A few weeks ago, I was biking in a park.  I paused to let some other family member catch up, and overheard a small part of a discussion between a man and woman as they were walking on the same trail, and passed me where I waited.  The conversation went something like this:

(man) "You're a nice looking woman.  I'm sure the right man will come along."

(woman)  "The thing is, my generation is screwed up, and the next generation is f***** up."

That's quite an assessment of the past 2 generations – this woman was in her upper twenties.

The conversation reminded me of another one I heard years ago.  That woman was telling her friend that she was having a difficult time finding the right man.  I knew this woman a little, and that her search scope was pretty much limited to the bars she spent time at.  I like that the woman had the discernment to recognize a good man from a rotten one (or sadly, that she had experienced enough bad men to be discouraged).  But if you were shopping for an elegant mansion, would you usually start by looking in the slums?

But the twist on this article isn't that we're shopping for our man or woman in the wrong place – it's that our shopping location has already tagged us as the kind of people we are.  The places we find these bad candidates are OUR FAVORITE HAUNTS.  And worse, we're not content with someone who hangs out in these places – but that's what we're doing!  Really, we don't like who we are, nor what we're doing with our lives.

Poop draws flies.

So what are you going to do about yourself?

My personal experience is that I need help to turn my trajectory around.  I've been enduring who I am, and struggled with ME and progress isn't happening.  I've tried many tricks and techniques to fix myself, and it's not happening.  I need something incredibly powerful to fix this mess.

And that would be God.

Sometimes as you drive thru the slums, you come across a beautifully well-maintained home.  A lot of love and care is poured into that home, and it's striking how it contrasts with the homes around it.  This is like how God comes, when we ask, and moves into our beat-up life – showing us how much He loves us, and how he guides us to a better life – a better way.

Perhaps the man-hunt or woman-hunt can be put aside to let God reshape us, to become something other than the poop we now see.