Originally published on SingleBlackMale
These days most people are
praying for doors to be opened. Whether it is in their professional life,
family life, personal life or relationships, people are looking for and asking
God for an abundance of opportunities to get them out of their current
circumstances. If you hate your job, you pray to get an offer from a better
company with better pay and benefits. If the family is behind on the mortgage,
you pray for God to make a way to avoid foreclosure and eviction. If you car
sucks and you’re broke, you pray for an unbelievable deal on a good car. If a
friend is going though something, you pray for their healing and deliverance.
In essence we are praying for options. We want to have the choice to get out of
our current situation. No one wants to be stuck and be a bystander in their own
life. We want control. I’m definitely a fan of having options, except in one
area: relationships.
Coming out of high school, into
college I was the one woman type dude. When I found someone I liked I was 100%
full steam ahead. I didn’t want to talk to anyone else, kick it with anyone
else, hang out with anyone else, chill with anyone else – and this was all
before we were even official. I would be dedicated to earning her time and
attention. Then, I stepped on the college campus – women everywhere. Short
ones, tall ones, big ones, small ones – it was almost a page out of a Dr. Seuss
book. There was something for everyone. There were options, too many options.
When I dated, I started to always wonder, “what if?” I could have date lined up
and get a “what you doing?” text from someone else and start questioning if I
was missing out on something better. Sometimes it was so bad that if I was on
the date and got a text, I might try to wrap it up early so I could see “what’s
up.” Sad I know. All the options were a distraction and dating multiple women
was a headache – and I wasn’t the best at multitasking. Don’t be fooled, it was
the same for the females; they had their pick at school too. There were plenty
of times I asked a girl out and she would already
have plans with someone else. Like I
said, there were options.
Fast forward pass graduation and
we enter the real world. No incoming freshmen girls every year and depending on
the size of the city you’re in, the dating pool may be pretty small and
stagnant. But old habits die hard. There’s definitely less options, but they’re
still there. New ones walk down the aisle at church, show up for happy hour at
Applebee’s, and shop at the mall. Old ones still text out of the blue, bump
into you at Wal-Mart, and give you that beautiful smile that you originally
fell for and soon you’re back to wondering “what if?”
These days I don’t need or want
that distraction. These days I’m constantly praying for gifts of discernment,
recognition, and closed doors. That’s right, closed doors. I want to be wise
enough to recognize and pursue a quality woman – that’s the work I have to put
in. But I need help with the distractions. I’m actually asking for and wanting
God to close doors that lead to dead ends or would be a distraction to my
current situation. I want to date a
woman, one, singular. I want to meet her, court her, get to know her and follow
through to see where the situation goes. I don’t want to be multitasking women,
especially since I’m still not good at it. I want to be 100% in again, I want
to give it a good try, un-jaded by my past. I want to have a singular focus on
one woman to see if it could work out. If it doesn’t that’s fine too, I should
have learned something from it.
So obviously these closed doors
could be dead end distractions, I’m sure some of you reading this agree. Then
there are those that are reading that question that you may just be wasting
time on the wrong person if you don’t explore other options. I understand the
dilemma, but that’s where your maturity and faith comes in. You have to trust
that the person you’re with is the one God is meant for you to be with at the
moment (not sexually though, God doesn’t like that). Whether it’s for a season
or a lifetime there should be something to gain from the experience and pray
for wisdom throughout the experience.
After a lot of attempted
multitasking, I’m ready to leave the college ways alone and date in the
singular. I encourage the other men out there to do there same. Distractions
are just that, distractions. Focus on the goal, what’s sitting in front of you.
