My parents have gone code-red on my non-existent dating situation. Asking me point-blank if I’m still secretly waiting for B____ to come back (thank heavens for verbal dexterity so I can throw them off the scent without lying), doing Match.com again for me, sending me profiles, and finally asking me tonight to see a professional again like I used to because one shouldn’t hate and dread dating as much as I do (the disadvantage of throwing them off the B____ scent was over-emphasizing the I-don’t-want-to-date scent).
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Had this come up a year ago, which, well, it had, many times – I would have caved under the deluge of doubts fostered by others’ honest concern. I would have rolled over my own feelings and conceded the match because I had no way of having conviction in my own instincts.
.
Not now.
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Believe me, doubts have come – honest soul-searching, brutal inspection of my own desires and my claims to love God above all else. But listening to my parents tonight, validating their concerns and unhesitatingly conceding that I have not one rebuttal to their arguments, merely quietly stating what I will and will not do, and not budging an inch: I believe this comes from this months-long “separation experience” with God. I no longer rely on them or their counsel quite so heavily. I love them no less, and I take their words into careful consideration as always, but even their concerns for my mental health – which at one time would have rocked me to my core – simply couldn’t uproot my conviction.
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I feel in my deepest core, my farthest reach, my truest spirit, that I am doing what is right. Do I know how it will work out? Heck, no. Do I get really tired and lonely sometimes, knowing I can’t share this with anyone yet? You bet. But I know my God. He will make his way known to me. The closer I’ve drawn to God, the more of my life has burned away in my burgeoning desire for his presence, the surer I have become that what I knew all my life and tried to change the last few years is as true as my own name: I was made for one man and one man alone. It required thirty years of trying and failing to connect, of going on so many dates with so many different men, of feeling so persistently different that I thought I was truly defective, for me to stand on what I had already known from my childhood: it was never going to work with anyone but The One. Only one man was created, designed, just for me. And I could do all I’ve done and somehow continue to do for just one man. No other.
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And knowing as my parents don’t believe I do what I risk losing, I say with calm certainty that if B____ never came back, I would remain alone. I cannot settle for a nice man so I can get a family and some conversation at the dinner table. Even for the irreplaceable gift of having a witness to the whole of my life – I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t made that way.
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I’ve always felt different from other people because I am. I am not the rule. I am the exception. I know that from my head to my toes. That question was from God, and yes, I am willing to wait for B____ as long as it takes. Because there is no alternative. I have to be true to myself. So bring it on, you doubting Thomases, you stubbornly defiant circumstances. I am still more stubborn.
Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
Though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
Though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful to God my Savior.
The Sovereign Lord is my strength.
He makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to go on the heights.
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-- Habakkuk 3:17-19
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