I did say it. All those months ago, when I first started using the Secret last January, when I had only the book Mom and Dad gave me for Christmas in a last desperate effort to give me hope, and I would go for runs with my “Wistful” mix on my iPod and my breath would frost in the frigid air and my fingers would freeze, and I was exploding with hope and a blazing vision of finding my mate after so many months of dark hopelessness – all that long time ago, I did say it. With conviction, with hope, with joy: “This is the last winter I will spend alone.” I thought to myself in my sobering reflection of the lonely years of my life that I wasn’t going to stand for it any more. No more cold with only my own heat to warm me, no more holidays with only three people to cook for, no more redolent, evocative scents of autumn and winter to arouse my soft joy with nowhere for it to go. I determined it and threw my newfound, untried, blissful faith into that determination.
.
But I have considered, furtively, hoping to get away with these thoughts, that the dark moments I’ve had in the intervening months, those periods when I despaired of ever meeting the One, when my own faith was revealed to be the earnest yet faulty thing it is – if I was counteracting that determination to spend no more winters alone. I couldn’t help but wonder if my focus has split or if my joy and faith weren’t enough, but then I would wonder if all the times when I did believe was enough to take the hits.
.
Time will tell, but I’m inclined to answer, “yes.”
.
It is the middle of October now and I had just over the last couple of weeks begun to wonder, in spite of my faith, how that determination would come to pass. Time was a-wastin’, and I was still no closer in manifest reality to meeting my mate. It is not my job to worry about how my future will happen only to believe with unwavering faith that it will. But I am only human, and an admittedly analytical one at that. So the question was there.
.
Well, ask and ye shall receive. My mother had mentioned It’s Just Lunch a couple of times over the last few weeks and I had always shrugged her off. I thought It’s Just Lunch couldn’t possibly be the vehicle of the future. That wasn’t inspired action, that wasn’t easy and harmonious. That was a cut with lemon juice on it, that was a blister that wouldn’t ease. And I thought I would meet my mate at my new corporate, non-female-dominated job, with loads of context to make getting to know someone easier. So I didn’t give her suggestion another thought.
.
Until last Tuesday, Life always blindsides you on a Tuesday afternoon, doesn’t it? I got a call out of the blue from It’s Just Lunch. They’ve called a couple of times since I put my account on hold two Junes ago, but once a year had passed, I assumed the membership was void and I was rid of the thing, and good riddance. So when they called because they had happened upon my file, I was merely annoyed. When will I be rid of them, for heaven’s sake? was all I was thinking. I politely but quickly refused renewal of my membership, and promptly forgot about it until later that night when it occurred to me that this could be the answer I’d been looking for. And felt my stomach drop into my shoes. Surely not, I thought. Was there no other way? What kind of sick cosmic joke was this?
.
What I really wanted was to talk to someone who knew if this was the path I should take, but anyone I talked to I knew would say yes just because they thought I needed to do something. “For heaven’s sake, Nicole, just do it. Do anything!” And that wasn’t the insight I needed. I wanted God to give me a sign. I may have been humbled and more malleable in his hands than ever before, but if I was going to go back into that particular foxhole, I was going to need something more to go on.
.
And then I had my hair appointment with Stephanie Duggan, who is like my monthly mentor. I swear, the girl has a standing invitation to my wedding. By the end of our appointment, I had found the perspective I was looking for and had perfect peace about calling It’s Just Lunch back and saying, “Hell, yeah.” Here’s a synopsis:
· The real anxiety when I rejected It’s Just Lunch out of hand was the virginity issue. I automatically anticipated the awkward disappointment of turning a guy off before too many dates because he would inevitably incorrectly interpret my slow pace as either frigidity or disinterest. And, as Stephanie pointed out, I’m going into it anticipating that one thing and so I’m putting out a lot of negative energy. I need to focus on anticipating a man who is cool and on the same page, who is respectful and old-fashioned, who has no problem with me needing more commitment before I get more physical. And I can just say, when or even if that point comes, “I’m just not ready for that yet. I need a little more commitment before I go there.” There is someone out there who believes as I do, and who is looking for a girl like me. Who wants a wife to have those particular morals.
· A perspective I had never had before which I now hold to is that God did put scales on all men’s eyes when they looked at me. And even if they looked and liked what they saw, there was no response in me. I had taken each of those lackluster dates or failed-to-launch relationships as evidence of something wrong with me or something wrong with them or proof that I was just too different to have a match in any man I would meet. I saw it as a failure, a negative thing that only made it harder to keep looking. But even though I’ve been told it’s a harmful myth that there is only one person meant for you, only one person with whom you could be happy, I have never, never been able to excise the belief that there is only one person out there for me. So if there is only one man out there like me, who can satisfy me, who can understand me, then how could I not have a lot of experiences where “it didn’t work out” or “I didn’t feel a connection”? If only one experience was going to work out? So that throws my whole dating experience in an entirely different light. Maybe eHarmoney and the bar scene and It’s Just Lunch didn’t work out, for whatever reason, because he wasn’t there yet. What if he’s there now and that’s why It’s Just Lunch called, long after my membership hold expired?
· I have felt for some time now that meeting my perfect mate is right around the corner, that I am on the cusp of my longed-for future. And maybe it has finally come.
· I worried about regressing to my old, nervous, ragged, hopeless self if I dived back into traditional dating – the me I was before the Secret. And I didn’t want to lose all that I had gained, all that I had learned about me and life and hope from the Secret. But I am too changed to go backwards that far. I know too much. I have too clear a picture now in my head of being with the love of my life, someone who cherishes what I uniquely have to give. I can visualize with remarkably little effort going on a date and making the connection and going from there. I am different, so my experience in this unchanged situation must be different as well.
· I have done everything I’m supposed to do, with feeling happy and hopeful on top of it all, to bring my mate to me. I have used half of my closet and dresser drawers, leaving room for my mate’s things, I sleep on one side of the bed, leaving room for him, I have written out a detailed list of the qualities I want in a man. And above all, and most powerfully of all, I have begun writing detailed accounts of my life as I wish it. Those are so powerful, it’s like looking through a window into that life. I have done everything I can, I have taken every suggestion, done everything I can think of to have the feelings of having it now. It has to work. It’s too coincidental and I believe God is too much in control for this to be some random fluke that goes nowhere. As it says in the Bible, does God bring you to the point of labor and not bring to birth? All of this, all of these efforts that I’ve invested for months into my future have to work. They have to yield something grand. It would go against the law of attraction and the law of God if it didn’t. and it occurs to me for the first time, as I write this, that those journal entries of my life as it will be only started a little over a week before that call came. Coincidence? I think not! I am powerfully drawing him to me. He doesn’t know why he is doing things he’s doing, or why certain things are happening the way they’re happening, but it’s all because I am singing him to me. He’s searching for me and he will find me although he doesn’t yet know quite how or when. But he feels as I do, that it will be soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment