Just buy shoes.

In her most recent post, Sarith encourages her friends to try online dating. I respectfully disagree and offer this alternative: buy shoes. The price of a subscription fee will get you a decent pair of heels, and they will make you feel more beautiful than a bad date ever could.

To explain my point, here's a sample from one of my .com dates*:

Him: "I hope you don't mind me asking, but what were your SAT scores?"

[30 minutes later]

Him: "I know you didn't want to answer this earlier, but seriously, will you at least tell me what you got on the English portion of the SATs? Like, what's one big word that you know that I don't know?"

[awkward pause]

Him: "What's your most embarrassing moment?"

Me: [insert generic story about falling down in public]

Him: "No, I mean something R-rated. Like something that happened with a guy."

Me: "Buddy, my life is not rated R. If you're looking for something scandalous, you've got the wrong girl."

Him: "My most embarrassing moment happened when I was on a Contiki tour. We were in Greece, and we were drinking a lot, and I was kind of inebriated. I don't know, punches were being thrown, and there was this innocent bystander - I don't really know what happened, but my fist inadvertently connected with her face, and-"

Me: "Wait . . . Did you just say that you punched a girl in the face?"

Him: "Yeah. I was really drunk. I just punched her."

Me: "What happened to the girl?"

Him: "Oh, she was on the ground. Totally out cold."

Technically, because he actually paid for my dinner and asked me out a second time, this was the best date I've been on all year. I declined the offer to see him again, however, and canceled my subscription a few days later.

Sarith has a better perspective on casual dating than I do, and if you're one of the fortunate souls who can roll with the punches ("you know, like when a bad date inadvertently connects with your face . . ."), then go ahead and follow her example.

Yet because this blog is all about grace, I will say that my online dating adventures have taught me a thing or two about trust.

The honest reason behind my subscription was not that I actually thought I would find love through the internet, but because I was impatient. Sometimes, I don't actually believe that God cares about my heart issues much. When I pray about this stuff, I picture Him like an unsympathetic guy friend, rolling his eyes because I'm distracting Him from more important things, like getting to the next level in Contra. He sighs, puts down His controller, and says, "Em, you're just too picky." Thus, I signed up for online dating to signal to God that I was serious and was about to take matters into my own hands.

Seven truly horrible dates later (remember the one where the guy talked about his back hair?), I cried uncle. And then I cried, "Father!"

God is pretty good about letting me make small mistakes but saving me from the really big ones. He knows me better than I know myself; thus, He knows that the type of heart He gave me was not designed to be tossed around and poked and prodded. It's not a heart you practice on. It's delicate, which is why it's surrounded by so many protective layers. Some of those layers are things that I control, like who gets my attention and how much. But one of those protective layers is, apparently, time. God alone is in control of that layer, and I will gratefully defer.

*Normally I wouldn't make fun of a date on the interwebs, but seriously - he punched a girl in the face and then laughed about it.