest girlfriends shopping at Pike Place Market in Seattle. The girls got crowns at a costume shop. These were just $3 crowns made out of foil pipe cleaners, but they still made them feel like princesses! They walked around Pike Place Market wearing them, and also each got bouquets of flowers at one of the vendors. Later they changed in to dressy dresses, put their tiaras back on, and we went to Spaghetti Factory for dinner ~ where people actually asked if this was a group of beauty pageant candidates!
The love of princessliness and tiaras continued on through the years. Here are Carlianne and Sharnessa at a costume party.
And Sharnessa wore a crown as a bride...
As did our daughter-in-love, Chrissy, who married her "prince," our son, Tory...
(Sorry for the not-so-great quality
of many of these photos; most of them are
pictures of pictures, taken lonnnng before
digital was ever even thought of!)
For Sharnessa, the princess interest was connected to her name which means "Pure Holy Princess." But the desire to be a princess is "in our blood"; not limited to those with the word "princess" in the meaning of their name!
A week after posting this article, we went to Disneyland, where I couldn't help but notice there are many princesses. And no, I don't mean visiting dignitaries from around the world, and I don't mean the Disney princesses in the parades or rides. I mean regular real-life people ~ ladies of all ages ~ with crowns on! I just had to include pictures of a few of them, and these four graciously allowed me to get pictures of them for this blog article.
(Yes, I went up to them in Disneyland and asked if they would allow me to get pictures of them and include them in this blog post. ... And if you noticed that two of them look a lot alike, it's because they are twins!)
And when I watched a video by Kristen and Danny, both of them wore crowns for one of the segments...
I highly recommend that you watch this! Click here to watch on YouTube! (But be sure to come right back here to finish this article. And then you can go back there and watch more of their hilarious and very entertaining videos!!!) I loooooooove these two!!!!
And then there are baby princesses...
...right on up to elderly women ~ the left one of which is my sweet momma, and the right one of which is my dear friend Anita's mom! (Both of them are now wearing their actual crowns in Heaven!)
So this love of "royalty" is clearly in our heart 'n' soul starting at a very young age ~ me included! I present to you "Princess Barbara"! Yes, that's really ME! At four years old. This was ::GULP!:: 61 years ago! (I wrote this in April of 2018.)
Even though that was a very long time ago, I can still vividly remember how totally elegant and important I felt walking around my yard in my beautiful crown and cape! SIXTY-ONE YEARS AGO!!! And the memory is still vivid and sweet!!!
Never mind that saddle shoes adorned my feet and that I had an everyday dress on; such trivial matters didn't diminish the royal experience for me one bit; my crown and cape covered a multitude of "normality."
My "royal cloak" was just an old skirt of my Mom's, which she slit up the front.
And the crown was a joint mother-daughter effort, made out of aluminum foil-covered cardboard. (I loved to create things!)
I tell you, I felt like I truly was ROYALTY!
And to offer you further, up-to-date, undeniable proof... here's my favorite go-to Word Chums character costume, which I'm sure all my opponents are sick of seeing, but I just love my tiara, cape and scepter!
I believe there is something very significant and very valid about this "royal feeling"! As a four-year-old, I had no understanding of it, but I believe I sensed ~ as I have a feeling you do, too ~ that I really was a princess. And not "just for pretend"! For reals!!!
We are truly God's beloved and precious daughters, adopted as children of the King of the Universe, and therefore of royal heritage! We are princesses in the purest and most real sense of the word!
Carlianne, right, with her dear friend
and mine, Laura, on her Wedding Day.
I think that many of us don't know who we really are. If we did, we would act and think quite differently than we do. Let's look at this verse in Philippians 4:6 and see if we really believe it... We are encouraged to:
"Be anxious for nothing. By prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests (needs) known to God."
The Living Bible says it a little differently:
"Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything."
Wonderful concept. But how easy it is to be anxious ~ for and about many things? Anything that's beyond our ability to fix, provide, or heal. But that's what God, our Father and King ~ or you might say our "fatherly King," or our "kingly Father" ~ specializes in. Being the King of the Universe, he is fully able to help us, even if not especially with the really hard stuff! (as I share in this article, "What Can God Redeem?")
Three more princesses!
In fact, the very next verse finishes the thought by stating what we get out of the deal ~ by surrendering our anxieties to Him, thanking Him, and making our requests known...
"...and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."
Our Heavenly, kingly Father listens to His princesses. (And to his princes, too, but that's another article.) God has access to the whole universe, so we can be certain that there is no shortage of resources to help us, and therefore we can be certain of the truth of this verse in Philippians 4:19:
"My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus."
If we find ourselves walking in a poverty mentality, or feeling abandoned by God, we need to choose to start believing all these powerful verses, and start living our lives as if we are the princesses ~ the daughters of the King ~ that we truly are!
Would a true princess go without her needs ~ and even desires ~ being met? NO! She would go straight to her Daddy King and let him know exactly what she is in need of!
"He has given us confidence to approach His holy throne..."! (Hebrews 4:16)
So there's no need to lament that we don't have enough money... or creativity... or patience... or wisdom... or whatever we are in need of. God wants us ~ right then ~ to grab hold of who we really are, and go to him, our loving, all-powerful, kingly Daddy-God!
Tasha, on her Wedding Day.
He doesn't want us to hold back or stay away! If we lack the confidence to do so, it could be one of these two reasons: 1) We haven't asked for it.
...or... 2) We are believing lies. Lies like these, for example:
"God doesn't want to bless you."
"God likes to be stingy with His blessings."
"You've blown it so many times, God has HAD it with you."
"God plays favorites ~ and you're NOT one of them!"
"You don't deserve His blessings."
(It is true that we don't deserve His blessings, but remember what grace IS? Unmerited favor!) And one last lie:
"You're unworthy." ... In response to that one, here's this...
Getting to the place of walking in all that it means to be a daughter of the King begins by yielding our hearts and lives to Him, our Beloved. He is the only One with the power to save, heal, and help us; the only One strong enough to carry our burdens and relieve our anxieties: the God Almighty, Our Lord and King!
If we are daughters of the King, that makes us princesses in a totally correct and complete sense of the word. It's not just make-believe, and we aren't just pretending or imagining it!
So if we are still walking in shame, failure, or discouragement, we have simply not fully realized who we really are. Let this not be true of us:
"Even though they hold on to a form of godliness, they deny the power therein." (II Tim. 3:5)
So when we are feeling inadequate, unloved, or unworthy; when we find ourselves in the muck and mire of difficult circumstances, let's, as His beloved daughters, remember who we really are! A Princess!
Let's lay hold of Him
and His goodness ~ and think,
feel and act like the princesses
we really and truly are!
CJ and our youngest daughter, Carlianne,
feeling very loved and princessly on their Wedding
Day. This was moments after their first kiss,
which they had saved for this day!
