Straighten Your Crown: Whose You Are

I am over 40 years old, but I will never forget the “crown straightening” talk I had with my uncle as a teenager. 

It was the early 90’s and after one of my many cousin’s weddings. I’m from a big ole Catholic family, and I am the youngest. This means that as I was approaching young adulthood, all my cousins were starting to get married. Let me tell you, it was fun. We literally had mini family reunions at least one to three times a year for years. 

I really look back at these days of rehearsal dinners, toasts, storytelling, eating, drinking, dancing and car decorating shenanigans as some of the best times of my life.

As a side note, we all have those relatives who have a score to settle from something that happened at their wedding. Am I right? In our family, car decorating became an art form. No mercy, and it was usually the adults who were the instigators. 

At this particular wedding, I had a little too much fun-to the point that my parents took me to the hotel long before the end of the reception. To make a long story short, I made some bad decisions and was pretty certain my next cousin to get married a month later was considering disinviting me. I wouldn’t have blamed him. 

The next time I saw one of my uncles, he had a book that he presented to me. It was titled, “Living on the Edge”. Gulp.

He gave it to me and told me to remember “who I was and whose I was.”  Up until that point, I had never heard this phrase.

He explained that number 1, I was a member of the Jucas, Harrison, Kreulen, Hudgens families, and I best know that I represent them in my daily actions. Most importantly, number 2, I was a daughter of the King and belonged to Jesus Christ. Therefore, I needed to behave in a way that reflected my relationship with Jesus and honored Him. 

Y’all, my crown was straightened.

I still have the book, and the entire debacle has become family legend and folklore.  I stand corrected, and I am so grateful to have been raised in a tight-knit family where an uncle felt comfortable enough to speak hard truths into my life.  Above all, I am eternally grateful for loving and serving a God of second chances who will never stop loving and pursuing me.