Smudged by the Cinders

Introduction “How lonely sits the city that was full of people! She has become like a widow who was once great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces has become a forced laborer!” –Lamentations 1:1 When I was a little girl, I wanted to be Cinderella. I dreamed and wished for a fairytale life. More than anything I desired to be the pretty princess with Prince Charming coming for me on his valiant white horse. As I’ve grown older that desire hasn’t changed. Daily I seek for ways to think and feel like a princess. My prevailing need is still to have a courageous Prince charge over a hill, slaying dragons and evil magic just to find me…just to know my love. I truly believe that within us all is the desire to be a princess. At some point in their lives, every little girl (even you tomboys), if only for a split second, dreams of what it would be like to be a princess. What would it be like to be Snow White brought back to life by true love’s kiss? How exciting to be Rapunzel as an adoring prince scales the highest tower just to be in your presence? Better yet, how totally awesome would it be to wear those off-the-wall girly ball gowns, delicate slippers, and a smashing gold crown? How extravagant would it be to be a beautiful princess forced into labor by your evil step-mother only to be restored to your position as princess by a Prince who moved heaven and earth to find you? A princess is a woman or girl in a royal family, especially a daughter of a reigning king or queen. Princesses are typically thought of as beautiful, gracious, and sought after. When I speak of being a princess, these are the definitions I have in mind. I believe a true princess is compassionate, strong, bold, and courageous. Too often we are embarrassed to say we want to be princesses because over the years they have gotten a bad rap. They are thought of as wilting powerless things fretting in a corner somewhere but this is far from the truth! As we’ll find out throughout this book, a princess of the One true King, God our Father, is anything but powerless and fearful. Her destiny to be rescued by the Prince, Jesus, does not detract from her own abilities or talents. You will find that to be wrapped up in the arms of Jesus releases us from the grip of our enemy, the Devil, and allows us to live freely as the strong, courageous women of God we are. The desire to be a princess is a precious gift God has given to each one of us. It’s a gift that gently nudges us towards and quietly reminds us of the destiny God has for His beloved daughters. It has always been God’s design that we live as royalty. In his book, “Finding Favor with The King”, Tommy Tenney questions, “Is it any accident that the dream of a ‘Princess Bride’ is so persistent even in contemporary societies, generations after true earthly royalty became rare? Could it be that our Creator planted this dream deep inside our hearts as a hidden seed, an eternal dream waiting to be fulfilled at just the right time?” I believe it is by divine design that we long for the fairytale existence. I believe the “Princess Bride” dream persists because it has been hard wired into our make-up by a loving Creator. When we are younger, it is very easy to see ourselves as royalty. Our throne is just an imagination away. If asked we would state with regal authority that, “Yes we are Princess So-and-so and yes that is Prince Charming by our side.” Unfortunately, somewhere between the little girl twirling with her pretend tiara and the young woman trying to feel comfortable in her own skin, we sometimes lose that certainty. While the desire to be a princess remains constant, the hope of actually becoming a princess gets tucked away with other childhood memories. Life happens. Hurt, pain, sin, and shame often happen. The princess within becomes alien and is replaced by what Lamentations calls a “forced laborer” or what I’d call a “cinder girl”. Lamentations begins with a broken Judah. Where once it was a bustling city full of people, it now lays empty, desolate, and forced into slavery by a foreign country. Jeremiah, the author of Lamentations, compares Judah to a princess dethroned who has become a forced laborer. At night, she weeps bitterly and her enemies have become her masters. The story sounds familiar, right? It sounds a lot like the story of a poor cinder girl named Ella. Ella’s story is that of a girl who lived the life of royalty only to have it tragically ripped away. She lived many years in solitude and forced labor. At this low point in her life it was very easy to forget who she was and from where she came. Her resting place was a bed of cinders; very soon she became smudged by those cinders and those cinders began to define her. This is what has happened to so many of us. We start off innocent and hopeful. I believe regardless of the home we grew up in, there is a time in our childhood where we all know what it means to be loved by the One True King. Then something happens, for some of us it happens very early in life and others may reach adolescence before it happens. This “something” changes the way we see ourselves and our King. Whatever this something is, it seems to snatch us from our thrones and thrust us waist deep in a bed of cinders. We then let these “cinders” define us or smudge our face. It becomes the part of ourselves we believe everyone around us can see. We begin to live a life of less than because of the shame produced by these cinders smudging our face. Within this book I pray you allow God to show you the journey out of the cinders and into your birthright as a Princess of the King of Kings. It is important to note that this is not a self-help book. There are no formulas as to how to make your cinders magically disappear. Within you these pages are an invitation to know your Prince Jesus more intimately. I pray you will learn to trust Him as His guides you out of the cinders and into the realization of who you are in the Kingdom of God. It is my deepest prayer that in the end, you will find yourself no longer smudged by the cinders.