Which Way Are You Looking?

To answer the question in the title of today's post, I'm looking in several directions at once to try to pull this article off. I've been catching up on my reading on the Boundless website (see the link over to the left) and thought that the Boundless writers had some really good points this week that have been on my mind too. So I'm gonna connect some dots here and put a couple of those good points together.

Here is something for you to think about - when you were, say, in your teens or twenties, what did you think you were looking for in a husband or wife? When I first started college, my list wasn't really that hard to follow. I didn't want a guy that partied all the time. I wanted a guy who might take me dancing now and then and was a gentleman. That was really about it. I didn't really know what I was going to do with my life at that time. I didn't know what city I wanted to live in, or what I wanted to do when I got there. In fact, you could probably say that I was sort of counting on Mr. Right to influence those decisions. So whenever I met a new young man and we started dating, I was fairly open minded. If he didn't party all the time and could be a gentleman, I could even do without the dancing (I know, I know, it was a big sacrifice!).

And I dated a few guys that could fit those expectations, but none of those relationships lasted over a few months. By the time I was a senior in college, I had realized that I wasn't going to meet my future husband before graduation and that I was going to have to decide where I was going to live and what I was going to do when I got there on my own. I didn't want to put my life on hold until this man came along, so I also filled my extra time all kinds of new hobbies, volunteering and interests. If you had asked me what I was looking for in a man by the end of last year, my list would have looked far more complicated than my first one. It would have read something like this: "The man in my future must be responsible, a gentleman, must not be afraid of education, church or the big words I learned in my microbiology class. He's got to like being outdoors and be interested in digging up fossils with me, now that I like doing that. He's got to appreciate music, because I play music now. He's got to want to (fill in the blank), because by now, I've dated someone who didn't like doing that with me. AND, on top of that, he's got to have some kind of reason to be passing through this tiny little town I live in, because how will he find me otherwise???"

Do you see any differences between my two lists? Did a comparison between your lists show the same results? The longer we stay single, the more experiences and identities we will start to carry with us. It is no surprise at all that I got frustrated with dating when looking for someone to fit that second list. It's not that I don't believe that God can't create the people we dream about, it's just that I think we're limiting Him when we focus so much on who we are to determine who we want. The longer I am single, the more I learn about myself, and the more I date, the more I learned about what kind of person I do (and don't, more specifically) want, which is fine. However, I think that it is easy to get mighty caught up in all of those details that I miss the details that matter. (Oh, and here's the Boundless article that talks about the same thing, more or less: http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001772.cfm ).

What details should I focus on, you ask? Well, we've talked about it before on this site and, ironically, Boundless referenced the exact same article this week too. (http://www.boundless.org/2005/answers/a0001766.cfm )

I also think that the longer I am single, and the more unsuccessful relationships I experience, the harder it gets to see past those people behind me. A friend might want tell me about a young man they saw earlier that week and tell me I should call him. I reply with something like "Yeah, but I've already dated someone who (fill in the blank)'s for a living, and we all know how that turned out...", and then mope on my drive back home out of the sheer frustration of it all. There have even been times in my life when I would look back at my own dating history and decide that I couldn't even trust myself to choose a person of good moral character, much less a potential life mate. Look at all of that looking backwards! It's a cliche that graces countless country songs, but it's got so much truth to it that I'm gonna type it out - you can't see tomorrow if you're still looking back. You can't get away from all of those things behind you if that's all you look at. You're not going to see the person you could spend your life with if you're not watching the horizon for them, but are instead focusing on all of the other ships you've already passed. (What? Are you rolling your eyes at my analogies again? Well, maybe you'll like Boundless' better: http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001763.cfm ).

I don't know if this site has been useful at all to anyone else out there. What I do know, is that since starting this site, I've really had a wake up call on the things we've discussed. God can do incredible things when we point our eyes in the right direction.

Which way are you looking?