John Croyle - Raising a Princess: Eight Essential Virtues To Teach Your Daughter

Copyright 2014 by Big Oak Ranch, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-4336-8073-1

Published by B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

Dewey Decimal Classification: 306.874

Subject Heading: VIRTUE \ CHILD REARING \ DAUGHTERS

Unless otherwise stated all Scripture is taken from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2007. All rights reserved.

Also used: New American Standard Bible ( nasb ), the Lockman Foundation, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, used by permission.

Also used: New King James Version (nkjv), copyright 1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Publishers.

Also used: New International Version ( niv ), Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 18 17 16 15 14

Ive made a lot of mistakes as a man, husband, and father; perhaps you have too. There came a time in my life when I decided to draw a line in the sand and grow up. Thankfully, its never too late for any of us to change.

This book is dedicated to my princess, Reagan. You changed my life forever.

Acknowledgments

To ALL the girls who have called Big Oak Ranch their home, who have taught all of us much more than we ever taught them.

This book is the culmination of countless hours that our frontline warriors, the houseparents at Big Oak Ranch, and our support staff have put into our daughters to mold them into the quality young ladies who will one day be somebodys queen.

Introduction

In 1985, I met a twelve-year-old girl named Shelley. Shelley had suffered the most unimaginable abuse at the hands of her parents and had been living in foster care for months. But now, the judge had decided it was time for her to be reunited with her family.

I pleaded with the judge not to send Shelley back into that situation. If you make her go back to those people, shell be dead in six months, I told him. At the time, Big Oak Ranch was a home for boys only. So I begged the judge to let Shelley come live with my wife Tee and me and our two little children. Anything to keep her out of her horrific situation at home.

But the judge wasnt moved by my pleading. For reasons I still dont understand, he sent Shelley back to her parents.

As it turned out, I was wrong in my prediction that Shelley would be dead in six months. She was beaten to death by her father three months later.

As we grieved Shelleys senseless death, Tee and I began praying about how we could help prevent this same thing from happening to other girls. That was the beginning of Big Oak Girls Ranch.

We started the Boys Ranch shortly after I graduated from the University of Alabama in 1974. In 1988 we opened the Girls Ranch, thirty-five miles away. When you drive up to the Girls Ranch from the main road, youre traveling on Shelley Drive. Its a daily reminder of why we do what we do.

Big Oak Ranch is a Christian home for children needing a chance. Our kids live in houses that probably look a lot like your house, in a neighborhood that looks more like a suburban subdivision than a campus. They have houseparents whom they most of the time call Mom and Dad. Hundreds of girls have lived at Big Oak Ranch since 1988. We have seen them through every imaginable parenting situation, from learning to ride a bike to going on a first date to heading off to college. (As I write this, twenty-one of our children are currently in college; almost all of them are the first from their family to go to college.)

I dont claim to have all the answers when it comes to raising daughters. I only claim to have a lot of experience, having had a part in the raising of every girl who has come through Big Oak Ranch since 1988.

Princess Power

Most of the girls at Big Oak Ranch have come out of unimaginable situations, many of them as bad as Shelleys. For the majority of these girls, their trust muscles are shredded, their self-image is destroyed, and their whole sense of how the world works is completely skewedthrough no fault of their own.

I can tell some outrageous stories about the way parents have abused and mistreated their daughtersstories that I have experienced firsthand. I will, in fact, tell a few of those stories in the course of this book, though they only represent the tip of the iceberg of what Ive seen and heard in my years at Big Oak Ranch. (I should point out, by the way, that in most of those stories I have changed names and identifying details.)

But of all the things these girls parents did to them, the worst, I believe, was giving them the impression that nobody in the world cared about them or valued them. Girls come to Big Oak Ranch not understanding that they are princesses, created by God and valued by people who love them. Our first jobour main jobwhen raising these girls is to build up their sense that they are indeed as valuable and lovely as any other girl in the world. The girls at Big Oak Ranch are princesses of God.

And so is your girl.

If youre reading this book, youre probably not a parent who beats your daughter or burns her with cigarettes. Youre probably not locking her in closets or neglecting to meet her physical needs. But does your daughter understand that shes a princess? Does she know that she is valued and as lovely as any other girl in the world? I see plenty of girls from good families who go to good schools and seem to have every advantage who think like orphans, not understanding who they are or whose they are because they arent quite convinced that they are princesses or dont quite know what it would mean if they were.

This is a book about raising your daughter as a princess who knows exactly who God made her to be, even if shes not quite there yet.

The Princess and the Pea

I love the old fairy tale of The Princess and the Pea. I also kind of hate it. You probably know this story already. Theres a prince who looks everywhere for a princess to marry, but every girl he meets either isnt a princess or else, if she is a princess, she has some issue that keeps her from being a suitable mate. Then, one stormy night, a girl dressed in rags knocks on the castle door and asks for shelter for the night.

This bedraggled girl claims to be a princess. But she doesnt look like one, with her ragged clothing and wet, ratty hair. Still, theres something about her that the prince likes, and he hopes that she truly is a princess as she claims. So he creates a test: he piles twenty mattresses on the visitors bed, and then places a pea under the bottom mattress. If the girl is a true princess, he reasons, she will be sensitive enough to feel the little pea through twenty mattresses.

The next morning, the prince asks the visitor how she slept. Terrible, she says. There was a lump in the bed that kept me from sleeping. It bruised me all over.

The prince knew that he had found a true princess. Who but a princess would be so sensitive that she would be bothered by a pea under twenty mattresses?

So, what do I love about that fairy tale? I love the idea that a princess is a princess no matter what her external circumstances. There are a lot of bedraggled, storm-tossed girls who show up at our door, who dont look like princesses at first glance. They dont believe themselves that they are princesses. But their royalty is there, just below the surface. It is the great joy of my life and of everybody at Big Oak Ranch to help those girls see that they are princesses.

And what do I hate about that fairy tale? I hate the idea that the essence of princess-hood is a finicky, persnickety sensitivity to the discomforts of real life. A princess, according to The Princess and the Pea, is a girl who is used to being pampered, a girl who complains if things arent exactly to her liking.