Anna: The Courage to Keep Loving

 There is something about Anna in Frozen that is easy to overlook because Elsa’s story is so big. Elsa has the magical powers, the ice palace, and the struggle with fear and control. Anna seems almost ordinary beside her. She is awkward, impulsive, hopeful, funny, and sometimes far too trusting. But the more I think about Anna, the more I realize that she possesses something every bit as powerful as Elsa’s magic. Anna has an extraordinary ability to keep loving, even when loving has hurt her.

Anna grows up on the other side of Elsa’s closed door. She doesn’t understand why the sister who once played with her suddenly stopped letting her in. She doesn’t remember the accident that changed everything. She only knows that someone she loves has disappeared behind a door, and she desperately wants her back. She keeps knocking, keeps asking, and keeps hoping that someday the door will open again.

I think there is something especially painful about being shut out when you don’t understand why. When someone pulls away without explanation, our minds have a way of filling in the blanks. We wonder if we did something wrong. We wonder if we became too much or somehow weren’t enough. We replay conversations and search for something that might explain why someone who once felt close suddenly feels so far away. Elsa knows why the door is closed. Anna only knows what it feels like to be standing on the other side of it.

Yet Anna never really stops loving her sister. That doesn’t mean she isn’t hurt. She is. In fact, I think Anna’s cheerful personality can make it easy to miss how lonely her childhood actually was. Her sister has been emotionally absent for years, her parents eventually die, and she grows up inside this enormous castle surrounded by closed doors. When those doors finally open, Anna can hardly contain herself. She isn’t simply excited about a party. She is hungry for connection.

I think loneliness can do that to us. When we have gone too long without feeling seen, wanted, or chosen, attention can begin to feel a lot like love. Someone notices us and suddenly we feel important. Someone says the things our hearts have been longing to hear and we desperately want to believe them. Sometimes we aren’t only falling for a person. We are falling for the feeling of finally being wanted.

That is what makes Anna’s relationship with Hans much more meaningful to me as an adult. It is easy to laugh at her for believing she has found true love with someone she just met. Even Elsa immediately recognizes how ridiculous that is. But underneath Anna’s impulsiveness is a young woman who has spent years waiting for someone to open a door and invite her in. Hans gives her exactly what she has been missing, or at least he appears to.

Anna’s experience with Hans reminds me that not everyone who gives us attention deserves access to our hearts. Some people are very good at telling us what we want to hear. That doesn’t make us foolish for wanting to be loved. It makes us human. But life eventually teaches us that real love isn’t proven by beautiful words spoken when everything is easy. It reveals itself over time, and especially when loving us becomes inconvenient.

That is where Kristoff becomes such an interesting contrast. He isn’t polished. He doesn’t arrive with perfect words or sweep Anna into some beautiful fantasy. He questions her decisions, argues with her, and probably spends much of their journey wondering how he became involved in any of this. But when Anna needs him, he shows up.

As I get older, I think I appreciate people who show up much more than people who say impressive things. Words matter, but life eventually teaches us to notice who stays when things become complicated. Who answers the phone when we need them? Who sits beside us when there is nothing they can do to fix the situation? Who checks on us when everyone else assumes we are fine? Who sees us at our most exhausted, worried, frightened, or imperfect and doesn’t disappear?

Sometimes true love looks much less like a grand romantic gesture and much more like someone quietly saying, “You don’t have to do this alone.”

But Anna’s greatest love story isn’t really about Kristoff. It is about Elsa, and I think that is what makes Frozen so special. Disney had spent years teaching us exactly what to expect when someone needed an act of true love. There would be a prince, there would be a kiss, the spell would be broken, and everyone would live happily ever after. Anna believes that too.

Then everything changes.

Anna is freezing, and Kristoff is coming toward her. The thing she believes can save her is finally within reach. But then she sees Elsa in danger. Anna has only seconds to decide what matters most, and she turns away from the person who might save her and moves toward her sister instead. She chooses Elsa.

That moment says so much about who Anna is. She doesn’t stop to think about all the years Elsa kept her outside that closed door. She doesn’t think about how much she has been hurt or everything she has lost. She sees someone she loves in danger and instinctively moves toward her. The act of true love that ultimately saves Anna isn’t someone else choosing her. It is Anna choosing to love someone else.

I think there is something incredibly beautiful about that. We spend so much of our lives wanting to be chosen. We want someone to recognize our value, love us, stay with us, and tell us that we matter. There is nothing wrong with wanting those things. We were created for connection. But maybe some of the most important moments of our lives aren’t about whether someone chooses us. They are about the kind of love we choose to give.

