Not because she was a spiritual powerhouse who was doing amazing work among the young girls of a developing country
For years my parents’ church supported a missionary in Nepal who, by all accounts of her ministry, was the definition of badass. But – and I’m not sure where or how I learned to think this way – even as a young girl, I distinctly remember praying that I would never end up like her.
Flash forward a couple of ily of outrageously adorable children and as we walked to the park, one of the girls asked me if I had a little girl of my own. I said I didn’t. The first girl stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk and exclaimed, “You mean you don’t have a man?” It took everything in me not to burst out laughing – largely because, as most of us realize when we get older, having a partner often complicates, rather than simplifies your life.
I am a Christian woman in my mid-30s, and I am single. And though I enjoy a life that I would consider abundant – full of friends and family, great professional opportunities, a decent level of financial freedom, and above all else, an extremely deep spiritual relationship with the Creator of the Universe – I recognize that to many younger women, I’m a cautionary tale. Because I am single.
Some of these thoughts came to mind as I read the New York Magazine excerpt of Rebecca Traister’s book, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation . According to the piece, we are living in a new era in our country in which there are more single women (defined as never-married, widowed, divorced, or separated) than married women.
“Perhaps even more strikingly, the number of adults younger than 34 who had never married was up to 46 percent, rising 12 percentage points in less than a decade. For women under 30, the likelihood of being married has become astonishingly small: Today, only around 20 percent of Americans ages 18–29 are wed, compared to nearly 60 percent in 1960.”