There I sat in the ash. A modern-day Cinderella with a wardrobe of crude rags.
I didn't use to be this way. Look like this. Dress like this. Feel like this.
There was once a life of beauty here. I was loved.
I mattered.
But evil burned the beauty to the ground and left me here in the cinder.
Cinderella. What an appropriate title. Belle of the burnt. Queen of the ash.
I gave my identity over to the one who dressed me in rags. I just sat there and took it. Never thinking to fight back or that maybe there was a flaw in the logic of the one who looked on me with distaste.
I had heard that I wasn't worth it, and I had believed that it was true.
Soot for rouge and broom for majestic accessory, I allowed myself to dream of true love in the middle of the wreckage. I longed to be rescued. I longed to matter.
But then shame would remind me of where I really belonged and fanned away my dreams, as if they were a horrible stench in the air.
Yet a glow of hope whispered to me like a dying ember.
They don't know I've danced with a prince.
They didn't see the way I radiated when I was clothed in elegance and slippers of glass. The way he looked at me--ME!--and chose me to be his, if for nothing more than a song.
He didn't see me in rags, the soot on my cheeks. He took my hand and put a new tune in my soul, singing over me songs of beauty.
You are worth it. You matter. You are enough.
I thirsted for the purity and the sweetness of his words. And the memory was enough to adorn me in the only sparkle that existed in that ash heap.
This time last year, I wore rags of pain and identified myself by the shame of being left for another woman. I let someone deceive me into thinking that I wasn't enough.
But I had not one but TWO royal dignitaries to swoop in and clothe me in beauty:
(1) A son of the King (my sweet Brooks) who pledges his heart and his faithfulness to me every day. Who waters my heart with love and confidence and pushes me to be a better woman.
(2) The King Himself, who first sought me from the ruin to make me restored.
Even in rags, I was worth searching for. You are worth searching for.
And when royalty looked upon my filthy countenance and beckoned me to answer why...
Why are you wearing rags?
Because, I mumbled, I let someone else dress me. And I let someone else tell me who I was.
They shook their heads and got to work.
They removed my rags of humiliation that were a parting gift from his affair and replaced them with threads of dignity.
Off went the dirty pieces of shame that told me I wasn't good enough, and in their place draped the certainty that I am good enough for a King.
Thrown aside were the shoes made for wallowing in the deepest pits of despair, and on went shoes made for dancing.
And gone was the halo of inadequacy, and instead, they crowned me with confidence.
Confidence that I matter. That I am loved eternally. That I'm worth it. Worth dying for.
Why live in ash and cinder when there is a palace waiting for you?
Take off your rags, Cinderella, and let another dress you.
You don't belong there, despite what you've been told.
You were always a princess, love. Now dress like one.
