One night, sitting in front of the family television, for the first time in my life, I sobbed at the end of a touching movie. The year was 1966, and the film Born Free aired in homes across America. The movie, based on a true story, tells of a lioness named Elsa, an orphaned lion cub who was raised in captivity and later released into the wild.
At the age of six, the warm tears that slid across my freckled cheeks were not like any I had experienced. They were not the same tears of pain I felt when I found a bee with my bare foot in our clover-filled yard, or those of sadness when I pressed my face against an airport window as my dad boarded a plane for a business trip. These tears were different. They had responded to the heartfelt gift of love Elsa's owners had for her in the story. They knew that to be wild was to be free from the caged borders of limitation, able to exercise creativity and exploration. Loving Elsa, her owners made a way for her to be the beautiful, wild creature God intended her to be, despite their heartbreak.
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