The Paper Bag Princess

What a great book.  It's written by Robert Munsch.  If you've never heard of it or read it, do.  Today, it kind of "spoke" to me. 

In my journey of healing, I have found myself struggling to know what it is to be truly happy with myself.  Just myself.  And being completely, 100% content on my own.  I WANT to be.  Desperately.  I want to have such a sense of who God made ME to be, apart from anyone else, but since I've never really done that, it's going to take a bit of work.

When I read this book today, it made me smile.  Yeah, it's a children's book, but I saw some parallels between me and Elizabeth, the Paper Bag Princess.

Elizabeth is a beautiful princess who lives in a gorgeous castle and is going to marry Prince Ronald.  One day, a dragon comes and destroys the castle and takes Ronald away.  Elizabeth has nothing left, not even the clothes on her back, so she dons a paper bag and off she goes to fight the dragon and get Ronald back.  It's clear where the dragon has gone because there is the mass destruction of burnt forests and horses bones.

Elizabeth finds the dragon's cave and through the course of the story, fights the dragon in a battle of wits, which she ultimately wins.  Finally, with the dragon defeated, Elizabeth goes to rescue her prince. 

Prince Ronald takes one look at her and says, "Elizabeth, you are a mess!  You smell like ashes, your hair is all tangled and you are wearing a dirty old paper bag.  Come back when you are dressed like a real princess."

"Ronald," said Elizabeth, "your clothes are really pretty and your hair is very neat.  You look like a real prince, but you are a bum."  They didn't get married after all.

The parallels aren't exact.  My "prince" left voluntarily.  But I fought.  Oh, how I fought and warred and prayed.  And in the end, I was treated like scum, not like the royal daughter I am.  In the end, he didn't care in the least that I was fighting for HIM!  And the end of this simple little book feels empowering to me today.  The final illustration in the book is Elizabeth, dressed in her paper bag, dancing into the sunset by herself. 

I love it.  I would rather be a mess, smelling like ashes, wearing an old paper bag, than be married to a "bum" who doesn't know the value of the true "princess" he's with.