At almost seven and four, you are both far too young for this conversation now, but I was thinking about it and wanted to write a note to your future selves.

At some point in your lives you will hear or pick up the message that “men are primarily visual creatures.”

For you Oliver, this message might suggest that you are inherently a simplistic and shallow creature that is pre-wired to see women as physical objects.

For you Lyra, this message might suggest that if you ever want to be loved and wanted by a man, then your physical appearance is what matters more than anything else and that your physical appearance needs to conform to a certain narrow and marketed concept of beauty.

The problem with both of these messages is that they are both terrible lies.

I hope I can help you set them down so that you don’t have to drag them around with you throughout your lives or even better, never pick them up to begin with.

The lie isn’t in the statement that “men are primarily visual creatures,” but in how that statement is understood.  The lie is found both in the perceived narrowness and shallowness of what it means for men to be primarily visual.

I’ll deal with the narrowness first.  Every heterosexual man is by definition attracted to women and the female human shapes.  As you will know by the time you read this, women come in all shapes and sizes.  In all my years of being a heterosexual male I have never known or heard of a heterosexual male who only found one “type” of woman attractive.

From a purely physical standpoint, men don’t even agree on what they find most attractive in women.  In our skinny-obsessed culture, I think it would surprise many women to hear that one of the only complaints I have ever heard men mention about their wives or girlfriends is when they feel like they started out with a “heavier girl” and then she started losing “too much weight.”  But overwhelmingly from my experience, men don’t talk about their wives or girlfriends physical appearance because they’re happy with what they’ve got – otherwise they wouldn’t have married them or be dating them.  And, all these women (that these different men are happy with) look different.

Men’s perspective on what is beautiful and attractive is not nearly as narrow as what cultural marketers make it out to be.

My children, I hope you experience the joy and freedom of just being the beautiful people you are and stay as unhindered by unhealthy cultural narratives as you can.

Now let’s look at the perceived shallowness in men being primarily visual.

I’m not going to get weird on you, but I’ll just say that I find your mother physically appealing.  That, however, barely scratches the surface of what it means for me to be visually attracted to her.  So many of my thoughts and memories of things I find attractive in your mother are images, and while they are visual, they are not surface level.

As you’ll likely know by now, your mother and I met in college when we were put on a six-person mission team to help some people out in Brazil.  The first time I saw her, I saw her hair pulled back in a pony tail, her easy smile, her baggy t-shirt, and sports shorts.  I saw all of these things and I thought she would be a fun and easy person to go on this journey with.

The next time I saw your mother was at the airport and she was yelling at me because she along with everyone else who had followed her instructions had been at the airport two hours before take-off and I arrived in the terminal about 10 minutes before boarding (things were different before 9/11).  I remember seeing how her hands and her face expressed how exasperated she was at me over a plane that we weren’t allowed to get onto yet and I thought this uptight girl was interesting.

I remember seeing her face on the plane as we played games to pass the time and thinking she was fun.  I remember the first time I felt physically attracted to her.  Our team had been in Brazil for at least a week or two spending night and day together and we took a break and went shopping with some Brazilians at a local mall.  Somewhere in our roaming around the mall I saw Carrie walk out of a store wearing some new Brazilian jeans, a simple red shirt and hoop earrings – I was wowed and I have been into her ever since.  It wasn’t anything racy or provocative that got my attention (though that would have too, just in a number of different ways), she had just dressed up a little bit and it was amazing – there was both discretion and beauty there.

The moment I first fell in love with your mother was also a seeing, visual experience too.  I was walking up the inside stairs of the house she was staying at in Brazil to tell her that our ride was ready.  As I came to the top of the stairs I saw her through the sliding glass door out on this small, almost rooftop porch.  She had her legs crossed in the chair, her Bible in her lap, making little notes in the margins and then looking out at the sunrise.  I’m not sure what all the things were that I saw in that moment – her love for the God that I love, her love of mornings that I dread, the artistic but also neat perfectionism with which she does so many things – but I saw her in that moment and I loved her.

I still do.  I see what a wonderful mother she is to my children.  I see how fun she is to play football with.  I see her face light up when she is excited about something.  I see her full of love and grace and wisdom when she stands in front of our church to preach.  When she gets dressed up for a date, I see not only how beautiful she is but also how excited she is to go on a date with me – it’s wonderful!  As of today, I’ve been given over fifteen years of seeing her.

I see her and I love her.  I don’t know how to put it any other way, but being primarily visual does not mean primarily shallow or superficial and it certainly doesn’t mean that the shallow or superficial things are the most important.

Oliver, may you learn to see women well.

Lyra, may you walk confidently through this world, trusting that you have a beauty worth seeing.

May you both know how much your daddy sees you and loves you.