In President Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s popular Conference talk, “Your Happily Ever After,” he lavished young women with words that I’m sure were music to their ears:
You are truly royal spirit daughters of Almighty God. You are princesses, destined to become queens. Your own wondrous story has already begun. Your “once upon a time” is now (Ensign, May 2010).
What girl (or woman for that matter) doesn’t love being told she’s a princess? It’s the stuff dreams are made of. After all, our world today is enamored with the idea of being a member of royalty. Just walk through Walmart and you’ll find princesses plastered on everything from toothbrushes to T-shirts to tennis shoes. And don’t forget all the images of Princess Kate staring back at us while we wait our turn in the checkout line. I believe that’s the reason President Uchtdorf ‘s talk was so beloved—because he took all that princess hoopla and made it real. To think that we as daughters of God are princesses in our own right is pretty heady stuff.
And yet, as inspiring as that idea may seem, the scriptures actually throw a hitch into all the princess hype. For one thing, the Doctrine and Covenants tells us that Christ “so loved the world that he gave his own life, that as many as would believe might become the sons [and daughters] of God” (D&C 34:3, see also 11:30, 35:2, 45:8). And Alma also talks about our need to be “changed…[and] redeemed of God, [thus] becoming his sons and daughters” (Mosiah 27:25). The word become means to be changed or transformed into something, so if we really are princesses like President Uchtdorf said, why would the scriptures say we need to “become” daughters of God? Why the need to be transformed into something we already are? It just doesn’t make any sense.
I wrote A Princess Story to answer that very question. Yes, it’s a wonderful thing to understand our divine, royal heritage, but the truth is that that’s only the beginning of our story. It’s just the first scene. In order to fully comprehend who we are and who we must become, we’ve got to move past that introductory scene and explore the rest of the story. I know many of us think we know the gospel backwards and forwards, but I’d like to introduce you to a whole new way of looking at it. I hope to convince you that, through the gospel of Jesus Christ, each of us has been swept up in a real-life fairy tale, complete with a princess and her prince, an evil villain, an awful monster, an epic battle, and a daring rescue. In other words, all those classic princess movies have jumped right off the movie screen and into our personal lives. All we need to do is open our eyes to see it, and we can embrace the adventure with all the passion and enthusiasm we can possibly muster. (If all this seems a little too far-fetched for you to swallow, just take a gander at 2 Nephi 9:10 and you’ll get a quick glimpse of the stirring saga I’ve been talking about.)If you’d like to learn more about your own real-life fairy tale, I invite you to pick up a copy of A Princess Story. As the storyteller, I promise you that this enchanting drama will include some unexpected twists and turns, and a better happily-ever-after than any Disney princess movie you’ve ever seen.
BIO
Jaci Wightman, a wife and fulltime mom of 7, graduated in 2012 from BYU-Idaho with a degree in University Studies. She is the author of A Princess Story: The Real-Life Fairy Tale Found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ (2016) and Body Image Breakthrough: Learning to See Your Body and Your Beauty in a Whole New Light (2014). To learn more, visit her website at jaciwightman.com.
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