What to do when Sunday Morning becomes a Match.com Mingle.
(Here’s a guest post from Rachel Mueller. You can check out her blog here or follow her on Twitter @rachelmueller. If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here’s how!)
What to do when Sunday Morning becomes a Match.com Mingle.
I live in a fairly average size city with a high concentration of Christian people. In fact, my city was once known as the ”Christian Ministry Headquarters.” But what there seems to be is an alarming lack of young single Christian men. I decided to turn to the internet to help my quest.
Being a good Christian girl, my go-to was eHarmony. What I got from that website was two stalkers. Literally. However, the inability to browse on eHarmony kept me relatively anonymous. I had no idea if GodsWarrior247 is the sweaty hand-shaker during the greeting, or MarkDriscollRox is my fellow youth leader. (“Though I walk through the pews of my Sunday morning, I will fear no awkward IRL encounter” should be their slogan).
Three strikes took eHarmony out so I hesitantly and rebelliously joined Match.com. The ability to specify my dream man (6′, blue eyes, brown hair, Christian / Other, doesn’t smoke, college degree, in case you were wondering)* gave me literally hundreds of options in my 100 mile radius.
Blessed Be the Name of the LORD! I had walked into the Land of Milk and Honey. In fact, I felt this was a fleece given to me to start my Wedding board on Pinterest. Surely my David was among these men.
But very quickly I saw familiar faces. A boy who I actually dated. Another one I went on a mission trip with, and another who used to be roommates with a friend.
BLOCK BLOCK BLOCK. I hit that blessed button as fast as my Spirit-led fingers could move.
But, soon after, a mustached smiling face appeared in my Daily Matches. I clicked his profile (knowing that he would see I had viewed him) and held my breath. Nice looking, good use of grammar, loves the Lord (or so I gathered from his creative use of C.S. Lewis quotes and Mumford & Sons being a favorite band), and played guitar. I winked and waited. He viewed my profile and didn’t wink back. The online equivalent of “but she’s got a great personality!”
Sunday morning I arrived a little late to church, hurried to find my friends, and settled into my seat. I looked up and nearly choked on my fair-trade organic coffee when on-stage was my C.S. Lewis quoting, Mumford & Sons loving, guitar playing wink.
I ducked down trying to hide my 5’9″ frame. What now? Do I acknowledge that we both looked at each other online? Do I strike up a conversation? Do I ignore him? Maybe I should just change churches. WHY IS THERE NO RULEBOOK FOR THIS?!
So I’ve devised my own. Obviously there are 7 rules because that’s the Lord’s number.
1) Remain calm. They may not know that you know they know you are both looking for love.
2) Alert a wing(wo)man. This is key in helping you make an emergency exit.
3) If possible, initiate conversation elsewhere. Avoidance is the name of the game.
4) If forced to converse, do not bring up online dating, love, romance, Facebook, email or anything else that may potentially connect you.
5) Send out the bat signal so said wing(wo)man can intervene and run interference, allowing you the excuse of a coffee refill or bathroom break.
6) Immediately rush home, check “who viewed me,” to see if they know that you know that they know you’re looking for love.
7) Pray the Lord does/doesn’t tell them you are the One.
If all else fails, enact the Emergency Contingency Plan: Sermon Podcasts for three weeks. Let that dust settle before you go kicking into awkward territory once more.
*dream man parameters have been expanded
What about you? Have you ever run into a match at church?
