Singles: Is God your Wingman or Pilot?

This is a light heart post.

I’ve been thinking about relationship and courtship recently given my upcoming trip would include teaching about the biblical view of courtship but I’ll be doing this in a culture where match making and arrange marriage is not unusual.

For the longest time I thought I was a matchmaker.  But recently I discovered I wasn’t a matchmaker.  Not by the standard in other countries where Pastors and parents really are match maker.  I soon discovered I was more of what some people call a “Wingman.”

I just learned this term last month: Wingman.

What is a wingman?

This is what Wikipedia has to say:

Wingman is a role that a person may take when a friend needs support with approaching potential romantic partners. A wingman is someone who is on the “inside” and is used to help someone with intimate relationships.

A sister in the Lord first mentioned the term to me and then one of my friends said he can see me being a wingman for another brother.

Now I know some have taken the term wingman to be something else that might not be all appropriate with the bar scene; I don’t think that is essential to the definition.  Instead I want to focus on the term wingman more of the one who helps a friend to be in a relationship.

I guess I have a long history of trying to help friends get together with someone.  But I always wanted to do it in a spectacular fashion (the folly of youth).  I’ve always viewed it as a mission being that weird military geek that I was in high school.

In freshman year a close friend had a crush on a girl.  He wanted to deliver her flowers.  At her house.  As in a whole shopping cart full of flower.  What sounds ridiculous to everyone seems to make so much sense to us freshmen.  In a day and age before any of us freshman could drive I came up with this plan where he would take the bus to her house and I would rollerblade with the shopping cart there.  That way he would arrive “fresh.”  I would be going up and down hills and get all sweaty.  Not to mention going around with a swinging cart with rollerblades that had little brakes.  In my mind I thought it was like a military mission where I was “taking one” for the team.  Actually it was only for him.  I was such a weird military nerd back in high school.  I arrived with the flowers.  Then I rollerbladed away for him to do his stuff.  I pulled the mission and happily did it as the background support.

Of course there were the countless missions where I went directly to someone on behalf of a friend, being the bearer of good news, or so I thought.  Or sometimes I was the mailman.  People wrote letters back then before text message, facebook and email was popular or even around.  I’ll be the guy to find the locker and put the note in.

By senior year we were able to drive.  A close friend from junior high moved far away near the beach.  He liked a girl in a totally different school.  This was before 1-800-FLOWERS or whatever it was called.  We were closer to where the girl lived.  So I got another friend to drive while I purchased the flower to drop it off.  I think I even signed the card on his behalf.  Maybe even wrote a poem or something like that.  While I was doing all of that in the car we got lost.  Not surprising since we were high school drivers before the day of GPS and I was also the navigator with an old Thomas guide (later in life when I was a Marine I was finally able to multitask land navigation and other things).  When we finally got to her house we have been driving a long time.  I was happy that this was going to be another successful mission.  I knocked on the door and delivered “the package.”  But then I notice my friend the driver wasn’t next to me.  And there was smoke.  Lots of smoke.  His car overheated and he was panicking.  After the girl finished sniffing the flower and being pleasantly surprised we had to sheepishly ask if it was ok we use her hose to cool the car down.  She gave us a strange face, said yes and closed the door.  We drove back but had to pull over constantly to cool the smoking car.  But what matter to me was mission accomplishment: She was going to go to some dance with him.

Of course there were the missions that blew up in our face.  I’ll never forget my senior year when my best friend back then thought this girl liked him.  He wanted to go to prom with her but he was too shy to ask directly.  Unfortunately since his intel operators and analysts were only getting information from him we were nothing more than an echo chamber.  And since we relied only on one HUMINT (Human intelligence) source sometimes you don’t get reliable information concerning the human terrain of whether or not the girl’s heart was with him or with someone else (or her heart just simply stayed in her heart).  Since she was in my math class in the last period of the day I had another friend there too as we approach her.  The other guy muttered “we know you like him” and she looked like she was going to throw up.  We didn’t know what to say.  Obviously my friend’s campaign of winning hearts and mind weren’t operationally effective.

All the’ high school stories aside, high school was also a dark time for me that culminated with my expulsion.  I came to Christ as a result of that.  By the grace of God a year after my expulsion the board allowed me to return.  By that point I was a  new Born Again Christian and a kid that wanted to evangelize everyone.

I learned in high school that some people appreciate a wingman.  After becoming a Christian I also began learning that many people want to be the pilot of their own life.  Some will insist on being the pilot even though they continuously crash and burn in pursing relationships and love according to their own way.   Yet they still like the idea of a wingman: Someone who will help them by their side, and be there cheering them in their corner.  They might consider the possibility of allowing God as their wingman though they don’t want God as their pilot.  But what they really need is not God as their wingman but their pilot.

My single brothers and sisters, have you trust God as Lord of your life even in the area of the relationship, courtship and marriage?

There might still be a role for others to be your wingman but God should be your Pilot.  Let God be God and trust in Him with His timing and His ways.

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