So I have a dilemma. Don’t you hate them? This weekend was my self-imposed deadline for signing up for Match.com, since my last date with It’s Just Lunch has come and gone and I am not impressed enough with the quality of the matchmaking at It’s Just Lunch, despite the stellar premise, to shell out another $700 for another year’s membership. And even though I have broken through I don’t know how many walls and barriers in dating, I have been dragging my feet to get my profile on Match.com. I have been with only feigned disappointment willing to accept any excuse to put it off. I’ve had report cards to do, I’ll wait for the weekend, oh, I have
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Tonight I went for a walk, exploring some paths and trails in that odd, beautiful time when the sun is going down while the moon is already up in the sky. It was a clear evening and the waxing gibbous moon, I could tell, would be shedding layers and layers of blue light in a short while. I was happy as a clam, walking along in pine needles and gratitude, and out of nowhere, I realized that when I got back home, my deadline would be staring me in the face. And I felt so suddenly let down, so quickly I could almost feel the air hissing out of my punctured balloon.
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And with every step, I plodded toward a realization that had been nagging me for I don’t know how long. It was the first time I had really, consciously thought it, put it out there with the slim edge of desperation with which I had always furtively thought it. yes, I had found a measure of freedom with dating I had never known before. Yes, I could actually see myself going on Match.com, creating my profile, uploading my picture, and beginning to correspond with men. But deep down, with a passion that rides the edge of sadness, I don’t want to do Match.com, or any dating service. I don’t want that to be our story. For the rest of our lives, whenever anyone asks us how we met, I don’t want us to have to answer with “a dating service.” They are all well and good, but I’ve never been able to exorcise the viewpoint of being at base a little pathetic to need a dating service. What, can’t meet a man on your own? And I know all the arguments for them. I mean, look how well it turned out for Stephanie who, of all my friends, truly knows how I feel now, on the cusp of meeting the love of my life, because she was just there a matter of months ago. And I also know, without a shred of doubt, that if I did meet a man, the man, on Match.com or It’s Just Lunch or eHarmony, I wouldn’t give a damn how it happened, just that it happened. I would think fondly on the particular dating service that had delivered my dream to me, and recommend it to anyone with no hesitation. After all, it had worked for me, hadn’t it?
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But I always had a sense that I was more special than that. No love story ever had a character like me in it, so why would my story be just like so many others out there? I don’t want a cookie-cutter, fill-in-the-blank, put-your-name-here meeting story. If I told people I had met my mate on Match.com, their faces would light up in supportive understanding and they’d smile and say, “Oh, that’s so great!” And they’d mean it. Dating services are so common no one gives them a second glance. But I don’t want that reaction. I would have their same reaction to my own story if the story was that particular one. I want my meeting story to be one that catches them up in the romance of it. I want them to sigh and smile softly and say “ooh” and “wow” and exclaim, “Oh, that is so romantic!” I want to have that reaction. I want my own story, not everyone else’s story. I want a story that truly expresses how I drew him to me. Why, when I am like no other woman I’ve ever known and he is like no other husband I’ve ever seen and our journeys have been so unique, would our meeting suddenly stumble into the rut of the run-of-the-mill?
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And as I came to the end of my path in the woods, so too did I come to the end of my argument. As I stood there at the water’s edge, hidden among the reeds, gazing up in longing at the white moon in the blue sky which was scarred on my right with the bloody colors of the jagged sunset, I clasped my hands against the wistfulness that misted my eyes and whispered up to the sky above me, “God, is there no other way for me than Match.com, the one dating service left for me to try? Are you not wise enough and powerful enough and creative and imaginative enough – you created the giraffe, for heaven’s sake! – to think of a better story for me?”
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I wound my way back along the trail and up to the marina, still thinking. It occurred to me that though I have grown and matured and really come into my own, I have never altered in my expectation – or sometimes just desire – for a really great story of how I met my husband. I always wanted a romantic story. I can no more cut that desire out of me than I can the expectation that there is one man and one man only out there in this world for me. Surely God knows that. Surely the Secret will work with that desire the same as it will with my belief in the One. And I thought finally, for the first time, in time with my footsteps toward the water, I want a gloriously, grandly, surpassingly romantic meeting story. I’ve always wanted that, dreamed of that, but never have I so boldly declared it. And I unexpectedly felt a real frustration at that point. It seems to me that my meeting with the One keeps getting postponed because I keep needing to come to these realizations. My journals are full of them. I felt like, in the manner of all the other epiphanies, I needed to come to this one before I could meet him. And I got upset looking out at the water with furrowed brows, thinking, am I ever going to meet him? If I keep needing to claim these different realizations, will I ever meet him? There is always more detail to paint in the vision I have for my life. There is always more knowledge to grasp. How many of these life-changing moments of insight do I need to draw in before I’ve had enough to meet the One? I felt like saying, “Jeez, God, do I have to do everything?” Did I really need to stride into my bold declaration that I want a unique, romantic meeting story? Couldn’t God have done that on his own and just dazzled me? Before tonight, before I planned to register on Match.com, before It’s Just Lunch called, I had just been focusing on meeting him. Wasn’t that enough? Couldn’t the Secret have taken care of the “how” since it always knows the best, quickest, most harmonious way to your dream? So even though I knew this epiphany would be useful, as will all the others, in fashioning my life exactly as I want it, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated and wonder, “When will I have collected enough a-ha moments to have things in place for my perfect mate to come? Which epiphany will be the last one I need to complete the “before” picture of my life and open the door to the “after”?”
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I just want him to come. I want it to be time. I’m so tired of waiting. I’ve been on the cusp for weeks now. If I need to do Match.com, I will and clamp my mouth shut. If he could just find me, then lead him to me. I could respond now – as I couldn’t have not so long ago – all I need is for him to see me and be intrigued enough to walk up to me and start a conversation. If just a glimmer of why he is the One for me came through, I would happily give him my number. Couldn’t he do that? I am drawing him to me with all my power. Can’t he then find me?
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