Praying For Closed Doors

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.