Fickle Freddy

The dating scene these days is becoming more dismal and the pickings are slim. What looks good on paper is often not what it seems anymore, people are becoming more self indulged then wanting to settle down. You don't want to meet a guy at the bar or club scene however the guy you met last week at the singles event at church is giving every devoted Christian man a bad name.  My oh my what are we going to do with these men? Not only does there seem to be fewer options but there is more pressure to be "perfect", and when I refer to perfect it's all about how hot we are to be a catch these days.  A little arm candy and we are all set, at least for a month until we find ourselves back at the single events because prince charming turned out to be fickle freddy. Do I sound a little cynical here? Ha! That is not my intention but a lead into what we don't want to lose sight of as beautiful woman crafted uniquely by a God that knew what he was doing. 

As a girl who has finally found the love I've been waiting for it wasn't long ago that I was impatiently waiting for my own piece of heaven on earth. I wanted to meet someone but I was going insane with the what  the options were or shall I say lack thereof. I was going crazy until I realized that I was making waaaay to much of my singleness about men. My heart was being broken and I wasn't even in a relationship! My heart was breaking because it felt that I would never measure up to being fickle Freddy's dream girl. My lens became so skewed I was measuring my own worth on what a fallible man thought of me instead of what the eternal God created me to be. As my heart became heavier with my own self-inflicted expectations of how to be the perfect girl for the perfect guy I realized that I needed to change my views.  Like every other woman I see the gorgeous woman plastered on magazines in the grocery isle checkout line, I see the sultry ads, the Housewives of Beverly Hills, the "arm candy" of this generation. But if we really dig into those people's lives I'm sure we would come up with something that looks a lot like us. We would find a whole host of insecurities and pains trying to be covered up by airbrushed perfection. That is why  what is skin deep doesn't impress me anymore, what impresses me is the humbled heart of a woman fighting for her marriage or like myself a single mom raising a strong willed child. As my perspective on beauty changed I began to find peace that when the right man came along he would be taken by these same qualities I adore, the strength that woman have to be courageous and have dignity in a world "gone wild". 

Something valuable that I figured out is that I'm responsible for the condition of my heart and what I have to offer someone. I am responsible for becoming who I need to be and working towards that. For so long I thought I was unworthy of love because of a past relationship, but when I took charge of my life and sought out guidance I discovered that I was believing a bunch of lies and reminded of the truth. When we finally meet our prince charming we don't want to offer them a handful of our own  insecurities, we want to be able to offer warmth, trust, faithfulness and joy. Singleness gives us the chance to become those things, or restore those things and to recognize when someone else is offering them to us. When we wait sometimes we become restless and our eyes are only set on what we had hoped that would happen already. That is what happened to me, things had not gone as planned and I was disappointed all too often by the men I was meeting at church or out on the town. I was impatiently waiting for the next chance to meet someone and trying to achieve perfection of the most shallow attributes. 

Not until I remembered that I was a woman of God and that I have a spirit for the Lord is it that waiting changed to becoming. I didn't want to sulk around another night wishing I had met "the one" or stew in a big ol' pot of jealousy because others were in love. I wanted to become a rocking chick because that is what God designed me for, not to take a backseat in life until I said I do. Some of us struggle with that feeling of being incomplete without "the one" (insert ME here) but seriously there is so much cool stuff to do in the meantime of finding love like pouring out my heart in a blog for example:). In a place that has high standards of superficial proportions embracing our flaws and finding confidence in them is not an easy feat yet once we love who we are as we were created we will discover what we have to offer far exceeds the time of day we will give any fickle Freddy's. In a place that screams….why are YOU single, or have YOU been on any dates lately we need to put on the brakes, breath, and be okay with where we are at and set our sights on being a strong, courageous woman who knows that something special takes time and is worth the process of becoming in the meantime. 

Love from one rocking sister to another
Nicole Renee