Apparently many people hold the misconception that accepting Christ means that your life won’t have any problems or worries. But that wasn’t my problem. For some reason I never held that theory because I can’t remember a time in which I wasn’t familiar with “into every life a little rain must fall”. I knew that just because life was hard and people were jerks to you didn’t effect God’s love and grace for you and vice versa. Maybe it was because I had a less than idyllic childhood…. But I did have different kind of fairy tale picture for life.

When I read about those who faced trials and tribulations in the Bible they all seemed to have this odd kind of peace. Not seeing anyone who had peace in real life I went to fairy tales for my picture of what that would look like in “real life”. I thought my life would be more like Cinderella’s, and I mean the Disney version. While people may still treat you horribly and not love you for reason beyond your control, you would have a song in your heart. You know, the woodland animals and sweetly singing birds would come in and help you do your work. While you may be slaving away it wouldn’t be hard, it wouldn’t be lonely, it would be serene. You wouldn’t care that no one ever said any thing nice because you had a song in your heart.

As someone whose childhood was fairly isolated, lonely and sucked for huge portions… life didn’t quite go that way. We never see Cinderella really cry. We just figure that it doesn’t hurt. All because of that song in her heart. The one I didn’t get. Or so I think at first…. As I started thinking about this subject and how naive I was I remembered the music, the hope….

I didn’t have a lot of tapes but I had some Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, DC Talk and KDUV started when I was in high school. That helped give me that song in my heart. A song that helped me focus on something other than the fact I was pulled out of bed to finish the dishes or to get the bits of hair I didn’t clean off of the linoleum. A song that reminded me that I was loved unconditionally by the God of the Universe no matter how isolated I was from those who I wanted so desperately to not only love me, but love me in spite of my flaws. A song that told me that even though I didn’t have 1 friend who REALLY knew me, my hurts or my life, God knew and cried with me. A song that reminded me that God would give me a happily ever after, and I am not talking about the one I have with NerdDad (though it is pretty good) but the one that is to come.

So maybe, just maybe my misconceptions weren’t so wrong after all…. A life with Christ is a little like being Cinderella. But while we have this life on earth we get to dance with Him at various balls and someday He will come with a glass slipper to claim His bride.

(** This is a reprint of a piece I wrote in the beginning of last year. I am republishing it for this week’s Theology Thursday.)