Craigslist Revisited

I posted my ad on Craigslist almost 48 hours ago, and I've gotten 76 responses thus far. The vast majority of them were well-written. A few were practically novels. But here's the problem: I don't know if I'm going to be that interested in any of them. In a romantic sense, anyway. Some of the responders sound like very cool people, and I realize that in person what I'm attracted to often differs from just a photo--but based on the photos, I don't think any of the ones who wrote decent responses are that attractive. In my subjective opinion. I emailed some of them back anyway, since some of the guys I have considered physically attractive in person I would never have dated if I'd just screened on the basis of photography. But there you have it.

The other disappointing thing is that even though I got a million emails, many (most?) of them don't seem to match even the criteria in my post (in summary):

- A committed Christian who agrees that the vast majority of so-called Christian music sucks.
- Loves to read.
- Enjoys intellectual conversation, banter, and debates.
- Enjoys travel.
- Has a deep appreciation for the arts.
- Is chivalrous and understands that even strong women appreciate it when someone takes care of them, even if they'd be reluctant to admit it.
- Doesn't smoke, and is at least 5'9". (A little taller than me.)

So I guess I'm disappointed, though I wasn't hoping for that much. You'd be surprised how many guys who say they aren't Christians or are just spiritual responded. But to have so many emails and still figure that I'm unlikely to want to really date them is kind of sad. Maybe things will play out differently than I imagine. One or a few of them could have charisma in person that doesn't come out in a photo. But why is it so hard to find the combination of intellectual, personable, and physical attractiveness that I long for?

CraigsList

Note: I've been lurking for a while. Thanks for the invite to join the blog!

Most of you are probably familiar with CraigsList. Well, I don't have the money to sign up for eHarmony, so I tried posting an ad on CraigsList instead (without a photo....). I wasn't expecting terribly much (I swear most of the posters are older white men with Asian fetish, older men looking to be sugar daddies, or twenty-something men who just want sex). But it's free, so I wrote a very detailed post and waited. I got back around 60 replies, most of them reasonably well-written. But one I got came from a man who must be crazy. In addition to his strange email, I recognized him. He'd posted an ad with a photo a little while ago in broken English looking for an Asian woman (yeah, I usually read through the ads for amusement) . And it's clear that he can write fluently, so I was actually pretty offended. (What, he needs to "relate" to Asians by writing incomprehensible English?) Now, I don't get offended easily in general. But he has to be in his mid-forties. And I wrote in my post that I'm 25. (Can't blame him for trying?) Here are the more interesting parts of what he wrote to me (his typos/errors are amusing):

My taste in music changed dramatically after receiving our Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.

Yet, what an eye-opening surprise it was to find worldly music creeping into the churches.

3 years ago I stopped watching hellivision altogether with very few exceptions, Sci-fi (haha!) being one of them.

I have a healthy dislike for being manipulated and I know TV viewers are offering themselves up to be brainwashed, tempted, socially engineered and seduced by the programmers of the TV networks.

I too, do not worship the Shrub from Washington D Ceive us.

Shrub's grand daddy was caught trading with and supporting Hitler during WW2.

W's daddy, announced we are in a New Word Odor while he pretended to be our president.

'W' and John Kerry both admitted on TV on the very same Sunday that they are members of Skull 'n' Bones, the most Satanical organization on earth.

When asked the very same questions, word for word, both admitted Skull 'n' Bones is a "secret" society and both refused to divulge what that secret is to the American people as they both snickered and laughed in the faces of the American people....

We know what the foundation of the problem is and Jesus instructed us in Mt 24 that "many" shall come saying that I am the Christ and shall deceive "many."

The word "many" is key. I now understand that real Churches with real pastors that teach the real truth will be more and more unpopular and the Main Stream so-called churches will continue to grow teaching false doctrines, tickling the ears of the hearers.

Me. I write poetry, publish a local business directory, entrepreneur, jurist, researcher, truth-movement activist and I'm a single pastor of a New Testament Church.

I'm highly interested in talking to you about God honoring music.

It's a very challenging subject. I do listen to a wide variety of music presented as "Christian", however, as a pastor I error on the safe side with my heart well focused on protecting the Church from inappropriate music.

One family we affiliate with loves my preaching and I have opened this brother's eyes on a number of things pertaining to the Word of God and the Church, but, his family singing group uses taped music that is the kind of music I do not allow in our Church.

So, it's very refreshing to me to read in your ad about how particular you are about music you deem to be Christian.

