Meeting Eligible people

“WHERE DO I MEET THEM, AND WHAT DO I SAY?”

A true “How I Met Her” story: I was in the supermarket three blocks frommy house.

Every Thursday night I was there getting the groceries I need. I came to the end of an aisle and looked right but turned left…and I saw her. She was sharp—not stunning, but sharp. As I cruised by (I have this great peripheral vision) I glanced at her left hand and, hallelujah, no wedding ring. She was someone I wanted to meet. She didn’t have any kids with her, so that was another plus for me. I kept about 20 yards behind her, and even though I’d selected everything on my list, I kept looking as though I was looking for more items. I was planning my time so I could get in the checkout line right behind her and strike up a conversation.

She headed for the checkout line and so did I. A family with five noisy kids was headed the same direction and I could see that they might cut me off and beat me there. I gunned the shopping cart and cut a corner real close. Too close, in fact. My foot hit the display of two hundred tightly stacked cans of beans. They began to tumble slowly at first and then an avalanche. As they did their thing, I did mine. I fell. Flat on my face! And as I did, I involuntarily shoved the shopping cart and it took off.

You guessed it! It shot across the floor on a straight line towards that attractive woman. It was a perfect shot. Right in her behind! I wanted to meet her, but not that way.

By this time the laughter fromall the people shut out the sounds of the bean cans. As she turned and looked at the cart with no one there, her eyes scanned the chaos to see who the perpetrator was and found me spread face down on the floor against the bean cans. I smiled. She laughed. We met. The rest is history. I wouldn’t recommend that method, but it worked for me.

Where to Meet Eligible People

Where do you go to meet eligible people? Does it just happen as in this case, or do you work at making it happen?

Some feel you will meet the right person by happenstance. Others contend you need to be aggressive in looking for a potential partner. Keep in mind that the greater the number of people of the kind you would be interested in, the greater the possibilities. It’s best to look for abundance. I heard the story of a high school teacher who had turned 40.

She suddenly realized she really wanted to be married. But being a teacher, she had neither time nor energy during the school year to look around, so during the summer this became her project. She used personal ads in singles’ resources and went to numerous events and activities that she enjoyed. For two summers she did this, and during that time she actually interviewed 68 men. She married the 68th.

Working at this project is a much better possibility than waiting for that predestined individual who’s just going to one day out of the blue fall into your lap. And for many of these examples that do “just happen,” when you look back you find that there usually was some orchestration of time, place, and events that occurred. It is true that you need to pray. Seek God’s will for your life—whether being married or remaining single—and then ask for His leading. But you just don’t sit at home waiting for a knock on the door. It’s a combination of praying, waiting, and looking. I’ve talked to several people who grew up in small towns.

They said they didn’t want to move fromtheir town, but since they didn’t find someone in college, they figured it would be better to live in a large city for a while so they could spouse￾hunt. There just weren’t that many available attractive prospects for themin a town of 4000.

This may sound simplistic to say, but it needs to be said, and you’llsee why later. If you’re interested in marriage and interested in a certain person, is that candidate available? You may be interested, attracted, head-over-heels in love, but if they’re not available, your efforts will be unrewarded. There are some people who are available and others who aren’t.