A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes

A dream is a wish your heart makes…

Many women can remember back to when they first heard those words beautifully sung by a beautiful princess. Cinderella was just waking up from a lovely dream and ready to begin her day when she begins singing this memorable tune, “A dream is a wish your heart makes when you’re fast asleep…” It was a great foreshadowing for what was to come in her life. At that point in the story, Cinderella was under conspicuous control by her evil stepmother and two stepsisters. However, she remained joyfully singing and interacting with her dear friends, the mice and birds who solemnly helped her in her everyday chores.

I don’t recommend forming close relationships with wild animals, I do, however, recommend taking a lesson from Cinderella’s life. She was in solitude, restricted from outside influences, continuously reprimanded for nonsensical things, constantly torn down with words, yet always singing, always hoping, and always persevering. How did she do it? I have never been so obscenely oppressed yet I have on occasion lost my joy, lost my song. What did she have inside of her?
Cinderella’s life wasn’t always corrupted by her evil stepmother. She had a father who doted on her and who continuously reinforced her worth. She was raised to believe that she was a princess and that she was worthy of love. She knew real love. This love was so real that even after her father passed away and her stepmother and sisters took such advantage of her, she was still able to dream, to sing, to be joyful…

Unfortunately fatherlessness is a disease that has run rampant in our society. Too many people today know the distinct wound left by a father who did not fulfill his duty. There is no other feeling of worthlessness that comes than from a father who was never there or might has well have never been there. But, praise be to God, the Heavenly Father, that He has a heart big enough and a hand strong enough to hold and heal every broken heart. He longingly waits for the chance to tell us how beautifully and wonderfully made we are. He is anxious to heal. He is mighty to save. Cinderella’s father’s love does not compare to God’s love for us. His love is sacrificial, that He came to earth to fix the broken bridge between us and Him, that we might have access to Him forever. All one has to do to have access to Him is to believe in Him with your heart, and confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ, God in man form, died for your sins but rose again with all power in His hands.

Cinderella could dream because she knew that beyond circumstance she was a princess. I can dream today because I know beyond circumstance that I am a daughter of THE King. Psalms 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” I delight myself in Him that I might know who I am in Him. I freely dream dreams that are too big for me to accomplish by myself, knowing full well that He placed them in my heart in the first place. The same way Cinderella marries her prince, in a more extravagant way than I’m sure even she dreamed about, I can’t wait to see my dreams come to pass, exceedingly and abundantly beyond all that I could even imagine.

I Have Big Feet

I have big feet. In middle school I tried to deny it. I would wear shoes that were definitely too small for me and as a result I have one too many memories of me falling on my own volition in the hallways at Fred J. Carnage Middle. In elementary school I was proud of my above-average stature. I was 5’1’’ in the third grade. Coincidentally that was the same year we had to read the novel Sarah Plain and Tall. Can you guess what my nickname was? By fourth grade I was taller than my mom and joked that she was too short to ride the rides at the state fair. In fifth grade I towered over everyone, including my teacher at the ripe old height of 5’6’’. When I got to middle school, my height slowed down a bit while my feet thought it best to keep growing. They decided that a women’s size 12 shoe was a good stopping place while the average women’s size is a 7. Immediately I was thrown into never being able to shop in department stores for shoes but having to settle for places where shoes were not the most durable. I grew so tired of the difficulty of finding shoes that I decided I would only wear tennis shoes, men’s tennis shoe’s at that. Being a 10 ½ in men’s shoes is much easier than being a 12 in women’s. That’s how I spent high school. I had one pair of black sandals with a square heel that I wore whenever I had to dress up.

Now, I can’t blame what happened in high school entirely on my shoe predicament, but it did not help matters. The lowest self-esteem I have ever experienced was in high school. My low self-esteem was not only depressing but crippling. I was at the point of committing suicide. I didn’t like ANYTHING about my body. The top complaints were bad acne, overweight, big breasts that got too much attention, and huge feet. I walked cowered over ashamed of my body, not wanting anyone to notice but assuming everyone did.

Recently, God has been healing my heart of different hurts from my past. His latest project has been getting me to accept my big feet. Psalms 139:13-14 says “I will praise Thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made, marvelous are Thy works and that my soul knoweth right well” (KJV). This verse literally saved my life in high school and here God is using it again to teach me that He knows how He made me, and He loves how He made me. The New Living Translation says this, “You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.” Not only does God like my big feet, but my height, my face, my crazy-loud laugh, and a whole host of other things that I used to try to hide.

God has encouraged me to embrace the things about myself that others might look down on, or even that I deemed ridiculous. The thing about becoming new in Christ (2 Corinthians 5) is that not only does God renew and redeem your spirit but the whole you. In Christ there is freedom to be the “you” God made you to be. I can’t be any other thing then what I was designed to be. I don’t buy men’s shoes exclusively any more but save up and buy cute shoes at Nordstrom. I rejoiced so much when last year I bought my first pair of “big girl” black pumps. I have big feet and that’s ok. I also have a big God who made me. Cheers to that! Now, excuse me while I go shoe shopping!!!