Cow. Salamander. Zebra.

Not one called “Friend.”

GOD put the Man into a deep sleep. As he slept he removed one of his ribs and replaced it with flesh. GOD then used the rib that he had taken from the Man to make Woman and presented her to the Man. (Genesis 2:21, 22)

This one God named. “Woman,” he called her.

And the “good” Garden was “very good.”

“Finally! Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!” (Genesis 2:23)

And man said, “Wow! This is good! This is really really good! She’s more beautiful than Peacock, more graceful than Eagle, better conversation than Monkey. She’s perfect. I don’t ever want her to leave. I can’t believe I ever lived without her. I must have been living half as much.”

Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife. They become one flesh. The two of them, the Man and his Wife, were naked, but they felt no shame. (Genesis 2:24, 25)

One. Not by paper or principality.

Naked. She stands bare before him, untainted by corrosive self-doubt injected by magazines and peers. She has no peer. She has no ideal. She is pleased because her Maker is, confident and prized because she is His.

Then flesh rests against flesh. Blessed. Belonging. The depths of two souls woven together. No shame. No lonely. No distance.

Day and night, waters and skies, birds and cattle. All of this was incomplete without man and man was incomplete without her.

And she is so treasured and essential that God couldn’t pull His pen through even one book of His epic without her flowing from His heart and onto the page.

Before misogynists demeaned her and husbands betrayed her. Before religion veiled her and preachers silenced her. Before media shamed her and employers underpaid her. Before the world fell and in its amnesia forgot her worth – she was Woman.

Prized. Honored. Essential. Loved.

She can be still. She should be.