So this one is risky. Opening up and sharing with others one of your desires can feel vulnerable because it might not come true. You may fail in all of this. You might have to meet a few different guys and put yourself out there. You could like a guy and he not like you back. You might get ghosted. He could be a scumbag and just hurt you. Your friends might think this is risky, or desperate, or too forward. They might not support you, or support you too much. It feels so weird to want this. It feels so foreign to say, “I want to get married.” Is it even okay to own that, to want that?

 What does the Bible say about dating? If I want it, does that mean I have to pursue it, and is that wrong. Can a woman pursue relationships?

To me there is a total difference between pursuing and being open to it. It is a process. There is awareness, then deciding to be open or closed, and then taking actions towards it.  

I think the way we have been taught leaves us closed off to dating. When you are closed off you make yourself unavailable, you come across uninterested in it. You don’t take any action towards it at all. There are a lot of things that I am closed off to that I don’t even realize. Most of the time it is the things we aren’t thinking about. I put very little thought into becoming a good bowler, or speaking French, or learning piano.

Recently I decided to become open to something. I felt God tugging my heart towards learning how to love better. He wanted me to love offenders, people that had harmed or hurt others. As I became open to the process I began to think about ways to be around those types of people. I reached out to our missions pastor to learn about our jail/prison ministries. This is all something I had not only been uninterested in, but actually unaware of. Then as I opened up to the possibility of it, I had to take action towards it. I had to fill out a form to get approved to go into the jail. All of this required me to take action. You could say I pursued it, but the first step would be me willing to be open to it at all. I am not afraid of this opportunity, I am open to it and willing to take action towards it.

It would be good for you to own where you are in the process. Are you aware of your desires? Are you open to meeting guys? Are you willing to take action towards meeting guys?

Listen, just because I was open to it, didn’t mean I was quick to reach out and find out about the jail opportunities. I think it took me like 6 months to actually learn more about it and then a few weeks to act on it. I wasn’t ready, but man when I was ready, I was willing to take action.

If you aren’t ready, that is all good. If you are ready, then you might want to take action towards it. But wherever you are own it. Own that you play a part in this process. Own that your thoughts are creating how you engage with it. Own how you feel about it all. Just because you have negative feelings about it doesn’t have to keep you stuck. It is great to be aware of how you feel and know that negative feelings will be apart of it. But you are willing to feel them for the end results.

Also, own your part in it. Own what you want to do and don’t want to do. Own your judgments of others around this topic. Own your fears about what other people will think. Decide what you think about it and own that, even if others don’t have the same belief. Look through the Bible and determine what you think God is telling you about this. See why God gave Eve to Adam. Understand relationships and even Song of Solomon. Determine what will guide you in all of this. Make some non-negotiables for yourself.  Some of you need to determine ahead of time how physical you will get. Some of you want to decide now how much time you want to spend with someone at first. Think through it all. Spend time investigating your thoughts about dating, guys, you, your ideal man, and even marriage. See what is going on in your brain around all of this. Give yourself the space to process it all before you get into it. When you walk through this ahead of time you are able to tap into your prefrontal cortex and think with some of your best thoughts. When we just react in the moment we tend to live from our lower brain and are filled with negative about it all.

Go to the place where it works out for you and see who that version of you is. See who she becomes in the process and what she believes. Own that you are not that person yet. That you want to become that person and that you are willing to do what it takes to become her.

I see you becoming her,

Angie