Once Upon A Time...

Once upon a time, there was a girl who had the most beautiful smile. She always seemed to be happy. She was quiet around her family and loved to talk around her friends. She wasn’t popular, but she knew a lot of people. She didn’t have many friends, but she had a few that she held very close.

She would dream about the day her prince charming would come. He clearly wasn’t any of the guys she knew. They were all very strange and weird, and they all liked sports way too much. But still she would dream about how they would meet. How he would take her hand, sing her favorite song, and take her to a mountaintop and ask her to marry him. That was really far off though. She had all the time in the world to find prince charming.

One day, while she was at school, something happened to her and she fell very ill. Her beautiful smile would vanish and she would moan in pain. All of a sudden, one by one, each of her friends started to abandon her because she couldn’t go anywhere or do anything. She was no fun to be around. They didn’t know that all she wanted was to feel well again. And that if she could, she would try and make them see just how much she needed them. But it never happened. For 3 years she suffered in pain and agony. Then finally, God gave her relief.

Things started to turn around. The girl was becoming a woman. She began to realize that friends would be your friends no matter what you were going through. And that the people who still cared about her were her true friends.

However, bitterness and anger were lingering in her heart. She wanted to go back and change everything, even though that couldn’t happen. She was mad at the people who were rude and arrogant towards her. There were times when these same people would even attack her family right in front of her. Quite often, she would just sit and cry. She hoped that maybe she could disappear from this cruel world. Then one day, she got away from many of them.

She went off to college where she made three best friends. She didn’t know that those three would later on be the only people to really care about her. They would help her out of a huge problem she had which involved a devilish man dressed as prince charming. They helped her overcome a lot of huge issues. They always made her laugh, and they did everything they could to make her smile again. They were the best friends she had always hoped for. Even though she had even more anger and bitterness now, she just kept covering it up…telling everyone she was fine and over it all. She even convinced herself.

A week before her 18^th birthday, she met someone wonderful, someone who today she calls her best friend. They got along very well together. One day she decided to trust him and tell him about her life. He told her that she was a reflection of his past, and that he could help her overcome her anger. But he made one thing very clear, to not trust him, but to trust God instead. Only God could help her and she should trust Him with her life. He said he could point her in the right direction, but from there she would have to find the path she was meant to take. He made her see that even though she thought she could forget her past, and want to start over, it would never happen. It would always be there. But until she could stare defeat in the face and say that she was better than that, and that she was here for a better purpose, nothing would change. She would be stuck in the rut of being unhappy. And ultimately never be able to love someone because she didn’t trust anyone to be different than those who had betrayed her in the past. She would always be angry whenever something small went wrong.

The girl knew this. She had been confronted many times with this issue. Each time she thought she had resolved it. She had the outcome of being happy again and trusting people, but only for a short while. She only did it to make other people happy, and to make it seem like she was reaching the ultimate goal.

But she never did. She never really understood that she was so focused on the end, that she’d cover up the middle to get to it. Her smile faded. Her joy wasn’t in it. She had no desire to deal with the past. Afterall, it seemed to have ruined her life. She would rather run far away and forget everything. Hit that reset button she always talked about.

Then one day she realized that running from her problems wouldn’t solve anything. She was always being haunted in her dreams by her past and her fears. She knew it was time for a change. It was time to take what had potentially ruined her and dig it back up. It wasn’t buried that deep so it wasn’t hard. But once the memories started flooding over her, she wanted to quit again.

Her best friend urged her not to. He said it was going to be painful. It was going to hurt. But it was going to be worth it.

It took her a very long time to sort things out in her mind. She really didn’t think it was worth it.

She knew there were things she had to do, people she had to go to that she had hurt in the process, and ask for forgiveness. There was no way she wanted to do that.

But one Sunday in church, she made up her mind. There were two people from the past she knew she had to talk to in order to be at peace before she could move on. She had everything planned out how it would go. 

She talked to the first person. It was easy.

Then all of a sudden, one of her college friends crushed her. She wanted to give up immediately, because the second person she had to go to was involved in the situation. She didn’t want her heart to be broken any more. Ready to give up, she shut herself up for a few days. But God kept telling her over and over again, “You promised me you would go to this second person. You are so angry, and I understand this is making it worse. But you can’t be mad anymore. Go. Do it.”

She had her opportunity, and she took it. Finally she was at peace. But now she had this other situation to deal with. She thought she would just ignore it. Look past, and not worry about anything. But the girl realized that she was even more of a bitter person now that she was before.

Her anger came out in everything. No matter what she was doing or who she was with. You could always tell something was up. She would explode every night. She couldn’t get control over herself. God seemed to not be helping her at all. She would read her Bible, searching for answers. She would pray and ask God to help her. She was always so uneasy about everything.

Until she realized, the problem was her. Her smile faded because she let it. She was always unhappy because she let herself be unhappy. She was angry because that was how she felt alive. And the only way she could change? Well, let’s just say I know what I need to do now.

This isn’t just a once upon a time. Fairytales have a happy ending. And I have the choice to make it a happy ending for myself. This is my story. And that is where I am at.

The story isn’t over yet. I have so much I need to do. And I can only do it with God’s help.

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And what happened to prince charming? Well, I’ll find him one day…