Why I Will Continue to Wait for "The One"

Dear Christian ladies (and gentlemen). I'd like to take a second for a personal rant. I've seen a few articles circulating lately along the lines of "There's No Such Thing as 'The One'" like this one, and I am starting to disagree with them.

 Let me start off by saying I agree with the general tone of these articles. I understand that there is no one who will be "perfect" and that marriage is a lot of hard work. I think this is a message that many young girls need to hear, especially in a world of romantic comedies, and Christian romance novels. I HAVE seen girls nit-pick at great guys, just because they think there may be someone better out there.

 The danger I've started to see, especially within the Christian community, is one of settling. Girls thinking (like Charlotte in Pride & Prejudice) that they may never be asked again, and since no one is perfect they may as well marry the one they're with. They may not be wildly in love with them or be "best friends", or even particularly attracted to them but they are "good enough". These type of articles often encourage girls to look at guys, not in a light of whether they are attracted to them or not, but more analytically, in a light of do they cover a basic checklist of loving God, and making a good husband (in general). This mindset gets pushed even harder the older a girl gets. By our late 20's we are told our standards are too high and it's implied that we may have missed out on many "eligible matches" by "waiting for the one God has planned for us."

 I am beginning to wonder if this is responsible for as many divorces as the fairytale mentality. In a fairytale delusion a girl wakes up one day, and realizes her marriage is not a Disney movie, and it's more work than happily ever after. In the settling mentality a girl wakes up one day, and realizes that her marriage is nothing But hard work, and she doesn't even particularly like or share any interests with the person she is married to. Both extremes are equally dangerous. Dumping someone because they have issues, and waiting for God to drop the perfect guy out of the sky is not the answer, but deciding that you just want to be married, and any eligible bachelor will do is not the best decision either.

 I DO believe that God has designed one person that will be THE BEST POSSIBLE partner for me, not that we won't have struggles, but that God will have designed us to work well together, and the struggles will be worth it. I've seen friends get married to "the one" and they've told me that he surpasses any other guy they've ever dated. That they were "perfect" for them. They still fight, they have to work at the marriage, but they knew that this was the person that God had intended for them to marry. That is why I will continue to wait for "the one" God has planned for me, rather than settling for "just being married".

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