Fully baked

At some indeterminate time in the past (I can't recall exactly when, so let's just say about a year ago), my friend Allie described to me the metaphorical similarity of baking a cake, to being single and/or dating. You see, when you pull a fully baked cake out of the oven, it is complete, in and of itself. But if you're like Allie or me, you want a little (or a lot of) frosting on the cake, to make it even better. The cake is still a cake without the frosting, but the frosting helps enhance the cake's existence - it's taste, it's appeal, basically frosting makes everything better.

With this metaphor in mind, in March I sent the following text to my friend whom I call "Girl #1", because she was the first in-person date I had from eHarmony (we went for a few dates, decided we weren't a good fit romantically, but remained friends and supporters in each other's quests for "true love") :

I'm doing well. Finding a good balance of life, work, devoting time to churches, and friends. Have had a few dates and also a lot of "no"s but I remain optimistic! She's out there. I'm also at a tremendous peace of saying my life is good and complete, I do not need another person to complete me, though I would still like to share life with someone. It's like baking a cake - I'm completely and fully baked (wow this was not the best metaphor) but I'd still like to have frosting on top.

That may be the first and last time you'll ever read me utter the words, "I'm fully baked"...

Less than a month after I wrote that text, I went on yet another first date; "Girl #20" I call her, though I'm pretty sure she has a real name, too. And we've been dating since then, coming up on 6 months now. (that is one reason why I've not had as much time to blog recently, but I do like frosting on my cake, so I think the trade-off is worth it). I mention that because I'd started scribbling notes for this blog post back before aforementioned relationship, and so you must read them in the context of single-Jeremy:

I'm not going to claim I'm 100% "there"; I think finding this peace is a life-long journey, but I'm closer than I've ever been before to saying:

1. I completely trust God in this (actually, I think I'm there)
2. I'm okay with being single for right now because life is good, life is complete; and
3. in the words of my friend Janelle's friend Rusty when I visited LA last December: I need to be equally okay with being single my whole life as I am with having a relationship / being married; if I'm not equally happy with both of those outcomes then it means I'm not trusting God fully.

Here's to being fully baked and trusting God to supply the frosting.