These days most people are praying for doors to be
opened. Whether it’s in their professional life, family life, personal
life...people are looking for and asking God for an
abundance of opportunities to get them out of their current
circumstances. If you hate your job, you pray to get an offer from a
better company with better pay and benefits. If the family is behind on
the mortgage, you pray for God to make a way to avoid foreclosure and
eviction. If your car sucks and you’re broke, you pray for an
unbelievable deal on a good car and a turn on your fortune. If a friend is going though something,
you pray for their healing and deliverance. In essence, we are praying
for options. We want to have the choice to get out of our current
situation. No one wants to be stuck and be a bystander in their own
life. We want control. I’m definitely a fan of having options, except in
one area: my relationships.
Going into college, I was the one-woman type dude. When I
found someone I liked, I was 100% full steam ahead. I didn’t want to
talk to anyone else, kick it with anyone else, hang out with anyone
else, or chill with anyone else – and this was all before we were even
official. I would be dedicated to earning her time and attention. Then, I
stepped on a college campus...women everywhere! Short ones, tall
ones, big ones, small ones – it was like a page out of a Dr. Seuss
book. There was something for everyone. There were options, maybe there were TOO MANY
options. When I dated, I always wondered, “what if?” I
could have a date lined up and get a “what you doing?” text from someone
else, and start questioning if I was missing out on something better.
Sometimes it was so bad, that if I was on the date and got a text, I
might try to wrap it up early so I could see “what’s up.” Sad, I know.
All the options were a distraction and dating multiple women was a
headache (and I wasn’t the best at multitasking). Don’t be fooled, it
was the same for the women; they had their pick at school too. There
were plenty of times I asked a girl out, and she would "already have plans" with someone else. Like I said, there were options.
Fast forward past college and enter the real
world. No incoming freshmen girls every year, and depending on the size
of the city you’re in, the dating pool may be pretty small and stagnant.
But old habits die hard. There definitely might be less options, but they’re
still there. New options walk up and down the aisle at church on Sunday, options show up at Applebee’s, options shop at the grocery store and go to the mall. Old options still text out of the
blue or find you on Facebook, bump into you at Wal-Mart and give you that beautiful smile that
you originally fell for...and soon you’re back to wondering “what if?”
These days, into my 40's, I've learned that I don’t need or want that kind of distraction anymore. These
days I’m constantly praying for gifts of discernment, recognition, and
closed doors. That’s right, CLOSED doors. I want to be wise enough to
recognize and pursue a quality woman – that’s the work I have to put in, but I need help with the distractions. I’m actually asking for and
wanting God to close doors that lead to dead ends or what would be a
distraction to my current situation. I want to date a woman, one,
singular. I want to meet her, court her, get to know her and follow
through to see where the situation goes. I don’t want to be multitasking
women, especially since I was never good at it. I want to be 100% in
again, I want to give it a good try, un-jaded by my past. I want to have
a singular focus on one woman to see if it could work out. If it
doesn’t that’s fine too, but I should learn something from it.
So obviously these closed doors could just be dead end
distractions, and I’m sure that some of you reading this might agree with that. But then there are
those who are reading this questioning if you may just be wasting time
on the wrong person if you don’t explore other options. I understand the
dilemma, but that’s where your maturity and faith comes in. You have to
trust that the person you’re with is the one God has meant for you to be
with at the moment (not sexually though, God doesn’t like that).
Whether it’s for a season or a lifetime, there should be something to
gain from the experience and pray for wisdom throughout the experience.
After a lot of attempted multitasking, I’m ready to
leave the college ways alone and date in the singular. I encourage
other men out there to do the same. Distractions are just that...distractions, but you could instead focus on the goal that could be sitting right in front of you...
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