What Tangled Taught Me About Life

Tangled is one of my favorite movies.

I honestly don't remember what I thought of it when I saw it for the first time when I was eleven. I just remember sitting in the second row of the theater, craning my neck, and wishing we'd decided to sit on the stairs instead. But now? I love the characters, the writing and dialogue, the plot, the music. I've seen it a few more times than the average sixteen-year-old.

If you've never seen Tangled, 1.) You should go watch Tangled, and 2.) Here's what you need to know about the movie for the sake of this blog post:

Rapunzel, who is about to turn eighteen, has spent her whole life in a tower in the middle of the woods. Every year, on her birthday ("only on my birthday.") a bunch of floating lights appear in the sky. Rapunzel doesn't know exactly what but she "just feel[s] like they're meant for [her.]" But her mother (well, not her mother. The woman who kidnapped her when she was a baby and has pretended to be her mother for going on 18 years) won't let her leave. There are ruffians, thugs, poison ivy, quicksand, the plague, and other horrid things in the outside world. (#ShelteredHomeschooler)

But Rapunzel has been dreaming of going to see the lights for years. Now that she's turning eighteen, she's worked up the guts to ask her mom to go see the lights. Really, though, she's been waiting for her whole life begin. Which explains the song with the title "When Will My Life Begin."

Then Rapunzel asked her mom to see the floating lights. And her mom took a whole song to say no. But that didn't stop Rapunzel. She took her life--and a frying pan--into her own hands. Yes, she had some help, but it was her waking up to the fact that she controlled her own life that set her on her journey.

I have this tendency, and maybe you do too, to look at some future age or situation as the moment when my real life begins. When I was younger it was each new birthday. It was becoming a teenager, turning sixteen, then eighteen. Now it's college, marriage, career. For Rapunzel, it was her eighteenth birthday.

Maybe we need to stop waiting for our lives to begin and just start living.

Maybe we should use each year, each birthday, as a reminder that our lives are happening now. That we can follow our dreams now. I mean, yeah, there are some things you need to and should wait for. Relationships, for instance, or college. But we shouldn't put our relationship with God on hold because we're still young. We shouldn't wait to start working towards our dreams because we're teenagers and can do, like, whatever we want.

I could go on for a long time about how awesome Tangled is, but here's the point: live your life now. Don't wait until you're sixteen, eighteen, twenty-one, or whatever. Instead of posting photos on Instagram about your "relationship goals" or whatever people post on Instagram, do things with your life that people would post as their goals on IG.

(But seriously: Rapunzel + Eugene = Relationship goals.)

"Do not let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity." 1st Timothy 4:12

In other words, live a Christ-centered life right now. Don't wait for some magic age to start living for God.

In summary, Tangled is great, life is now, and I wish I had an Instagram. And that's what's up.