Unka Glen

nspiredbyhiscreation asked: Hi Unka Glen! I have a question. It’s one I struggle with off and on, but here goes: I am 22 and have, in my entire life, NEVER been on a date. Typically it doesn’t bother me, and I go about my days knowing that when I am ready God will place me with a special guy. But then when I see what seems like everyone around me in a relationship, getting engaged and then married, I get depressed (and sometimes bitter) about it. And what’s worse, I know I’m not ready, not with Veterinary School coming up.

Unka Glen answered: When you get to Veterinary School, I’ll bet you’ll study bulls and their resulting B.S., and recognizing B.S. when you hear it would be of great use to you right now. In one paragraph, we go from it doesn’t bother me, to seemingly everyone around me makes me depressed and bitter, to all this is fine to ignore, because of school.

B.S.

If you can’t juggle school and dating, how are you going to juggle a career and a marriage? You’ve already put off dating to the point where normal and healthy emotional development are on the line here. You say that “when I’m ready, God will place me with a special guy”, but that’s like the old joke about the guy who prays to win the lottery every week, and finally he hears a booming voice from Heaven saying, “meet me halfway and buy a ticket.” 

I’ll bet that despite the overwhelming lack of results in the current plan, that you haven’t asked the Lord specifically if the right thing for you to do, is to sit at home and wait for the man of your dreams to come crashing through your ceiling as he falls from Heaven. 

So that needs to be prayed through, and when you do, you’ll get one of two answers. The first answer you may get, is that God does want you to date, and He intends for you to do something about it. 

The second answer you might get is that you have some major issue, an insecurity, or trauma from your past that isn’t fully resolved, or something, and God wants you to deal with that first. In that case, don’t waste your emotional energy on wanting a relationship that you’d only screw up anyway. Put all your focus into getting past your struggles, so healthy romance can have its day.

You know what you call a blessing you’re not ready for?  A curse.

But if the Lord says it’s time, it’s time. If nobody is asking you out, I am sorry, but none of us gets to live in the world of “supposed to be”, we’ve got to live in the messed up world of “what is”. If you want to go out, ask someone, and go. 

I suspect the only real problem with you, or the guys you’ve been around who have already wanted to ask you out, is this: when you put off taking any big step in life, year after year, and chance after chance, soon enough you begin to think of this step as a fearsomely huge and scary thing (otherwise, why didn’t I do it before now?).

But all I’m talking about is seeing a cute guy, who loves Jesus, and asking him if he’d like to get a cup of coffee sometime. It’s not really a date, it’s not the scariest thing in the world, it’s just coffee. Or ice cream. Or waffles. 

1 John 4:18 says “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.”