Stuart pointed out to the fact that my profile says I am from Afghanistan. This is not accurate and will be rectified.

Last night Suzanne and I had a really good discussion about the Sermon on the Mount and the whole good fruit bad fruit concept. Its really great, amazing, awesome, etc. to be in love with a woman who is wise and gives good counsel. Suzanne is so good at holding fast to the most basic points and from them, moving out into all the unclear parts of scripture. I can get turned around a little bit, as was the case last night, but Suzanne totally reeled me in and reminded me of some really simple truths that I was overlooking.

This discussion was in addition to one about beauty. It is fun to talk about beauty with the most beautiful woman I know. Throughout this conversation, I realized the wonder of God's timing. Suzanne and I often wondered why we never met each other before it was nearly too late. But during this conversation Suzanne was expressing her frustration at some guys' idea of the perfect woman being someone who wasn't concerned with how they looked. She wouldn't wear make up or be caught up in her appearance. I totally used to think that way. But somewhere between summer project in Florida and my last two semesters in Fayetteville, I changed that viewpoint. The perfect woman does dress up, she can wear make up if she wants, she does wear nice clothes and puts flowers in her room and smells nice. She does a lot of things that have no apparent worth to a guy, because she is expressing the beauty of God. She is Eve, the human form of beauty. She is concerned with beauty because she was made to be beautiful. Just like guys are captivated by great leaders and competition, beauty captivates a woman. That idea/concept has been manipulated by the fall to be a huge struggle for women comparing themselves to other women, feeling like they aren't beautiful if they don't appear to look like whoever happens to be on the cover of a magazine in the grocery store line.

I thought about what life would be like if I had married a girl who had no concern for beauty. It would be like being married to a skinnier dude. I don't want that. I really like that Suzanne is beautiful, and that she likes to be beautiful. She really likes me to tell her I think she is beautiful. Without her, everything in my life would be quantified, measured, compared, optimized etc. But women and beauty don't work like that, they just are. It can't be saved up or stored away. It can only be enjoyed.