Time

Time is a very valuable commodity in today's society. It is something that we all have the same amount of (not lifespan just we all have 24 hours a day and 7 days per week) no matter our gender or social standings. There are certain things that we have to allow for, such as sleep and work. There is, however, a certain amount of "free time" that we choose how to fill.

How do we make the choice of what to do? Who do we spend our time with? If we had the resources available, how would we spend our time differently?

I think that we choose what to do based on our priorities. We tend to make time for the things that are truly important to us. We also have "luggage" that we take with us and that can affect our choices. But, what do our choices tell others about who we truly are?

Who we spend our time with can tell us about ourselves. Do we "hang out" with people because they are there or because we truly enjoy their company? Do we spend our time with people who build us up or tear us down? Personally, I try to spend my time with people that I respect and who show me respect as well (this has not always been true).

How would our priorities change if we had the finsncial resources to do anything? How would our lives be different? What if we had an unlimite amount of free time?

My conversations lately have almost had themes, but I guess I missed the memo because it keeps catching me off gaurd. The latest theme is - what would it take for you to feel like your life was a success? My answer is - I would be successful if I could truly make a lasting difference in one life.

So I ask you the same question - How would you define success?

Down to Business instead of Dizzyness

Of the whole three or four people that voted in the poll (where was everyone else?!), it looks like for the most part, singles would rather date someone they already know or that a trusted friend already knows. When I think about that, I'm really not that shocked and you probably aren't either. For one thing, physical safety is something we absolutely have to be aware of these days when meeting new people and you do, of course, want to know that you have things in common with this person before you go on the date. That all makes a great deal of sense. But something else doesn't.

I'm willing to bet that I'm not the only person who's ever had visions of looking for a book in a bookstore and looking up to see someone looking at the same shelf, casually striking up a conversation and then deciding to have coffee together and then a year or so later, one or both of us are standing at a wedding reception stating it was love at first sight - oh sorry, did I get carried away there? Well, maybe I did, but as ridiculous as it sounds, I've done it. I've been the girl sitting at a restaurant alone, imagining striking up a great conversation with a stranger and falling in love. I've also been the girl who gets frustrated and then down about how those sorts of things just never happen (well, ok, they've happened, but they sure haven't panned out).

Now let's put those two paragraphs' thoughts together - we prefer to date someone who isn't a complete stranger........but that's what a heck of a lot of time and energy and thought and worrying-about gets put into. Meeting and dating strangers. In a way, it's kind of like beating around a bush - we know what we want and need for very logical reasons, but we (or at least I) have spent so much time not really getting down to business. Is it not dizzying? I think this can even be extended to that part of you that knows things you really want in a person, but you still waste time (maybe "waste" time is too strong of a word, but you get the idea) on all the people that don't have those important things because "what if" they surprise you and it works out. Does that line of thinking really make sense? I'm sure it has worked for a few people, but for the most part, it seems to me like singles have the temptation to try to fix our own loneliness ourselves instead of trusting God that He's got what we need worked into His plan for us.

So now that we've really looked at the most preferred dating scenario and we recognize the fact that we're going to stop running circles around this proverbial bush - now what? Well, now we stop getting down on ourselves when we don't meet a dashing or beautiful stranger at the bookstore. Now we turn our attention to perhaps finding groups of people we can go out and have fun with so that maybe when a new person joins the group and you get to know each other, you just might find who you've been looking for all along. Or maybe we start looking at the people we already know and look for the important things in them - do they believe in God and live that belief? Are they a responsible person who would make a good leader or supporter of a household and family? Are they honest and respectful?

Which leads me to my next set of questions - what are you looking for in another person? What sends you on that second date? What signs are good signs and which ones are bad ones? There's a saying somewhere that "if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there." So let's figure out where we're going. Sit down and actually put your finger on what you want. And then tell us about it!

FRIENDS

It seems that I have a recurring conversation with people. That conversations includes the question - "Would you date a friend?"

My friends are so important to me - if I can only have friends or dates; everytime I would choose friends. With that being said - in response to the question, I like to think that at this point in my life I would only date a friend. I do, however, have one friend that I would not date. I enjoy the relationship that we have now and risking the change that could come with dating is too high a price to pay.
I like the idea of being in a relationship where I can be myself and be honest about who I am (my friends already know). I'm too tired to play all the dating games that go with dating people that you don't know. Even if those games only include pretending that the house is always clean and you are always rested and in a good mood.
My question to you is - "Would you date a friend?" Why or Why not?

And the Results are In

Thanks to everyone who participated in the poll about how you describe yourself as a single person. It would appear that most of our readers are either dating casually, or maybe not dating but wanting to. So this brings me to a set of questions. I've gone about dating in just about every way there is to try it - I've been set up by friends, I've dated old friends, I've been asked out by a total stranger, I've asked a total stranger out. I've been on blind dates, I've been on there's-no-way-there-will-be-a-second-date dates and I've been on what-I-would-give-to-go-on-a-second-date dates. I've dated long distance and not-so-long distance. I've toyed with dating online, but haven't yet. I've gone months without a single possibility for a date and I've had days where three new people come out of the blue, all at once. Then there's double dates, larger group dates and situations that sure do feel like a date but it isn't being called a date. Geeze, the more I think about it, the more I see that dating is more complex than I thought before. Just look at all the ways there are to even get started! There is one thing that all of these new starts have in common though, and that is the fact that they all involve a certain art. They all involve understanding what you want yourself and understanding what the opposite sex wants as well. What makes a successful date? What things do you look for in a person? What signs tell you that you want a second date and which ones tell you that you want the quickest exit possible? Are some of these things pretty universal or are they different for everyone? So many questions! So today I'll just start at a logical place - the beginning. :) The poll for this week is about meeting people. How have you met people (people you dated, that is) in the past, and how would you prefer to meet people (I don't think that the two questions always necessarily have the same answer...)? Oh, and yes, you can check more than one option.

