A Different Sort of Love

Looking back over the past 5 years, I remember quite a few guys who "liked" me. Interestingly, they all liked the exact same things about me,

1. My physical appearance: this includes my "beauty," my athleticism, etc.
2. My humor/wit
3. My love/ability to have a very good time at whatever I do

I have also "liked" quite a few guys. I liked unique things about each of them but a similar vein is apparent; I liked,

1. Their outward appearance (esp. their eyes and smile, their height/stength (but not to a huge extent.))
2. Their ability to make me laugh (i.e. humor)
3. Certain things about their nature (i.e. cavalier towards women, gentle, smart, perceptive (to feelings, needs, etc.), masculinity etc.)
4. Attraction to the same things, hobbies, etc. as me

But the more time I spend thinking about these things, the more I realize that I want to be liked, and to like, for who I am spiritually, not who I am physically.

My physical appearance is like a quickly fading flower. As I look at my grandmother, I can see that anyone looking at her from a purely physical perspective would see an old woman, worn down and tired. When I look at all the old photographs we have of her, I see an amazingly beautiful woman, the sort that makes you take a second look at her when she is walking down the street. Today, she is nothing like that. But when I look at her, I still see a radiating beauty in her face. She shines with Christ's love from the moment she wakes up to the moment she goes to sleep. She is in great physical pain sometimes, but she never, never complains and goes out of her way to lighten our days and lift us up.Everyone who meets her, loves her for this, not for her outward appearance.

At school, I have been making myself go towards the people who are not "beautiful" and witty, because often, I have discovered, the least attractive people have the best, most constructive things to say.

When I sit in my math class, three incredibly attractive girls and a handsome boy sit at the table to the right of mine. I am naturally drawn to them. But as I listen to their conversations they never say anything of value, and all they talk about is boyfriends, manicures, and movies. This is because what they truly care about it is what they look like. I am not saying there is anything wrong with taking care of your outward appearance, but I am saying that when your appearance is who you are, therein lies the problem.

So my problem is that all the guys who have liked me, have liked me for fairly physical reasons. Even though liking me for my humor/wit is slightly better than for my face, my mind could be taken from me by a stroke or a crippling fall. Anything that is physical is fleeting.

However, I don't think it is the fault of those guys because they are liking me because of what were the biggest features about me. I mean to say, what have I been cultivating for the past few years? Have I been studying the big issues in this world? Or have I most cared about what is the biggest fashion faux-paus? To say I haven't cared about this big issues at all, is a little extreme. But I haven't cared to the extent that I cared about things that are "here today and gone tomorrow."

I have been thinking about this all morning and have to come to these conclusions:

1. It would give me great joy if the next time a guy told me he liked me, he did not mention anything about my appearance. But if he instead said, "Liberty, what I love you about is your passion for the Lord. I love that you ignite the people around you with a love for the Lord. I love that I can sit and talk with you for hours about big ideas and about Christian apologetics and politics. I love you because Christ is in you."
2. It would also give me great joy if I could reach the point where when I became attracted to a guy, it would be because he inspired and challenged me to grow more in Christ and become closer to Him. The Bible gives the man a position of authority over us women and I have no problem with that. I just need to get to the place where the kind of man I am attracted to is just that kind of man, not one who is at a less or equal place of maturity as me (like I have been doing for the past few years.)

But for now, I am just working on the basics: I am building up my ability to live in complete blind faith in Christ, grow in courage about witnessing at school, and learning to not care what other peoples' opinion of me is-only what their opinion of God is.