A Princess

Today I had to teach a lesson on Individual worth to my young women.  This is a tender subject to me because I have been the girl who felt like a nobody and I have also been the girl that has had a strong witness that I'm somebody.  It breaks my heart to think of any of them feeling like a nobody and it fills me with a sense of urgency to make sure they know they are somebody.  I knew I wouldn't get through the lesson without a few tears, but it wasn't too bad.  I just hope that at least someone went away with the assurance that they matter.  That Heavenly Father knows them and loves them and has a plan for them.  That is my wish.  During Sunday School, the teacher read a little excerpt from a story and it fit my lesson so well that I asked him if I could have his notes for my lesson.  This is what it said:

From the story A Little Princess:

The character Sara teaches the other orphans "I am a princess," she says.  "All girls are.  Even if they live in tiny old attics.  Even if they dress in rags, even if they aren't pretty, or smart, or young.  They're still princesses.  All of us."

She behaves as a princess herself - not a princess who expects to be waited upon, but a princess who knows she is of value, and who serves others with kindness.  "Whatever comes,' she said, 'cannot alter one thing.  If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside.  It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one else knows it."

Not everyone can see the princess inside, or treat us like the princesses we are, but it doesn't change that we are.  We are daughters of a King.  A Heavenly King!  There are no nobody-s to Him.