This Provincial Life

I know this is not this promised update from my fast, but I have something to say.

Let's see if you can name these movie lyrics...

"Madame Gaston, Can't you just see it!?
Madame Gaston, his little wife!
No sir! Not me! I guarantee it!
I want much more than this provincial life!"

(The music swells...)

"I want adventures in the great wide somewhere,
I want it more than I can tell.
And for once it might be grand
To have someone understand
I want so much more than they have planned..."

Show of hands... who got it? Anyone who cut their teeth on Disney princess movies should be seeing poor sweet misunderstood Belle from Beauty & the Beast in their mind right about now. If you're like me, you heart soared during that song and you sang it too. I want so much more!

In true fairy tale form, Belle got what she wanted. She was saved by an unlikely circumstance, an ugly beast turned prince, and rewarded with a princess' life of ease. Servants to wait on her every need, and true love to boot. No more provincial life holding her down.

I watched this movie with new perspective today. I hadn't seen it in years, but could still quote it to you. It was a childhood favorite that I watched a hundred times (or more!) But it's feminist propaganda, wrapped in a pretty package, courtesy of Disney. Being a wife, raising children - you can do so much better! You want so much more! You deserve to have it all! Why would anyone want that poor provincial life?

What dangerous thinking. Is it any wonder that I (and so many other women) are dissatisfied with the simple life? You know what I mean. That restless feeling that you need more, that this isn't what you planned. Dear sisters, this is not what God intended for us.

1 Thessalonians 4:11 says, "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands." Moreover, Titus 2:4-5 adds these words specifically for us girls: "Train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God." It sounds like the "provincial life", that simple way of living, was God's intent.

Sisters, do not be fooled. The princess life is not all it's cracked up to be. True blessings lie in the simplicity of real life. Embrace it. Teach it to your daughters. Don't surrender them to the lies of "harmless" fairy tales.