I think he missed my point about music entirely. I wrote that the majority of so-called Christian music sucks. Not that we have to protect ourselves from inappropriate ("secular"?) music.

1 Corinthians 7:8-9

Someone posted this on the Relevant Magazine message boards as a joke, and I thought it was hilarious:

Dear sir,
I am currently experiencing burning passion and feel it is biblically necessary for me to get married. Please help me in this area of my life, in Jesus' name, and take me out tonight.
Thank you.
the desperate girl next to you

It's an idea. :-p

a little naked honesty

I -- once -- was better
I put off all my grief
I put off all my grief

~Sufjan Stevens


I woke up in a rage today. It's beginning to happen more frequently, where the absence of a body next to me in the bed makes my eyes hot and my stomach clench. I seethe in the shower. I hit the accelerator a little too hard on the way to work. I slam papers and staplers down on the desks. I yell at the computer for booting up too slowly. I kick the copier just because I hate it.

But then my boss talked to me this morning about "fishing," and asked me some questions about what kind of man I'm looking to find, and gave me some tips on where to go to find him. He concluded the conversation with, "We need to get you someone. We can't have you sad all the time."

And I thought, Sad? Angry, almost always; sarcastic, definitely; ferocious, yes -- at least about this topic. But I'm happy about plenty of other things. My cat, my cooking, my friends, my family, God.

He's a shrewd one, my boss. He doesn't miss much. Under every emotion I emit, there's a grief. Every day I mourn my aloneness. I can't shake it.

I'm not sure why the human psyche almost instantaneously converts sorrow to anger -- perhaps because anger tends to give a person strength, and I need to hold it together through each day, not fall apart; or perhaps because anger is easier to handle. I'd much rather be furious than sad. There's something -- well, anger burns, and that can be distracting and thrilling. Nothing compares to a brilliantly constructed, irate sentence that pointedly gets across something true in the meanest way possible. Anger causes pain. Anger is satisfying.

Grief is not. Grief saps the strength, dulls the ambition, kills the wit, swallows joy. And I think I feel guilty about grief because it doesn't get anything accomplished; it's not productive. I can do a lot in one day when I'm in a rage; I can barely get out of bed when I'm swamped in sorrow. Which is fine if you're mourning the death of a pet, or the loss of a job, or the protracted illness of a loved one, because you're supposed to grieve in those situations, and the grief eventually fades as you cope, heal, and keep moving forward.

But this? This aloneness? This lack of companionship, lack of physical intimacy, lack of love and touch and purpose and children? This shallow dependency on a job for life fulfillment, instead of a family? I carry it with me every day, everywhere. It doesn't end. There's no set expiration date on my single status. It could end tomorrow, or it could never end at all. It's not a grief that comes from loss; it's a grief that comes from absence, from never having had, and so it's not something you necessarily go through the Five Stages of Mourning or whatever to get past. I go through them all the time, and in no particular order. Some days I deny that I care, or I'm angry, or I try making deals with God, or I cry, or I'm content. But I don't get over it. The cycle spins out all over again, from day to day or even minute to minute. It has no locus in time, so time doesn't heal it.

I tend to ignore the fact that all anger stems from hurt or sorrow. Probably most other people do, too, and so we seem to be a rampaging army of Angry Young Women, and we look scary and estrogen-charged and unreasonable, when if you were to view us when we're alone, you'll probably find us sad, because the one thing we want most is continually denied us, and we don't know why, and we can't see a way out, and it hurts us.

I wake myself up crying sometimes. I was built to belong to a family, to have my own, to be someone's companion and helpmeet and lover. I was built to raise delightful, beautiful, confident children. But time continues to pass, and I'm alone.

So there it is. My rage and accusations pinpoint pieces of truth, but they also mask a sorrow so consuming I'm never free of it, even in my moments of blazing joy in Christ. And it's especially horrible because I don't understand why this yearning, which unfulfillment is the wellspring of the grief, hasn't been fulfilled.

I know it's better to be alone than to marry the wrong person, but why haven't I found the right person? Why hasn't he found me? Why does no one ask me out? Is there something wrong with me?

I'm not incomplete in myself. But I'm incomplete in my life. And I don't understand.

You are talking like a foolish woman.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. - Asimov

Well, I was wrong.

If you're wondering what I'm talking about, skip back 2 posts. FWIW.

I've been reading The Sacred Romance and MAN has it been hitting me where I am right now. A bit more directly to Sarah's point...

