what Disney gets wrong.

As a child, I remember loving Disney movies, for an extended period of my adolescence. My personal favorites were movies like Mulan, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast, because the heroines could pretty much beast the entire playground and my female empowerment days started young. I was not, and let's be honest, still am not really, a romantic.

But at the same time for me, as for many young women, there was something beautiful about the stories of romance contained within the fairy tales that Disney movies portray: Cinderella, pursued and rescued from her ashes by Prince Charming; Beauty, softening and winning over the beast, who then fights to rescue her; the Prince riding in on his white horse, and waking Sleeping Beauty from her death-sleep with a single kiss; and the happily ever after which inevitably comes. And, like it or not, I think in some way, many of us carry those fairy tale understandings of relationships into our real relationships.

We expect that we will be the Beauty who changes the Beast or the Prince who rescues Cinderella. We look for Love's kiss to awaken new things in us that will enable us to "live happily ever after." We expect that once we work out the legs/flippers exchange, that life will be hunky dory and singing seagulls will croon lullabies in four-part harmony to us as we sail off into the sunset. And we expect that we'll "know" that it's the "right one" when the conditions above (our fairy tales) are met, either in us, or the other person.

And those are not necessarily bad things to long for, to hope for: in fact, I think the fairy tale story often points to our holy longings for real, whole relationship, consummated only with Jesus (minus singing seagulls). But I think when we place those expectations on real-time, real-people relationships, or on our real selves, we often end up with real disappointment.

If I expect my significant other to be Prince Charming all the time, I am going to be disappointed when I wake up one morning and find out that he's Shrek, complete with smelly layers. And vice versa, if he expects Belle, the perfect princess (literate and feisty too), he's going to very disappointed when one day he finds out that he has the Beast instead. And, while I have a pretty healthy self-esteem, if I have expectations for myself that I will be Ariel, always giving up my gills for legs for the man of my dreams, always loving selflessly, then I set myself up for failure, and vice versa.

As my friend and former mentor, Alex says, it's the difference between hopes and expectations in relationships... Hope is good. Expectations can be quite costly.

Fairy tales are great, in that they spark our longings for a bigger story, with a happily ever after and the ideal play-out of all situations. But they make lousy guides for relational expectations. And they set us up for failure when we place those expectations on ourselves or our significant other.

Let me just cut to the quick:

You are messy.
So is your significant other [or future significant other].
We do not live in a Disney world and that's a good thing.
Placing Disney expectations on your relationship is not wise.

But, friends, there is hope! Because happily ever after does not come from you or your significant other or even your nearly perfect relationship. It comes from Jesus taking what is messy and redeeming, restoring, and renewing it. Our hope and our expectations come from the fact that we are part of a bigger story, one with the real Prince (Jesus) wooing the real Princess (the Church), winning the real war, and establishing his real kingdom on earth.

That is both our hope and our expectation.