Home > Singles > Single Minded
It's Raining Men (Hallelujah!)
By Camerin Courtney
May 24, 2006
It wasn't until I was relaying to my friend Jackie the details about my dating downpour a while ago (a very welcome break from the usual Christian dating drought) that I put it all together. Yes, the three good godly guys who'd suddenly appeared in my dating universe were answers to prayer—just not the one I thought.
I met the first guy at a friend's party. "John" was an engineer who led a Bible study with several coworkers and played trumpet in a community band. He struck up a conversation and even asked for my e-mail address. After several e-mails back and forth in the days following, he asked me to meet him for coffee.
Two days after this casual get-together, I met "Evan" at a work function. We talked most of the evening and after discovering a common love of movies, agreed to meet at a local theater that weekend. The flick was a bust, but we closed down a nearby restaurant talking about movies great and horrible as well as our similar volunteer efforts working with internationals.
The following week, a church friend told me about a "great guy I just had to meet." When I explained that I needed to explore things with John and Evan, both of whom had asked me out again, before even thinking about meeting someone new (the words felt so foreign coming out of my mouth), she surprised me by saying this "great guy" was already coming to the dinner party she'd invited me to the next night. I'd been stealth blind-date bombed. This great guy, a.k.a. Chris, turned out to be pretty great indeed. And he called me a few days later to ask me to lunch.
Listening to his voicemail message while simultaneously reading an e-mail from John, I wondered whose life I'd just dropped into. I felt like Monica or Rachel from Friends—just without the size-2 miniskirts and all the sex. Usually good godly guys are an endangered species in my life, but I'd just met three in a month. And in meeting them, I'd found them to be that splendid blend of interesting and interested.
After more dates in one month than I'd had in the previous year combined, I talked with my friend Jackie one night about the fun weirdness of it all—about striving to exercise integrity in these casual, non-exclusive interactions while also savoring the feeling of being just a smidge bit in demand. As this single sister listened, she commented, "See, they do exist! There is hope."
Hope. Here I'd been all caught up in my hormones and the odd timing. But with the word hope I was reminded of an incident a few weeks before my current bounty.
I'd been sitting in a local Starbucks reading over some feedback from ChristianSinglesToday.com readers. The e-mails were full of humor, hope, and despair. But one two-page message really got to me. It was from a single woman in her 40s who'd never been married but had desired to be for many years. She'd been trying her best to live a full life, all while watching her other friends marry and disappear from her life, only to reappear years later after getting divorced. When those friends started getting remarried and disappearing again one by one, she couldn't take it anymore. It didn't feel fair or right or like God cared one iota about her years-long attempt to live a life pleasing to him while dealing with unmet desires.
Her well-articulated words made me think of Proverbs 13:12, "A hope deferred makes the heart sick." I felt her pain—along with the pain of so many similar e-mails, conversations with singleton friends, and my own experiences and feelings as a single woman. I was aware of the tough odds and statistics, the dating droughts and unfulfilled hopes. Of, yes, the capital-H hope that awaits in heaven, but also of the lack of biblical guarantee for lower-case-h hope in some of our everyday circumstances.
As I drove home from Starbucks, the tears fell as I vented aloud to God: "This is too much. You've given me this peek at the thoughts and lives of countless single folks. Some of it's great, but some is so tough. You've given me a heart for this demographic, but I can't carry this alone. It's just too heavy."
And now a couple weeks later, this surprising dating boom. I didn't get the sense that these men or relationships or marriage were the "solution" or the embodiment of hope here, but I did feel God saying, See, odds schmods. I have reserves and provision you know nothing about. Let me bless you a bit and lighten some of the heaviness in your life and give you something a little more hopeful to write about. So here, in obedience, I am.
After writing about dating droughts and Christian man shortages, I would be remiss not to give this glimpse of the overall picture as well. Because even when we know hope exists, sometimes we just need to see it in action.
So what became of the three guys? How long did any of those relationships last, and are any still a fixture in my life? You know what, I'm not going to tell you. They're not really the point of this story anyway. This love story is about a God who listens and provides hope when we need it and sometimes surprises us with his blessings. Sometimes three times over!
We welcome your feedback and brainstorms at: SinglesNewsletter@ChristianityToday.com
Sign up for the Singles Newsletter and receive a new article from Camerin plus community updates in your inbox every other week!
Copyright © 2006 ChristianityToday.com
|
 |
|
|
eHarmony is a completely new way to build a relationship. We turn the process around, so you learn about people from the inside-out before you get involved.
Falling in love still takes chemistry, but eHarmony gives you the confidence to take the first step, knowing that you and your matches are truly compatible for the long-run.
Only eHarmony creates matches based on 29 proven dimensions of compatibility and over 30 years of relationship expertise. Combining this knowledge and experience with our commitment to personal care ensures that eHarmony will work for you.
|
|
|
|
| |
|
