The Elsa Effect

The movie, Frozen, came in 2014, over 250,000 people came to see it. That being said, I feel those statistics also mean more than 250,000 should be able to relate to what God has revealed to me. Before we go into this message... No. This is not a word telling you to, "Let It Go." It's a little deeper than that... Today, let's talk about how we can....

"Control our emotions without freezing people out."

This message is more contextual, with some scripture in support. Overall, I pray it leads the reader to self-examine and seek where God is trying to develop and add discipline.

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Let's have a brief synopsis about the movie, Frozen. (Just in case there's one reader who successfully avoided seeing this movie). Long story short, there are two sisters (Anna and Elsa) who grew up in the same house but never really had a relationship. When they were younger, they played together all the time. What made their time together magical was the fact that Else (the older of the two) had the power to create snow and ice. She would turn rooms into winter wonderlands everyday; until one day Elsa got really excited and accidentally hit Anna with a bolt of ice. Anna turned out to be okay, but to prevent it from happening again, their parents kept Elsa in a room to herself for the remainder of her childhood. After the parents were lost at sea, Elsa had to become queen and in the middle of her ceremony, she had another outburst of uncontrollable emotion and she caused a winter to come over the entire city. Out of embarrassment, she ran away and created an ice castle of solitude. The rest of the movie is an adventure of Anna trying to find her sister, and save their city. I actually think about this movie often, because my daughter has the book on CD. So, yep- you guessed it. Everyday, at some point in the day, I end up listening to Frozen.

Sooo, what does this have to do with REAL people and God? Almost everything!!

If we look at this movie through our spiritual lens, one could venture to say this can relate to controlling emotions. I'd like to submit to your consideration; we are all Elsa. We all have the ability to lash out and freeze out. Can anyone reading this relate to having this issue? It's okay... I can't see you. You can put your hand up. :) I know I do.

Elsa's power to create snow and ice, when controlled, is beautiful. She was able to create things only imaginable in the mind of a child. However, it was also dangerous and volatile. At two points in the movie, Elsa hurt her own sister because she was hadn't yet developed a discipline for her gift. She went from creating a bolt of ice hitting her sister to an entire winter storm affecting the entire kingdom. Talk about going from zero to one hundred. Let's give leeway to the fact the first mishap was when she was a child and the next was most-likely a decade later, as she took over her throne. In those ten years, Elsa was kept to herself.

How do you control something you've been taught to hide?

As a mother, I can understand why the King and Queen thought it would be best to keep Elsa hidden from everyone. They cared for the safety of others. Selfishly, they were probably also concerned about their reputation. I mean, c'mon. Having a daughter with magical powers would draw a lot of unwanted attention. To circumvent all probable outcomes, why not hide it?

Out of the context of Disney fairytales, can we be honest about the dangers of hiding what may actually need to be developed and disciplined? No, none of us can cause winter storms or bolts of ice to come from our fingertips. But the same ability of life and death is executed from our mouths (Proverbs 18:21). I used to be proud of not having a filter, and "telling it like it us." So much to the point if I hurt someone's feelings or rubbed people the wrong way, it was (in my perspective) a testament to their inability to take a joke or not have tough skin. If I ever received feedback about being too harsh, my response was simply to not to/around that individual again. Mind you, in most cases, the recipient of my sarcasm was not a bad person. They were just people I did not want to control myself around.

I wonder how many relationships I damaged or ceased because of my lack of self-control?

Later in the movie after causing that unseasonable winter, Elsa went into solitude again. She went to what she knew. What she was taught. We discussed the original isolation was created by her parents. In a social-norm comparison, we are often taught to do the same thing. Not by choice (like I did), but by expectation. From a relational perspective, dealing with family and friends, I've experienced and seen this as well. When we see someone going through something, it's easier to tell them to "suck it up" or "it'll be okay," without actually seeking what they need to be okay. Elsa went from striking ice to causing an entire disrupt in seasons because she kept everything in for years. I'm sure, the intent of her confinement was to help her. But eventually, it lead to an even bigger mess.

Let's not forget, Anna - Elsa's little sister.

We already covered how relationships can become fractured or completely broken because of how we chose to respond to our own actions. But let's also look at how we directly impact the lives and journeys of others, because of our inaction.

I always find it interesting how Elsa is seen as the main character of the movie, when the majority of the Frozen is Anna's adventure to find her sister and make everything right again. There are two things about Anna that I hope we can all takeaway in spirit:

1. How we love impacts how others seek love

2. We can cause others to go on otherwise-preventable journeys

It probably serves you well to know as Elsa was kept from people, Anna was kept from the world as well. There's even a beautiful scene with both sisters on either side of Elsa's bedroom door as Anna sang a song begging her sister to come out and play with her. Anna was not allowed to play with other kids, since she was a princess. She also couldn't hang out with her own sister. When the doors to the kingdom were finally opened Anna fell in love with the first prince she saw. I'm sure you can all imagine how that turned out in the end. SPOILER ALERT: He was a horrible person. But I wonder if this injustice of the heart would have happened, had Anna had a healthy relationship (or any for that matter) with her sister growing up?

As Anna goes through her adventure, her sister ends up striking her with ice... again.

Another accident. Even after this, Anna begs Elsa to come back with her to make everything right again. After seeing what she'd done, Elsa creates an ice monster to chase Anna away. There's a huge takeaway here. Had Elsa simply stayed in the storm she created, this could have been avoided. But how many times we do retreat in fear or embarrassment only to create another problem - bigger and badder than what we were running from?

Let's dismiss the part about Elsa and Anna being in forced separation from one another. We all have people in our lives we separate ourselves from, because we think we are doing them a favor - by keeping them from our toxicity. Can I be real with you? It may be easier to push people away, but being distant from others does not eliminate our affect on their lives.

An awesome part, a revelation - if you will, about this movie is Elsa honestly didn't have the answer to fixing the winter she created when she left, anymore than she did when she and Anna finally reconcile. So what would it have mattered if she stayed? Nothing Elsa did, even among the accidental tragedy of her storm, would have kept her from being queen. She wouldn't have lost her position in the kingdom. What she needed to control her magic was (in true Disney fashion) love. She had to let in the person she was forcing herself to be away from.

In most of this, I've talked about the people we separate ourselves from, because it's easier than fixing our own problem. But can we get a little deeper than that? We distance ourselves from God more than anybody else. Because we don't want to bring our baggage, our embarrassment, our hurts (both what we've done to ourselves and others). We didn't create ourselves, so we can't fix ourselves. We didn't put people in our lives, they were placed there. We can damage people with what we were given to bless them with. Our emotions and our ability to communicate is a gift. It can be overwhelming at times, having so many avenues to chose from when needing to respond to the world around us. But what we can't do is nothing.

Let's take the effort to identify how we are misusing our gifts and bring them to God for instruction. I pray God leads us all to being part of a community where we feel safe to be who we are; not to stay comfortable in our ways but to recognize where we have opportunities to be strong. More than that, I pray we all realize the connection we should never neglect or run from with God.