Love and Shoes

Yesterday, one of my friends expressed his confusion about why none of his ex's wanted to marry him, a thought which I think most of us have had. Unfortunately, there are a million reasons: timing, agency, preference, compatibility, fear, the list goes on. But what came to my mind was that selecting a spouse is a whole lot like selecting shoes.

I love shoes, but I don't just walk into DSW, grab whatever looks good, and take it home. Shoe shopping takes time, patience, precision and feeling. When I enter a store, I'm not only looking for something that looks good, but something that fits, and has the right price tag. Most importantly, the shoe needs to bring out some element of my personality; I need to love it. There are plenty of shoes that I think are cute, but just aren't me.

In my experience, dating is exactly the same. Someone may be attractive, and their personality may fit with mine, but there are some prices that I'm just not willing to pay - things I'm not willing to sacrifice - to make the relationship work. On the other hand, everything could be perfect on paper, the look, the fit and the cost, but something's just not there, even if I want it to be. Therefore, I'm convinced marriage takes an act of God. It's honestly as baffling to me as the creation of the world - just as I don't understand how the world came into being, I cannot fathom the strings God has to pull to get two people fall in love with each other - at the same time.

So in the mean time, it's all about hope. Not hope in a person, or a situation; but hope in the Lord. Hope that He knows not only what's best for us, but when it's best. I can't tell you how many times I've almost bought a pair of shoes, and walked out because I knew they were too expensive, and then came back months later only to find them 80% off. And that, my friends, remains the hardest part of singlehood: to trust that one day, that perfect pair, wrapped up with everything in it's proper place will appear.