I wrote the words below the morning before I met Victoria. All speculation.

I didn’t read it again until I opened up my travel computer just before visiting her on December 9. Then I was stunned to realize I had met the same woman as I described here. It was like seeing a prayer before and after it was answered. If I had any doubts about the grace that brought Victoria and I together I no longer had them. When I went to St.Louis the second time I felt Victoria and I were meant for each other.

“a man who also acknowledges that life is a meandering journey bolstered by faith” from a Profile on match.com

I wanted to meet the woman who wrote this.  Match is a place to find every cliche and wishful thinking of single women. You find out how much they like to laugh and be charmed by looks, touches, and thoughtful gestures. You find out they don’t like men who take themselves too seriously, are carrying “baggage,” or want someone to cook for them.

O.K, I get it. We are starting over at age 60 or 70 and want to correct all the mistakes of earlier marriages. We have a short time to redeem the unhappy years of former relationships or exhaustion of the working years.

But even in retirement there must be more than letting ourselves go and breaking every rule we lived by for the first fifty years of our lives. Life has just as much meaning to retired people as to working people, or how could we retire contented? Are we all destined to drink ourselves silly on some beach on our bucket list?

I wanted to meet a person of faith, but there are code words that, too  I am not sure what they mean. I should “love the Lord” or “believe in God” or “attend church.” None of these are sure indicators of faith. Faith is something you live by and alters the way you make decisions. It is not a badge or membership card or an attendance record.  These are the trappings that make some declare they are “spiritual, not religious.” But even that classification is more of a disclaimer than a positive assertion. Not attending church is no more a sign of faith than attending it is.

I like the meandering journey part, because it shows that faith is no guarantee of the future . How could it be faith if it carried guarantees? We pray, we listen and we act as we think is spiritually wise, but we don’t have a path through the Red Sea or even an eye of the needle to walk through. We are seekers our entire life. It is a meandering journey.

Who is this shrewd woman who has come to understand faith in this profound way?And what is she doing on an online dating site? Is she as frustrated as I am trying to find a life partner in the grocery aisles of love? Has she cracked the code of the Profile to find men who see faith as an adventure, not a ticket to heaven? Until I found this meandering woman I had not deciphered the “spiritual, not religious” or “loves the Lord” that labels the believer on her pilgrimage of faith.

It’s all words, so maybe there’s nothing to learn from them until you meet the writer. Still I admire the woman who finds words that fit her and has the faith that some man interpret them as she means them. We are both on a meandering journey, and our paths are about to cross.