The Princess Diaries

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The Princess Diaries reveals your true identity: not invisible, but chosen—God’s child, called to step into your royal purpose with courage and faith.
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The Princess Diaries (2001) Rated G

Directed by Garry Marshall       Production Company: Walt Disney Pictures

Starring Anne Hathaway, Julie Andrews, Hector Elizondo, Heather Matarazzo, Caroline Goodall, Mandy Moore, Erik von Detten, Sandra Oh

 A 15 year old misfit finds out she is a princess and sole heir to a small European country.

Opening Thoughts

A while back, I decided to do a deep dive on my name, Sarah. I knew it means “princess,” and the name is Hebrew, and is attached to Sarah, the matriarch in Genesis, Abraham’s wife. First I went to the absolutely amazing and extremely insightful book, The Name Book, by Dorothy Astoria. It’s a book I use a lot with my writing, because when naming characters I often like to check the meanings of names, and this book contains cultural origins of names, their inherent meaning, their spiritual connotations, and a relevant Scripture. So for the name Sarah, here’s what the Name Book contained:
Language/Cultural Origin: Hebrew

Inherent Meaning: Princess

Spiritual Connotation: Beloved

Scripture: Psalm 45:13 (The King’s daughter in the inner part [of the palace] is all glorious; her clothing is inwrought with gold. [Rev. 19:7, 8.] AMP)

Then I ran it through an AI bot to get more comprehensive. So, Sarah in the Bible, the one mentioned in Genesis, Abraham’s wife. This woman originally began her life with the name “Sarai.” Now, “Sarai” means “my princess,” it’s a possessive, personal belonging. But then God gave her a new name, “Sarah,” which means simply “princess.” God expanded her identity as not just belonging to one person, Abraham, but to the world – Sarah would be the mother of nations. She would belong to all. Sarah is also the only woman in the entire Bible who received a name change directly from God. The name Sarah also is one of the few names in history that has remained in continuous use across multiple cultures (Jewish, Christian, Islamic) for over four thousand years.

While I’ve always loved having the name Sarah, I’ve often had trouble seeing myself as the princess that both my name and God call me. I don’t think I look like a princess, at least, the Disney kind. Most days I definitely don’t feel like one. But what God’s been showing me a lot lately is that we are so, so much more than what we look like or even feel. That our core identity, our most definite definition, is what he calls us. And he calls me Princess. He even gave me the name so I can’t get away from it!
So I was watching The Princess Diaries a week or so ago and God was really speaking to me through it. Read on to find out what!

SPOILERS for Princess Diaries here!

Mia Thermopolis is a fifteen year old living in a converted firehouse in San Francisco with her artist mother. She’s a bit of a misfit, clumsy, awkward, and her expectation in life is to “be invisible, and she’s good at it.” But her life changes forever the day her grandmother, Queen Clarisse, arrives to tell her that due to the recent death of her father, she is now the sole heir to the throne of Genovia, a small European country. Mia rejects this at first, but her mother encourages her to join her grandmother for “princess lessons” before she makes a final decision.

Clarisse and Mia meet regularly where Mia learns how to behave more like royalty in terms of manners, dining, diplomacy, and presentation. She is given a makeover, which causes a sensation among both her friends and enemies. When Mia is “outed” as a princess at school, her stress levels escalate due to press hounds tailing her everywhere and school enemies taking advantage of her. After a catastrophic beach party event that makes the newspapers, Clarisse and Mia agree that she should step back and renounce the throne.

However, Clarisse’s chief of security, Joseph, who has championed Mia since the beginning, urges Clarisse to reconsider and think of her granddaughter, not only her heir. Mia finds a letter from her deceased father and changes her mind, accepting her princess title and her destiny as ruler of Genovia.

So What Did God Show Me?

