Beauty beckons me. She seeks to draw my heart out of itself. My heart will not listen. My heart craves control. Beauty seeks to draw me out but I seek to take her in, to have her as my own. She will not submit to such savagery, and as such she flees from me. And then I wonder why I feel alone. 

Beauty most often makes herself known to me through women and words. I lust and lie, and then I wonder why she comes around no more. 

I see a woman’s beauty and my heart is filled with fear, my conscience tells me I should stay away. For against Beauty I have committed many a crime, and perhaps I’m not yet free from that rotten desire that dwells in the depths of my heart. 

I long to be free. I have thought this freedom mine many times. Many hearts I’ve left broken in the wake of this presumption. And so I find myself fleeing from Beauty, recoiling confused and confounded from her face. But my flight from her does not abate my longing. Instead I am left haunted by my own desire.

Much of my experience is clouded by shame and self-pity. I am a soul shackled by fear, blind to Beauty though she be all around me. I refuse to receive her because I feel I am not worthy. I am a coward. The Lord sees all of these things. I pray that He will help my heart befriend Beauty, and become a place where she may freely dwell.