Happily Ever After

“…and they lived happily ever after.” I don’t know how many times I have had to read that phrase to close a book. My daughter loves stories about princesses, and in our household she is THE Princess. She loves to hear about the obstacles the princess overcomes. She enjoys hearing about the handsome prince riding in and sweeping the princess off her feet, about riding into the distant horizon where they will live happily ever after.

That phrase, that ending to the book sounds so captivating, so enchanting. But it isn’t reality. We don’t hear about the struggles they deal with as they govern their fair kingdom. We don’t hear about the fights they have because their wonderful loving spouse doesn’t squeeze the toothpaste correctly, or doesn’t put the toilet paper on the roll the correct way. We don’t hear about how they deal with babies who wake up crying at 2:30 in the morning. We don’t hear about what they do when their finances get tight.

“Happily ever after” doesn’t tell the whole story. It doesn’t tell the story about life and truly living. Life can be difficult. When we truly live we are going to run into problems, some we cause and some are caused because others don’t want us to live. While fairy tales are fun to read (for some) and are enjoyed by others, they are not the whole story. We need to tell our children our stories and those of our parents and grandparents. The stories of how we dealt with our obstacles, of how we dealt with crying babies and more month at the end of our money. We need to give them a different hope, not about a prince or a genie or a fairy god mother sweeping in to save the day, but a hope about how to really live. We need to share a hope that there are opportunities out there, those opportunities might just look like obstacles at first. A hope that “happily ever after” is not about riding into the sunset to never be heard from again, but “happily ever after” might just look more like getting a colicky child back to sleep, or getting this month’s bills paid, or having a quiet moment with our spouse without a telephone ringing or children looking for our attention.

May you find life in truly living this week. May you find a way through your obstacles this week. May you begin to live a real “happily ever after” this week.