The battles God calls us to, the woundings and cripplings of soul and body we all receive, cannot simply be ascribed to our sin and foolishness, or even to the sin and foolishness of others. When Jesus and the disciples were on the road one day, they came upon a man who had been blind since birth. "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?" they asked him. "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life." And with that, Jesus spat on the ground, made some mud to place on the man's eyes, and healed him (John 9:1-7).

Many of us who are reading these words have not yet received God's healing. The display of God's works through our wounds, losses, and sufferings is yet to be revealed. And so, we groan and we wonder.

I was reading this on the plane the other day and had a stark realization - I wasn't born at the time of Jesus because theses truths would have been lost on me more than they were on Peter.

And so...I groan. And I wonder.

Unexplored Options

Well, I’ve done it. I’ve become my own Lewis and Clark of resolve and exploration following the Sacajawea of eHarmony across a vast and hitherto undiscovered terrain of searching singles.

It was a pretty sudden switchover. I’ve been against online dating on principle for a very long time. I thought it wasn’t putting enough faith in God to bring someone along that I could meet for the first time face-to-face. I thought it was reckless and foolish (what? Meet a stranger for dinner? It’s worse than blind dating! What if he’s a predator?). I thought it was for losers who couldn’t hope to meet anyone unless they hid their faces behind a computer screen.

Until I turned into one of those losers. I was having a conversation with MP the other night and we were writing down strategies for meeting new people. Looking at the list, I realized I would have to make over my entire leisure time structure in order to do it. Because all of the things I most love to do don’t take me out of the house. What are my favorite hobbies? Reading, writing, cooking, knitting, watching TV on DVD, hanging out with my cat, and eating dinner with friends. I don’t tend to meet new people in my apartment; if I did, I would probably shoot them. I just don’t get out much, and that’s the kind of person I am – I like the comforts of home.

I do enjoy the occasional trip to a city, the occasional outing to a botanical garden or a beach, but when I do it’s never to meet people; I go to visit friends, or take friends along for company. I’m reticent and shy with strangers. I strongly prefer the known to the unknown.

Which severely limits my options. About the only workable strategy I have for meeting new people in South Bend is to go to the Notre Dame law library for bogus research projects for my boss in hopes of stumbling across an up-and-coming young lawyer. Other than that, I’m sunk. This isn’t an age when it’s easy to meet people. I’ve given up on finding someone in church. The people I meet at work are criminals or future divorces, and my boss and his wife don’t socialize much, and don’t know anyone my age. I am one of four staff members in the office, so there’s no hopes of meeting some interesting male coworker. I haven’t met any serious-relationship material through my friends in the grad school. My family is far away, so it’s hard for them to recommend anyone. And with there being a strong undercurrent of No Community in neighborhoods and cities – no barn dances or barbecues or socials – you don’t run into people much outside of church, work, friends and family.

Which leaves the online community. In an era without community matchmaking, where your friends and neighbors aren’t actively seeking to marry you off, these online dating systems provide the next-best thing – a supervised method for getting to know people who are looking for a serious relationship. You don’t really have to sweat a person’s intentions – they’re right there on the screen. You can survey their personality and interests, their goals and life pursuits in a rational manner, to see if this is someone you can picture being with. And it’s fairly safe.

So I went to eHarmony, which has the best recommendations, and filled out their survey to get my Personality Profile. It was dead-on, by the way. And what I liked about it were three things:

1. The only options were "I’m a man seeking a woman" or "I’m a woman seeking a man." I just really liked that – it means the site is marriage-minded (sorry, some of you).
2. It was founded by a Christian.
3. The survey didn’t focus as much on interests and hobbies as on personality and pursuits – who I am, what I want out of life, and what I want out of a partner. Because really, it doesn’t matter if (and is unlikely that) the man I marry likes exactly the same literature, music, and movies that I do. What matters is whether what we want out of life, and our characters, are compatible. Can we live together? That’s the real question, and this website matches people based on those lines.

I hung back from actually subscribing – that’s the dive into perilous water. Until this morning when I was notified that one of my matches had requested communication. As I only have two matches so far (I KNEW I was a tough one to match – I even clicked on four different states), I thought, well, here goes...and took the plunge.

So I’m now a member for a year, and have one more bill to pay, but the more time passes, the stronger I feel God’s call to family. Two years ago, when I was looking to leave the retail business, but had no idea where to go next, MP asked me, "What do you really want? Don’t think about it, just answer. What’s your ideal job?" And I said, "Not to have one." And now it’s become not just a wistful yearning for the future, but a purpose. Every other ambition and goal pales to that call. I’m supposed to be a wife and a mother. I’ve been praying about it for months. If I’m going to walk in obedience, I need to stop hanging around waiting for God to make it happen. It’s time for me to "strain toward what is ahead," not just hope for it. I have my part to do, too.

