Disney’s "Frozen": Top 3 Lessons on TRUE LOVE

1. From Elsa: Accept Yourself.
• Conflict: The movie is centered around Elsa’s inability to control her ‘snow magic’, something she deems dangerous. Taught at a young age to contain and hide her powers, she spends most of her life in fear and solitude, afraid of the world and of her own self. Unable to accept the very powers that make her so unique, she never lives in peace with herself. Her powers are capable of creating great beauty, but she is unable to offer her powers as a ‘gift’ because she first fails to see them as ‘gifts’. She is so busy fighting herself rather than maximizing her potential. 
• Lesson: Only when Elsa accepts her powers and stops fearing them is she able to use them for the benefit of others and for her own happiness/freedom. Love, rather than fear, was the attitude she needed to have towards herself and others all along. 
• What about us? How many times do we also hide the parts of ourselves that we believe are ‘unacceptable’? How many times do we fear our own uniqueness, withholding ourselves from the world, rather than realizing that our uniqueness is exactly what needs to be offered? Rather than viewing ourselves as ‘cursed’ for being different, it’s time to see ourselves as ‘blessed’. God makes us the way we are for a specific purpose; we’ll never tap into that if we are constantly afraid of who we are. 
2. From Anna: Guard Your Heart.
• Conflict: Rather than living in fear like her sister, Anna trusts too easily. Although her idealistic hopes and dreams for true love are sincere and innocent, her desires blind her from seeing the reality of people. As a consequence, she falls in love with Hans, a prince who turns out to have vile intentions. Her desire to believe that he was exactly who she dreamed of made her project ideal qualities onto him that never really existed. Her desire to find love also made her rush into it without consideration, taking his hand in marriage after only knowing him for less than a day. 
• Lesson: Eventually Anna did find the man who was the right one for her, a person who took some time getting to know and who wasn’t her idealized image of  ‘perfection’, but right for her nonetheless. She might have missed out on him entirely had she given her heart away to the wrong man out of carelessness, rushing, and desperation. 
• What about us? How many times do we rush into relationships because of our desire to love and be loved, knowing in the back of our hearts that we’re settling for less than God’s best? Though our desires for love are healthy, we need to realize that love is worth waiting for, and that it takes time. Guarding our hearts doesn’t mean living with walls up, never trusting anyone. It means remembering how valuable we are and only giving our hearts away to those who deserve it. Take your time and don’t rush; never settle for less. 
3. From Elsa & Anna: True Love Comes in Many Forms. 
• And finally we come to the last thing that makes “Frozen” so awesome: it shows us that true love doesn’t have to come from a ‘prince’. Many people blame Disney for teaching young girls to make “finding Prince Charming” the primary goal of their life, but kudos to Disney for giving us something different for a change. Given the choice between Kristoff and Elsa, Anna chooses her sister instead, showing us that love between two sisters is just as powerful as ‘romantic’ love between prince and princess. 
• What about us? True love is available to all of us right here and now, regardless of our ‘relationship status’. Rather than obsessing over finding a man to fulfill our emotional needs (not saying that men are bad!), realize that there is so much love to find in our friends and families as well. Like Elsa discovered, no one is meant to live in total isolation. True love is out there, we just need to seize it. 

Pope John Paul II explains in Theology of the Body that “Man cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of self.”  

In some ways, I think that’s exactly what Elsa and Anna learned to do. Whether it was by offering their powers for the good of the community, or offering their hearts to someone who could love them properly, they learned to value themselves first as gifts in order to make that “sincere gift of self.” 

To do the same, we must learn to see ourselves through God’s eyes: as precious and valuable daughters (and sons) of God. Nothing less.

Psalm 139:12-16 

WHERE ‘YOU’ COME IN …
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