(Don't) Date Me
When I was younger I always had this mental picture of how my Prince Charming would come up and totally rescue me from, well from something I wasn't quite sure of what but there would be something that he would rescue me from and just love me for who I was.
Of course the problem presented itself to me when I realized that I was homeschooled and no guys really fell over me in the church lobby. So I began a stratigic plan of operation to get my parents to let me go to regular school. I started it when I was 14 and finally when I turned 16 they told me that was fine, but if I so much as dropped any in my studies I wouldn't be allowed to go back....So I stayed at a pretty much steady 3.8 or 3.9 (chemistry was always the one that brought it down), but still
there were no dates.
I became friends with guys and hoping that they would evaluate what I was feeling inside, but nothing produced with that effort, all that actually happened was that I started hating myself with a great passion. Pass on that idea. And still no dates.
My dad had always kidded around with me not dating until I was 18, and for a while I thought that maybe he had contacted every guy in the school and told them not to even think about dating me, and I went thru high school, even thru prom with no dates. Not that I hadn't been asked but it was usually by the total losers who thought a good date was getting high....not my idea of a good time...
Graduation was also ironically my 18th birthday, and I went to the after grad party with one of my cousins, and looked relatively well, but no dates.
Right before I started college I recieved 3 books, Passion and Purity (Elizabeth Elliot), I kissed Dating Goodbye (Joshua Harris) and When God writes your love story (Eric and Leslie Ludy), I guess I just kinda skimmed all of them. Actually I remember laughing at P&P, giving my copy of Kissed dating to my sister cause I didn't need it, and not really even soaking in Love story....I remember thinking "These people are just too radical and controversial, there is no way I will ever listen to them"
3 years go by, still no dates. The occasional asker was either too young or a weird stalker person who I wasn't about to date if my life depended on it. I started to have feelings for one of the guys in my coed Bible study and thought maybe he was starting to think of me in that way as well. He wasn't, and I found this out (he brought a girl he was interested in to the Bible study) right before I recieved a letter of acceptence to a Bible College 4 and a half hours away.
So I survived my going away party with little to no regrets, and just ready to move out. You see, not one of the guys that I had ever liked, liked me back. I was the little sister, the best friend, the one that was invisible....
and I had no dates during those 3 years. And during those 3 years I reread all three of those books, finding out that it wasn't them that was crazy, it was my prespective that needed to change. So I keep rereading them and finding whole new truths every time....
So here I sit, alone but not lonely. I'm grateful now for the fact that I have no significant other because I really wouldn't want to do that whole long distance thing.
Still it's nice living on my own, I have to admit. No one fights for my remote, or what movie we should watch, or even what kind of candy I should buy. I still question God, about dating and whatever but now thoughts are beginning to pop up in my mind.
Relating to being single-for the rest of my life.
I shudder and gasp, but the truth is, I don't think it would be so bad. And I know that God's grace is always more then enough for me, and I can't imagine that grace being exhausted in 2 years or more....
Dating? Well; I'm not sure if it's out of my life plan or not, but I am now content to wait. I don't want to see if this guy is the one or not, I just want to get to know God better and get to be closer to Him then ever before. And something else? I've decided that it wouldn't be such a bad thing to go to heaven a virgin.....
~learning how to live one day at a time is harder then you first think, cause you wake up and then you actually have to go thru that one day, and it's not what you thought it might be....
~plumb