And just for the heck of it, I'm adding "meeting someone at the grocery store" to the list because I want to know if anyone's really ever done that...

Faith: Laying Down the First Pieces

There is a Persian proverb that I really like and have been thinking about a great deal lately -

"Go as far as you can see, and when you get there, you'll see further."
~Persian proverb

It's a good little saying for someone who likes to know how something (whether it's a project, relationship, or some kind of goal) is going to turn out before I put my time, heart, and energy into it. For example, at work, it's time for me sign a contract saying I'll stay here for another year and the very idea of it overwhelms me. I look at that year in the future and wonder, how on earth am I going to accomplish the goals I have for my department? How am I going to get another round of students through complex chemical equations? And when I think about how I can't quite answer any of those questions yet, I become afraid to try. It's the same way with new relationships. You meet someone new at work and you could put effort into making friends with them...but what if the friendship doesn't last? What if it crashes and burns? Should you just avoid the awkwardness by not befriending the person at all? The same situation can be extended to dating, of course. It is so easy for me to look at something and want to know exactly how it's going to pan out before I put my heart into it. The problem, of course, is that there's no way for me to know exactly how I'm going to build a stronger science program in my school successfully. I can't know exactly how a new relationship is going to work or turn out. That's where the proverb comes in. All I can do is act on what I feel is best and hope that when I get to a certain point, I will see what direction to go from there. It's like working a puzzle. You pour all the pieces onto a table and then you have a choice to make at that point. Sure, you can try to stare each and every piece down, calculating where all the pieces go and work the puzzle out entirely in your head before you even turn all the pieces over, but who does that? Instead, you have faith that when you put a couple of pieces together, you're going to start to find enough patterns or fractions of a picture that eventually, you're going to be able to add more and more pieces as you go until the big picture is finally complete.

Isn't that what faith is? In the movie Facing the Giants, I remember a custodian telling the coach a story about two vineyard keepers who were living in a drought. One farmer decided not to plant his crop until it rained and the other planted his crop anyway, so that it would be ready when rain came. Who had more faith? The answer is pretty obvious and the story makes so much sense, and is so applicable to every day situations in my life. There is a lot to risk when it comes to acting on faith, but if I concentrate on avoiding all risks that come my way, then I'm not letting God use me as a puzzle piece in his Big Picture. Will every one of my students learn the material and morals I try to instill in their minds every day? I don't know, but I can certainly plant the seeds and pray for God for grapes. Do I know that contacting someone I am interested in is going to result in awkward conversation or that friendship of a lifetime that I can't find anywhere else? Maybe not, but I can lay down the first puzzle piece and go from there.
I believe it was Martin Luther King, Jr. who said that faith isn't seeing the whole staircase, but rather taking the first step. Once you get there, God will tell you where to go. Moses didn't know how he was going to get all of his people out from under the Pharoah safely. He didn't have a detailed travel itenerary - God helped him cross seas and deserts as the people came to them. Mary and Joseph didn't know exactly how they their baby's life would get started - God opened stable doors and safe escape routes for them as they came to them. We are no different. If we sit and wait for God's plans for us to be explained in their miraculous entirety to us before we make any plan of action, we aren't showing faith. We'd be waiting out and wasting our entire lives.

So I leave a lot of quotations and proverbs mixed in with bible stories, metaphors and various analogies for you to think about this week.

Faith isn't working the whole puzzle at once. It's putting down the first piece.

Glen Lake Retreat

The last couple of days have been very refreshing. I went to Glen Rose for the Central Texas Conference Single Adult Retreat. We spent a lot of time in fellowship with each other. The greatest gift that we were given, however, is that scheduled in was time alone with God.

Terry Hershey was a wonderful speaker and over the next few days I will add different thaoughts that he presented to us. He was speaking on the "voice of grace".

This afternoon, he was talking about counseling people in conflict. He said that his first questions are:
1. What have you done this week that is completely nurturing for yourself?

2. Where do you hear the voice of grace?

One of the exercises that we did was that we had 3 minutes to go anywhere that we wanted on the campground. We were to be focused on reaching our destination. Then we had to take 12 minutes to come back. We then compared the differnece in the two trips. Try it and let me know how the two compared.

Just Out of Curiosity

As we've mentioned before, singles have a lot in common, but singles have got a lot that's pretty different too. So I'm curious. What sort of social situations are this blog's readers in, presently? Are you single and interested in seeing content on this blog about dating (I think I could write for days about blind dates alone)? Or maybe you are already dating one person seriously and are interested in reading more about choosing a spouse or preparing for marraige. Maybe you are single and couldn't possibly care less about dating or maybe you are keeping an eye out for someone to spend your life with, but for whatever reason, you're not dating at the moment. It's a touchy subject from just about any angle, I know. But it's a huge part of single life and single culture and if nothing else, this blog is about telling it how it is. So look over there to the left and answer the question in the poll. How do you describe yourself as a single person? (We'll have the Who's-Had-the-Most-Blind-Dates contest later.) :)