So, a little while ago I bared my heart in relation to the
journey Papa had taken me on in regards to dating. It felt a little brave and a whole lot
vulnerable but I have been blown away by the comments I have received, especially
where my story has given freedom to others to pursue their own journeys. I love how when we are obedient to what God
asks of us he has a beautiful plan already worked out. He truly is so good!
This then, is my next step in obedience in relation to this heart
journey as I share what he has been teaching me in the process. Again, this feels vulnerable but obedience
can be costly! I hope you are blessed,
encouraged and challenged as you read.
The night I signed up to the website I felt God say that I
needed to wave at someone. I didn’t want
to, I wanted just to have signed up and that be the end of it. However, I knew God was saying that if I did
not do something then I would be ruled by fear in relation to this. So I waved at a couple of guys. It was hard for a few reasons, firstly
because it was quite hard to find profiles of men who truly did appear to love
Jesus and want to live sold out for him, then there was how vulnerable I felt
even thinking about waving at someone and lastly, God has done this big work in
my heart about being created to be pursued by a man and here he was asking me
to make the first move!
I did not get any response and didn’t want to wave at anyone
else and while talking to God I felt him say that I could just sit and
wait. A friend then said to me that if I’m
not out there to be seen then I can’t be pursued. This felt like confirmation that I could sit
and wait and see what happens.
By this time, I had already realised that whatever the
outcome of me being on this website in relation to meeting any potential
husbands, the most important thing for me is this heart journey that he is
taking me on. I just knew that there was
going to be numerous lessons for me that would be harder to learn if I wasn’t
on this path and this is already proving so true!
So having waved, I waited.
I had a few waves, not from the men that I had waved at but from
others. When I checked out their profiles
though it felt like they hadn’t read my profile at all but just waved and so I
just sent them a message saying I wasn’t interested. Though I didn’t want to take things any
further I wanted to honour them with a kind response.
This was the first week and then nothing! Lots of things went through my mind,
including changing my profile but having chatted with one of my close heart
friends, who said that my profile was a good representation of me, I decided
not to.
After a couple of weeks of not having any responses I began
to get a little frustrated. As I was
chatting with God I felt that he said that I should go on and look and wave at
some people. So I did just that. As I spent ages looking through profiles of
men to see whether they sounded passionate for Jesus I got more and more
disheartened. Not because I didn’t find
any who appeared to be passionate but I felt like I was making a judgement on
every person that I closed the profile on, and to be honest, this was the
greater majority. After what must have
been at least an hour, I had waved at 3 men but that was hard going.
The next day I went back to God. I don’t want to trawl through pages of
profiles. I don’t want to feel like I am
making judgements on people just from a picture and a few words. I want to believe that it is possible for a
man who loves Jesus to wave at me and that something can start from that. I also believe that this is a journey of my
heart, that I am learning what is important to me and that I am truly happy
whether this journey with online dating leads to a relationship or just leads
to my heart being more whole. I am
loving the process because it is drawing me closer to Jesus and that means it
has to be a win/win situation whatever any other outcome happens. God is so good!
So, then the waiting.
Actually, to be honest, it doesn’t feel like waiting. It’s just something that is there in the
background and crosses my mind when someone asks about it or when my weekly
review email comes through. The review
email tells me men have been looking at my profile and that is enough for me
because I have realised that if they like my picture enough to look further but
then are put off by my profile, we’re probably not a good match anyway. God is so good!
Then last week I had my first email contact. It was from someone who had previously waved
but I had said thanks, but no thanks. As
he had persisted, I thought I would say hello back. We chatted by email over a couple of
hours. He seemed like a very nice man
but there were two things that concerned me; that he lived in London and that
he didn’t go to just one church, though he did talk about how important Jesus
was. We said we might chat again the
next night and I left it at that.
As I chatted to Jesus when I went to bed I became aware that
for me it was important that any person I looked at having a relationship with
had to be committed to a church. There
are lots of reasons why this is and I won’t go into them here, I just knew that
this is something that is non-negotiable to me.
I also realised that I would much prefer to chat with someone who is
closer to home. This, of course, meant
that I did not want to continue chatting with the man who had waved at me.
The next day I sent him a message explaining this. It was important for me to be kind and honest
in my message. He responded that he was
disappointed but not surprised. This was
such a blessing to me because it made me realise how much God had done in my
heart. Just how much healing he had done
and how different I am.
In the past I was more interested in attention than where
the attention came from. I would also
lead men on to believe my feelings for them were greater than they were if it
meant I got attention. Honesty was not
one of my strong points in relationship.
God has done so much healing in me over the past 21 years that this is
so far from where I am now and I am so grateful that he is using this journey
to let me see the reality of this healing.
God is so good!
So, here I am, still waiting. Still happy and very excited for where God is
taking me on this journey. I am so
thankful that God is more interested in the process than in the destination and
that when we know this, it is so much easier to have joy in it. I am thankful that his heart is to see my
heart healthy and whole and me living in the fullness of who he created me to
be. I am thankful that he is in this
journey with me, I am never on my own.
I hope you have been blessed by this post and that whatever journey
you are on, whatever process you are walking through, that you would find joy
in knowing that you are never alone in it.
He will never leave you or forsake you and he will get you wherever you
need to get to, to the fullness he created you for.
Happy heart! Blessed
indeed!