-Mia says her “expectation in life is to be invisible, and I’m good at it.” I can identify with this for sure. As someone who wasn’t very popular in school, I too leaned hard into making myself invisible. It certainly has its benefits. Being invisible protects you, and to a certain extent allows you to have more freedom and control over your life. But what about the cost of being invisible? Consider this. When you make yourself invisible, you are doing it in the effort to not be seen. Not be noticed, by anyone. To blend in with the crowd. But what happens when you do that? You run the risk of becoming less of yourself. Becoming someone who is forgotten. But worst of all, being invisible robs you of letting others experience you and the wonderful person you are!

Yes, you! You are unique in a way that no one else before or since has been. You are irreplaceable. God did not want a universe without you in it. God wrote you into the greatest story ever told because the story would have been incomplete without you. Think on that, friend. You are not invisible to him, you never could be. Like Michael saw Mia when she was invisible, God sees you no matter how hard you might try to hide. And he didn’t spend time creating a masterpiece just to hang it in a closet. You were made for more. God says so, in fact, he wants to show you off! He says it specifically in Isaiah 62:3 – “The Lord will hold you in his hand for all to see—a splendid crown in the hand of God.” You are God’s crown jewel! And crown jewels were made to be seen.

-Mia is shocked to learn she’s a princess, that her father was a prince, and that her grandmother is a queen. I don’t think that’s too far of a stretch, I think that would be most people’s reaction. But that being said, let me shock you with some news:

You are royalty.

  • Your Father is a King.
  • You are His beloved child.
  • That makes you a princess (or prince).

Very basic. Very common sense. And yet so hard for our earthbound, fleshly minds to understand. So here’s some more Scripture to back it up!

John 1:12 – “But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.”

Romans 8:17 – “And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory.” (That’s right, Jesus. The Prince of Peace, remember him, your BROTHER? If he is a Prince and he’s your brother, that makes you a princess or a prince.)

Still not convinced? Ok, more Scripture!!

Galatians 4:7 – “Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir.”

It’s hard to believe, I know. But you can’t argue with Scriptures that clear.

-While Mia is bemoaning the fact that she isn’t princess material, Queen Clarisse offers to teach Mia to walk, talk, sit, stand, eat, and dress like a princess. Now, notice she says like a princess, not to be a princess. Mia is already a princess by birth, so it doesn’t matter what she wears or how she sits, royalty will never not be a part of her identity. I want to be very specific about that.

That being said, when we finally come to understand who we are as royal children of God, we don’t just spring as fully-formed Christians like Athena springing from the thigh of Zeus. No, we have to learn how to walk in our identity as sons and daughters of God. How to speak in love, how to walk out our faith. We have to learn and grow into our faith, and it’s a lifelong process. But God is patient and with us every step of the way. Like Joe, he is understanding of where we are, whilst constantly encouraging us to grow towards the people he designed us to be.

-When Mia starts her princess lessons and begins to look and act differently, her friend Lily wigs out and accuses her of trying to become an “A-lister,” which hurts Mia’s feelings. Mia had been feeling pretty good about herself and was really starting to believe that she could do this princess thing. But Lily thrust her own insecurities on Mia, and made her feel terrible about the new changes in herself.

As Christians, the enemy is going to HATE it when you start walking in your identity, because as long as we do, we are reflecting back to him everything that he is not, and never can be. So he is going to everything he can to tell you you are ridiculous, you’re not royalty, and you never will be. And, he can be really, just irritatingly good at it. But Joe offers excellent advice that we can take as well. Quoting Eleanor Roosevelt, he says, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” This means the enemy can fuss and fume and throw all the insults and lies at us he wants, but it is our choice whether we listen to them and believe them. He has no power over us other than what we give him. Remember that, your Highness, because it’s really important.

-Queen Clarisse tells Mia, “No one can quit being who they really are. You can refuse the job but you are a princess by birth.” Mia has screwed up and thinks she’s no longer worthy of being a princess, so she decides to abstain from the job. So often we as Christians screw up, fall into sin, scream at people, gossip, have bad days, tell those comfortable lies, etc. And we convince ourselves if we do those things we’re not really Christians, are we? Because a real Christian wouldn’t act like that. But that’s like saying that if a chicken has a health problem and stops laying eggs it’s not really a chicken. You were created by God, you are his child, and this applies to the worst, most heinous sinner on the planet. Because sin is sin, whether you just completed a killing spree or lied when you said you love your friend’s new hairstyle when you really think it looks like a football helmet. People screw up. A lot. Like, a LOT. But your actions can’t stop you from being what you are – God’s child, first, foremost, before anything.

