Saturday morning I stopped by church to drop off a full-length mirror for a bridal party to use that afternoon. At 8:30 in the morning preparations were already in full swing for the 2 p.m. ceremony. I hung the mirror in the youth Sunday School/dressing room where two adorable flower girls were all aflutter.
“Momma,” hollered one. “Can we put our dresses on?” I jumped in pointing out that it was hours and hours until time for the wedding. “Sure,” momma called from down the hall. “Just don’t get dirty.”
Huh. What a perfectly reasonable thing to do with two over-excited children. Their dresses were lovely, but made of an uncrushable and likely stain resistant synthetic fabric that would be hard to mess up. And so what if they wanted to play princess for a couple of hours? I mean . . . I would.
So I helped tie a sash, attached a silk flower and tracked down a headband. Adorable. And oh so happy.
Learning to delay gratification is a good thing–it’s an important skill that predicts future success (look up the marshmallow experiment). But every now and then I think we should just jump right in and be princesses all day long.