Adage #9: Make sure to leave your glass slipper on the stairs before you leave the party.

I have loved the story of Cinderella since I was a little girl. It is the only movie I can tolerate watching over and over and over. I will watch any version of it I can get my hands on, no matter how cheesy it might be. So when my sister, my dad and I talked about what we would go see while on our trip to Europe this May, I only had one request: to see the “Cinderella Castle” (Neuschwanstein) outside of Munich. This castle inspired Walt Disney and it did not disappoint, the place looked like it was straight from a fairy-tale.

The castle was built by “Mad King Ludwig.” He built some gorgeous castles - these castles he dreamt up were not your run of the mill. They are everything you think of when you think fairy tales and princes and Disney movies. But Ludwig never finished Neuschwanstein Castle and never got the chance to begin construction on his next castle project because he was arrested for being an unfit king.

Ludwig was too caught up on building his magical castles to care about running Bavaria, . His whole story is very interesting and his death is shrouded in mystery (check out the links above for more info). As my sister and I were taking in all this information while on a tour of two of his castles, it occurred to me that Ludwig got so caught up in the magic of other people’s stories that he never lived his own. He built a castle based on Versailles because he wanted his own version and Neuschwanstein was based on the music of Wagner. He had the power to do incredible things as the king of Bavaria, but instead he chose to build castles and ignore what was happening in his kingdom.

I love stories: telling stories, hearing other people’s stories, and watching stories unfold on TV shows, in movies and in books. The life of King Ludwig reminds us that we can’t get caught so much in the fantasy of other people's stories that we forget how to live our own out. You are in the middle of an incredible story. You might be in the part where the characters are being introduced, maybe you’re building up to the big battle or maybe you’ve just won a huge victory. But you’re story coincides with The Story, the one God started in the Garden of Eden and ends with eternity (which is more of a beginning than an ending).

What are you doing right now to live out your own story?



Suggested reading:
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller
To Be Told by Dan Allender