-Mia states to her grandmother her reason for quitting being a princess, “I’d be so afraid of disappointing the people of Genovia, and I couldn’t bear to disappoint you again.” She uses this as solid reasoning to step down. But it’s really the same invisible act all over again! Sure, Mia could step down and save people from whatever future mistakes she’s afraid of making. But all she’s really doing is trying to protect herself from looking dumb if she does make mistakes. I know this feeling very very well, because one of the worst feelings in the world to me is feeling like I’ve disappointed someone that’s depending on me, especially someone that I love. But when we step away from what God has called us to do, what we’re really doing is robbing people not just of our mistakes, but our triumphs! The enemy will try to make us focus on aaaallll the mistakes we make and forget the victories, like it’s some cosmic scoreboard. Don’t let him. Sometimes, like Yoda said, “The greatest teacher, failure is.”

-Mia receives a precious letter from her deceased father, who writes, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than the fear. The brave do not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all.” God understands fear. He put on an earthsuit and lived among us so he could relate to us and we to him. He gets it, and it is completely ok to feel scared about things that are scary or feel overwhelming. But God also gently reminds us that the scary feelings shouldn’t end there, but rather drive us forward past the fear to what lies beyond it – whatever is more important than the fear. And if you’re having trouble figuring out what the important thing is, take a good, solid, full faced look at what it is you’re afraid of. Because the important thing is usually right in the middle of it. For Mia, she was afraid of ruling a country. But when she looked past the fear, she saw that what was more important was the people she would be ruling over, and the authority she was being given to wield to steward a country. A big responsibility, sure. But a good one. One that she had the ability to carry out. I know in my own experience if I’m dealing with something so scary it makes me want to just wet my pants, it’s usually an EXCELLENT indicator that the enemy is trying to keep me from doing whatever the scary thing is. Which means I must pursue it, at all costs! (See my blog post on Dead Poets Society)

Closing Thoughts

God’s been doing a lot of stuff in my heart lately, and I’m not going to get into the details here because a lot of it is between me and God, and I’m also still quasi in the middle of it. It has not been cozy. It has not been comfortable. Like Aslan, it has not been safe. But it has been good. And not just good, but the very best kind of good there is: it’s been tov.

See, the reason this movie resonated with me at this time is that a lot of the core of what God’s been doing in my life is surrounding my identity, the true truth of who I am, and how the enemy has been distorting that on so many different levels for so many years. I’ve got a ways to go yet, my vision is still somewhat blurred. But it’s becoming clearer. I’m hearing his voice more clearly. Seeing myself more clearly, because I’m seeing myself through his eyes.

And I like what I see. And I want to know this person better, because I think God’s got whole new adventures he wants to take her on, and whole new opportunities for her to walk in, once she’s ready for them. And they’re adventures and opportunities I never could have experienced if I’d decided to step down from my throne and stay invisible. But instead I’m choosing to step up to my throne, and plop myself down on it, and see how things look differently there. I’m slowly making my way out of the shadows. And just you wait until I do! Just you wait and see…

Do you see yourself as royalty? Why or why not?

Reading:
“Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir.” – Galatians 4:7

Challenge:
Take some time this week and soak in the knowledge that you are God’s child, and as such, royalty. Begin to take steps to living that out, whatever that looks like for you. If you’re a princess, buy yourself a tiara. If you’re a prince, buy yourself a sword. (Or if you’re a princess…I love swords! Swords are cool.) I find being immersive helps me own it more. So dress like royalty, whatever that looks like to you. Find songs, poems, stories, or artwork that speak to your royal identity, and print them out and hang them up somewhere. Do a deep dive on your name and see what God says about you. Whatever makes you feel more like you.

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