If you’ve seen Tangled, I want you to think about Rapunzel in the
beginning of the movie. She’s living in a tall tower deep in the middle
of the woods. She has no contact at all with the outside world.
Restless and frustrated, she sings, “When will my life begin?” Though
it’s an adorable song in the movie, the question that’s always haunted
me is this: if she’s so restless to get out and see the world, why
doesn’t Rapunzel just leave the tower? Why doesn’t she just slide down
her hair and go exploring? She’s not chained up. There aren’t any bars
on the window. Why in the world does she stay? The answer is simple. An
evil woman named Gothel has lied to Rapunzel—lied to her about who she
is, about the outside world, and about the purpose of her life. And
unfortunately, Rapunzel has believed every word. Because she believed,
she chose to remain in the tower when she could have been living as a
princess in her parents’ peaceful, happy kingdom.
Would you be surprised if I told you that the same thing has happened to
each of us? An evil villain that the scriptures call “the father of
lies” (2 Nephi 9:9) has told us all kinds of lies just like Gothel told
Rapunzel. These include lies about ourselves, lies about the outside
world, and lies about our purpose in life. Just like Rapunzel, we’ve
believed him—and most of the time we don’t even know it. Because we’ve
accepted Satan’s falsehoods as reality, we too remain stuck in our own
little towers that limit us and keep us from becoming the holy women of
God that we were meant to become.
If you’d have asked me many years ago if I believed any of Satan’s lies
in my life, I would have adamantly told you no. I would have said I was a
good, active Mormon who tried very hard to keep the commandments of
God. But then I found a book by Virginia H. Pearce, former member of the
Young Women General Presidency, called Through His Eyes: Rethinking What You Believe About Yourself.
In it, Sister Pearce talks about our Belief Box. It’s a term she uses
to represent the part of our mind that houses our thoughts and beliefs.
She says that in this Box there are three compartments or types of
beliefs: Truths with a capital T (eternal truths), truths with a lowercase t
(bits of wisdom or good advice), and beliefs that are not true at all.
This last category, she says, “is quite important, because not all
beliefs are true. Some are actually lies.” She continues:
We are generally unaware that such ideas are in our Belief Box,
because when we . . . look at them, they don’t make sense. In fact, they
are laughable. Unfortunately, however, they can be very powerful in
determining our emotions and behavior.
So how can we uncover the lies that live in our Belief Box? Here’s how Sister Pearce suggests we begin:
Listen to the chatter in your head. Don’t talk back or make
judgments. Just listen. Slip into your ‘observing self’ as you become
aware of strong emotions—positive or negative—and try to hear the
chatter that created those emotions. Don’t do anything about it yet.
Just watch and let it be. It’s pretty interesting. Much more
entertaining than watching reality television!
I’ll admit that when I began to look inside myself and evaluate
the beliefs living deep in my heart, to my horror I found that Satan’s
sneaky little lies had wormed their way into almost every single area of
my life. He’d lied to me about my personal worth, my body image, my
marriage, and my parenting. He’d convinced me to turn to worldly things
for happiness rather than God (even seemingly harmless things like
chocolate, a chick flick, or a good book.) His lies were also fueling my
terrible habit of people pleasing, and they’d even twisted the way I
saw the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I’d believed that voice in my head
without a second thought. You know the voice: “You’re worthless. You’re
terrible mother. You’ll never change.” Or even: “You’re having a
terrible day—you deserve to eat all the ice cream in the freezer.” I’d
never realized that was the voice of the adversary lying to me. The
realization rocked my entire world. Suddenly I desperately wanted to be
free from the bondage of Satan’s lies and to clean out the corrupted
Belief Box living inside my head.
Thankfully, Rapunzel’s story teaches us how we can turn our backs
on the adversary and his awful lies. Her path to freedom began when
Eugene came to the rescue and showed her the way out of the tower. In
one of the final scenes, Eugene was even willing to give his life and
cut off Rapunzel’s magical hair so she could be free from Gothel’s evil
influence. We too have an amazing rescuer—a Savior who
really has given His life so we can be set free. I know that if we’ll
draw near to Him, He can help us root out the lies we’ve been believing
and replace those lies with His precious truth. I know this because He’s
done that very thing for me personally. As I sought Him and His
guidance and enabling power, my Savior taught me the truth—or “things as
they really are” (Jacob 4:13).
Through Him, I began to see myself, my marriage, my parenting, my
happiness, and my entire life very differently. It was incredibly
liberating to learn that I didn’t have to stay in the small little tower
Satan had constructed for me. With my hand in my Savior’s, we left that
awful place behind once and for all and began a journey to a brand new
life filled with faith, hope, strength, and love. And He invites all of us
to take that liberating journey. In fact, I’m firmly convinced that
it’s the only way we’ll ever become holy and sanctified women of God.
