What Ingredients Do I Need To Be Considered “Datable”?
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. – Galatians 6:9
I’m a firm believer that we can learn a lot of life lessons from being in the kitchen. And I’m not just talking about how to keep your eyes from burning when you’re chopping onions or making sure you let brownies cool before you try to cut into them (although I’ve learned both of those lessons the hard way). I think cooking can teach us a lot about how life works.
For example, I recently made chili for dinner. I love to use my slow cooker for dinner every chance I get. Plus I’m a sucker for a good soup or chili recipe. So I got to work in my kitchen.
Now, if you’ve never made chili in the slow cooker before, let me assure you that it’s actually quite simple. I use a couple of cans of crushed tomatoes, some tomato sauce, tomato paste, ground beef, diced onion, garlic, and a bunch of seasonings. And no, I didn’t forget to say beans. We don’t like beans in my house, so I intentionally leave those out. Don’t come for me.
In all seriousness, though, you literally just brown your ground beef, dump everything in the slow cooker, and set the temperature to low for a few hours. That’s it. Couldn’t get any simpler, right?
Sometimes, I think we view our attempts to get out of our singleness seasons the same way we view cooking. We believe that there is a certain list of “ingredients” that we need to acquire, and once we have all of those ingredients secured, we’re good to go.
Some of these ingredients could be:
Finishing school
Getting to a healthy financial place
Securing a job
Practicing a healthy lifestyle
Going to counseling
Volunteering at church
Joining a small group
Cultivating a strong relationship with Jesus
Purchasing or renting a house/apartment
We’ve decided what we think a successful, attractive, “datable” person looks like. So if we can check off each of these boxes, then surely the Lord will bring our future spouse into the picture.
I know I had this mentality for a while. I thought if I did my part to get all of the “ingredients” together and become the best version of myself, then there would be no reason for me to need to wait any longer to be with the man I was going to marry.
So when I got to the point where I felt good about where I was at – out of college, living in an apartment, involved in church, pursuing a healthy lifestyle, working at a job I loved – you can imagine my disappointment when God didn’t bring my husband along immediately. In fact, it was a few more years after this point before my husband and I started dating.
Friend, I was forgetting something very important.
Just like having all of the ingredients to the chili wasn’t enough for me to put dinner on the table, checking off the boxes on the world’s “what makes me datable” list doesn’t guarantee you an instant spouse.
The one thing the chili needed besides the ingredients...was time. It needed time in the slow cooker before it was ready for dinner that cool autumn night.
As much as I wish it weren’t the case, God rarely (if ever) operates according to our timeline. We typically want God to function like a microwave when, more often than not, He works like a slow cooker. He takes His time. He has a perfect plan in mind, and He knows exactly how much time it’s going to take to see that plan come to fruition.
So if you’re reading this, and you’ve been struggling with trying to do all of the right things and “get your life in order” (whatever the heck that means) so that you can finally get married, I hope you’ll take the pressure off yourself.
Yes, it’s good to want to work on yourself. Yes, it’s good to pursue health in all areas of our lives. I’m not telling you to abstain from doing any of those things. I firmly believe each of those things on the “ingredients” list above are great goals to work toward. But I don’t want you to buy into the lie that you have to check off every single thing on that list (or even others that I didn’t list) so that God will drop your spouse on your doorstep.
Life doesn’t work like a video game. You don’t have to reach a certain level to get a certain reward. The Lord has a plan. He has the timing all figured out. Your only job is to continue to live in a way that honors Him, with the goal of becoming more like Jesus. As long as you’re doing that, you can trust your Heavenly Father to take care of everything else.