too picky...

I'm so grateful for friends who feel comfortable holding me accountable. It becomes almost easy to encourage our friends, but I think it's so important to also challenge each other.

One of my best friends who I've known for 15 years and served as her maid of honor picked my brain a bit regarding my singleness. She's always encouraged me to not sweat it... God has a plan... etc., but this time she dug a little deeper to ask why certain guys weren't appealing to me or why relationships hadn't worked out. I still believe most of my relationships that haven't worked are because we weren't on the same page in our faith journey. I think I settled. They met everything else on my list of "must haves" or stayed off of the list of "deal breakers," except having a relationship with God that comes first before everything else. Her point was what if we reversed it... if someone was completely sold out for Christ and putting Him first, does anything else matter? Can we throw out the lists? I wanted to keep non-smoker on my list and she even challenged that... saying he could work on it. I had to ask myself... was I being too picky?

Fast forward a week later and I had a chance to go on a date today. He confirmed he was a Christian and despite not having gone to church in a few years, said he "certainly would go with you and be more involved. You might need the person I need to get me back on track." Those are the hard ones. It's flattering to know I could help encourage someone in their faith journey, but I'm not sure how much I think it should coincide with a dating relationship or even male-female friendship. He seemed nice enough and I continued to talk to him before agreeing to meet him today. The last few days I grew uncomfortable with his forwardness. In a relationship it would probably be considered sweet or romantic, but 24 hours into communicating or three days into texting, I was uncomfortable. I kept challenging myself... am I being too picky? Or is this God nudging me? To be honest, I'm not sure he met the first requirement to allow me to drop my other requirements.

I've just been challenging myself to discern God's guidance with my own pickiness. I don't want to be picky... but I also don't want to settle out of impatience.

Here's to not being picky within God's will...