So, maybe you think I’m insane, or the years of singleness have turned my rational brain to pudding. But I’m tired of this. I’m tired of being alone. I want more.

This appears to be a reasonable option. At the very least, it’s a way to meet people who are similar to me, and it should yield some great stories.

(Okay, someone come out of the woodwork to support me.)

FWIW

There is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him. - Steinbeck

I'm fresh off of what I can authoritatively speak to as the worst month of my life.

Some of it was the travel. I'm on a new project - consulting with Walgreen's outside of Chicago, so I'm there Monday morning through Thursday evening on your typical week. I flew out there and worked the week before Christmas, and then flew home to California from there. After Christmas with the folks I flew down to Dallas / Ft. Worth for the wonderful wedding of one of my best college friends, Kathleen - she was wedded on New Years Eve. After New Years it was back to Chicago for more work, and then home. All told, nearly a month not in my own home. As an aside: for so many years I resisted calling a place not in California my home, but that paradigm has certainly shifted at this point. You get to missing your own bed.

Some of it was the work situation - there's a lot of it, I'm in an area I don't have particular expertise in, we're behind schedule, and if all that were not enough, we have management that is jerking us around on the hotels we out-of-towners are staying in. At this point we've worked our way back into the relative luxury of a freakin Courtyard, relative to where we've been the last couple of weeks. There's a Westin just down the street that is delightful, that other people from my company on other projects are not restricted from staying in, but apparently that's just too good for me, for the extra few dollars a night. And I'm going to be out there for more than a few months.

Some of it was the quasi-relationship I have or have not had for the past few months as the case may be. Long story short I met a fabulous young lady that (from my point of view) works on paper just great, but I just don't get the feeling that the timing / etc. is going to work out. Its quite maddening - which if you know my history I'm sure you can begin to understand. She's been out of town for the month, so February should be interesting.

Certainly a huge part of it is the "is this all there is?" whisper I've been hearing from the dark corners of my heart lately. I've completely lost any passion for work, but what's worse I've lost most hope / positivity on other options - going back to school, finding some other line of life pursuit, etc.. And its not just work - I haven't had the desire to write, to read, even the one day of skiing I got in so far this year seemed an empty experience next to any other day I've ever spent on snow.

And then of course there was Christmas. Long story short I had a certain part of my reality turned on its ear - and certain things in my life will never be the same. It wasn't the best time for me to find out what I did, but in retrospect, it was the right time. That's really all I can say about it at this point, and probably ever.

Its just been really, really tough.

But thank God that's not why I'm posting this.

What I am simply amazed by as I type this out is the "strength for today" I've been granted in these darker times. I may not have the "bright hope for tomorrow" at this point, but at the very least, if I can look back upon days of strength granted, I can hope for at least that much in the future - I just need to keep telling myself that.

I have this strength because, in large part, God was preparing me for this time over the past year. At least one way that comes to mind is through my pastor's preaching. I've been listening to him for almost 5 years now, and while his underlying theme is usually one focused at communicating the gospel message to those in need of it, there are the recurring side-themes that I benefit from in different ways. This past year, one new thing I began hearing was that, for most of us, its not until your mid-twenties to mid-thirties that life starts really throwing you the big curve balls that begin to help you define your true character and hopefully find that its rooted in Christ. These curve balls come primarily due to the consequences of sin - whether they be damaged relationships, intimate betrayals, the loss of health in one's self or a loved one, or sin's temporary triumph of death - and the important thing to realize is that they are indeed coming.

That said, I just wanted to throw this out there for the times that you may be down. I feel there's two important applications of thrusting the pain of real suffering into your horizon. The first thing is - in the down times, think about where your down is: are you down, or are you really down? You may be the latter, but most times its just a concentration of the former - in which case you need to think about all the wonderful things that you are blessed with right now, rather than the one or two in particular you might not yet be.

And the second thing is that, yes, the big drops on the roller coaster of life are indeed around the corner, if you haven't yet already been in one. But there's hope in the fact that God only ever gives us enough grace for one day at a time: "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own troubles."

But there's an even greater hope in the fact that our God is one who knows where we are when we do suffer. To paraphrase my pastor, the Cross may not tell us why suffering can happen, but it clearly shows us that it can *not* be because He does not love us. We have a God who walks with us when we are in the shadows.

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, of the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; and it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify what has happened. - Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov