“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.” ~ 2 Corinthians 5:17
“In a little room sat an old woman with a spindle, spinning her flax busily. ‘Good day, Granny,’ said the Princess. ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I am spinning,’ said the old woman… ‘What is the thing that whirls around so merrily?’ asked the Princess. And she took the spindle and tried to spin too. But she had scarcely touched it before the curse was fulfilled, and she pricked her finger with the spindle…”[1]
In each version of our story, we’ve seen how the identity of the Sleeping Beloved has been destroyed or challenged – it’s why she needs to be awakened by love in the first place; however, I haven’t made a practice of pointing it out. There was just too much going on in those stories to focus on the undercurrent theme of identity.[2]
With the Grimms’ version, the theme takes center stage. I talked in my last post about how our Princess wears a beautiful, perfect mask – a mask made of deeds to earn love. She is able to live behind her mask for a while…but then, something snaps.
She sees what is forbidden and reaches for it in the hope that it will set her free from her mask. It was within her rights as a woman, after all. Other girls spin – other girls base their identity on it! Why can’t she?
The problem with the Princess’ actions is not that she tries to take off her mask; the problem is that she tries to trade it in for another one. Her identity is still based on her deeds.
The good news is that Christ completes, fulfills, and sustains our identity. Our identity is not based on our deeds, but on who Christ is and what He did, both during His earthly life and on the cross. As Christians, we are no longer what we were because of that: we are new. We don’t need to cling to our deeds – or lack of them. We are in Him…and we are free.
I must warn you, however: either way, there is death. Either we die to ourselves and live in Christ (Gal. 2:20), or we live in our masks and die inside.
We all know how painful masks can be. We are burdened by the sense that something isn’t right, and yet we feel as if we must continue on. We don’t want to alarm people, after all. We become exhausted from trying to earn love and approval through our deeds…we just want to be real.
So we reach for something that seems to offer relief. Perhaps it’s experimenting with an alternative lifestyle; maybe it’s to rebel against everything and everyone; or perhaps you pretend to be someone else in your daydreams.
And like the Princess, our hearts fall into a deep sleep. But God is gracious. He never leaves us in our death-like state, even if that’s what we’ve chosen. He always makes our identities new…
Sources
[1] Brothers Grimm, translated by E.V. Lucas, Lucy Crane, & Marian Edwardes, Grimms’ Fairy Tales, p. 102-103
[2] When I first began this series, I wrote a post entitled “The Sleeping Beauty’s Identity”, in which I explained how weaving was central to a woman’s identity for most of history. You can find that post here.
