Liberated to Love

You ask me what I'm looking for in a girl, but I've given up list-making. Every time I meet a girl the list changes. I think, how could I have missed this and why did I care so much about that.

So I will tell you what I find attractive. I close my eyes and set the scene. I'm at the bar and from across the room I see her. Her light eyes reflect off her fair skin. I stare at her shy smile. She walks over and catches me off guard with an observation that I don't think anyone notices, but I secretly want them to. "I like your shirt," she says, "causal without the collar, but classy with the buttons."

"Thank you. I like your smile. My name is Keith."

I'm swooning now, but I won't fall in love for months, for beauty that is trapped is but slavery and I am no master.

Over time I find out that she has been liberated to love, not just me but her God and her people too.

She studies me. She anticipates my fears and my desires. She willingly rewrites her love story to include me; rather she casts me as the main character. This makes me nervous so she is gentle and patient. She is understanding when I don't understand her.

She is liberated from law. Not just free, where she might find herself confused and wandering, but overjoyed with passion and direction. She prays without ceasing. She listens when God speaks by her heartbeat. As I watch her eyes and ears grow, her hands and feet grow too. When she stumbles and falls she always gets back up, but never the same as before.

She doesn't know a stranger, for to find one she would have had to lose herself first. She is diligent to know how others perceive her, not for identity but course correction. "I feel like myself when I am around you," her friends write in her birthday card, "Thank you for letting me be me."

I sit with her at dusk on a porch and enjoy my favorite time of day. I can finally take a breath and reflect on the gift I awoke with.