Anna also reminds me that optimism isn’t necessarily the result of having an easy life. Sometimes the people who bring the most light into a room have experienced plenty of darkness themselves. Anna knows loneliness, rejection, grief, betrayal, and heartbreak. Yet somehow she continues believing there is something good worth moving toward.

I think we sometimes mistake hopefulness for naïveté. We assume people who expect good things simply haven’t experienced enough bad things yet. But there is another kind of hope, the kind that develops after life has given us plenty of reasons to become cynical and we decide we don’t want to live that way. There is something incredibly courageous about remaining hopeful after life has shown us how easily things can change.

There is courage in loving again after someone has disappointed us. There is courage in trusting again after someone has betrayed us. There is courage in reaching toward another person when we cannot guarantee they will reach back. There is courage in believing something broken might still be repaired. Anna has that kind of courage.

I also think Anna’s story reminds us that loving someone doesn’t mean we can fix everything for them. She desperately wants to help Elsa, but ultimately there are things Elsa has to learn for herself. That is a difficult lesson when we love someone deeply. We want to make things better. We want to remove their pain, solve the problem, find the answer, and protect them from whatever comes next. Sometimes we would gladly carry something for someone we love if only life would allow us to.

But love cannot control another person’s journey. Sometimes all we can do is stay beside them while they walk it. We can listen, encourage, advocate, pray, hold their hand, and remind them they aren’t alone, but there are places we cannot walk for them.

Faith has taught me something about that too. God asks me to love people, but He never asks me to become their God. I cannot fix every person I love. I cannot protect them from every painful thing. I cannot guarantee that their story unfolds the way I desperately want it to. There comes a point when love also requires surrender, when I have to trust God with the pieces I cannot reach.

Anna understands something about continuing too. She keeps moving forward when almost everything tells her to stop. She climbs a mountain she isn’t prepared to climb, walks into a snowstorm without much of a plan, gets knocked down, and keeps getting back up because someone she loves is somewhere ahead of her. There are seasons of life when I think faith looks a lot like that. We don’t necessarily feel brave. We certainly don’t know how everything is going to turn out. We simply know what the next step is, so we take it. Then somehow we find enough courage for another.

Maybe courage isn’t always the absence of fear. Sometimes it is simply deciding that something else matters more than the fear.

Anna also makes me think about all the different ways strength can look. Elsa has obvious strength. She can create ice castles and command snowstorms. Nobody has to wonder what Elsa’s power is. Anna doesn’t have anything magical about her. Yet when the defining moment comes, Anna is the one who steps between Elsa and the sword.

There is physical strength, and then there is the kind of strength nobody can see. There is strength in forgiving. There is strength in remaining tender after life has given us reasons to become hard. There is strength in getting up after disappointment. There is strength in asking for help. There is strength in hoping again. There is tremendous strength in continuing to love without allowing everything that has hurt us to turn our hearts cold.

Maybe that is Anna’s gift. Her heart never stays frozen.

Life certainly gives it plenty of opportunities to. She is rejected, betrayed, frightened, hurt, and disappointed. She learns that some people aren’t who she believed they were. She learns that love can hurt. She learns that happily-ever-after is much more complicated than meeting the right person at a party. But she doesn’t allow those experiences to determine the kind of person she becomes.

I hope I can always say the same. Difficult experiences change us, and perhaps they should. We become wiser. We learn where boundaries belong. We become more careful about whom we trust. We begin recognizing things we once missed. But I never want the difficult things in life to make me so afraid of being hurt that I lose my ability to love.

There is wisdom in protecting our hearts, but there is also courage in keeping them soft.

Maybe that is why I see Anna differently now. When I first watched Frozen, Elsa seemed like the obvious strong one because Elsa had the power. But perhaps strength isn’t always found in the person who can create the biggest storm. Sometimes it is found in the person who keeps walking through it.

Anna keeps walking. She keeps hoping. She keeps reaching toward the people she loves. She learns from the people who hurt her without deciding everyone will hurt her. She discovers that true love is much bigger than romance and that sometimes the greatest love we will experience in this life is found in the people who simply refuse to leave us standing alone.

Anna doesn’t have magic. She doesn’t need it. Her story reminds me that there is something incredibly powerful about a person who can walk through loneliness without becoming closed, experience betrayal without becoming bitter, endure heartbreak without giving up on love, and face a frozen world without allowing it to freeze the heart inside her.

Maybe that was Anna’s magic all along.