Laura Bennet – Author

This week I’m delighted to offer another guest post from Brendan Bennet, an excerpt from The Miracle of Us: Confessions of Two Online Daters. Brendan gives us a glimpse into his initial experience with internet dating…

I began my internet dating experience on a secular website. 

Silly Me! My first clue should have been the computer generated initial ‘hi’ for this site was a kiss. A bit forward, don’t you think? I mean kissing on the first date would be pretty irregular especially before even being introduced.

I received my share of interest from people who I declined politely. Those were individuals twice my age (and I was 47 then), not resembling a female (who am I trying to kid, not even vaguely female), escaping war torn nations, believers in the god Pluto (the Disney one), and shall we say, business ladies.

Despite some hiccups, I did connect with a couple of ladies who I ended up meeting in person. One of the ladies decided she was too independent for a serious relationship and my having three children required someone serious about family! I went out with the other women four or five times for some laughs over drinks and dinner. We became friends and had some good times together, but we were not interested in each other romantically. No other situation presented itself. Still, it was refreshing and fun to meet these ladies and realise that being single might not be a permanent situation.

It soon became apparent, however, that secular dating sites might not be the best place for me to search for my life partner. In view of my Christian beliefs, it was desirable to meet a like-minded lady. It would be a disaster if we found out later that our philosophies and beliefs conflicted, and we couldn’t get along because our values were misaligned. Trouble was I didn’t even imagine there might be such a thing as a non-secular dating site.

Technology is not my strong suit. I only recently learned that search engines have, for a very long time, had the ability to tag linked accounts, such as email, with banners for businesses that might synch with the activity on the account. Given I was on a dating site as well as various Christian sites regularly, the search engine must have married those two activities and come up with the banner over my email advertising a dating site called Christian Café. I don’t believe in coincidence; I believe in Providence. I felt this began a long list of interventions that brought me and my family to the U.S. where God gave me Laura as His gift and blessing for healing, new life and wholeness. Mark down finding Christian Café through a banner advertisement as intervention number one.