How deeply do we believe God will come through for us—help us? Do we really believe it’s worth it to wait on Him—from the simplest auto repair to the deepest desire of our hearts—especially when His work and His ways feel so invisible?   King David faced this question at his time of greatest need. His enemies flat out told him that no one was going to help him, especially not God. “Many are they who say of me,” he wrote, “’There is no help for him in God.’” (Psalm 3:2)   Those words are still spoken today, often deep in the vulnerable places of a long-time single woman’s heart: If I wait for...

Over the past few days, a lot of single women have used Facebook to discuss the topic of my last post, living independently versus living in self-sufficiency. From what I can tell, it seems like most of us agree: Staying on the biblical path is sometimes challenging, sometimes conflicting, and always requires something of us.   It requires humility, but also expectation. Not only do we have to lay aside pride to ask for help when we need it, we have to be expectant that others—including men—will be willing to help us. Both of these attitudes go against our society’s grain, especially when we’ve...

OK, so we’re single. We have to be independent, right? As one of my friends in her 40s said—it’s not appropriate for us to be living with Mom and Dad just because we’re not married. Those days are long gone.   We’re responsible adults, forced, in many ways, to do everything a man does while still doing what a woman does. We earn a living, keep the house, get the car fixed, pay the bills, do the grocery shopping, make the meals, take out the trash and, if you’re a mom, carry the full weight of child-rearing.   Independent living, however, is different from self-sufficiency. One is...

So, whose fault is it—prolonged singleness? Is it the single person’s? Society’s? And for the believer, is it safe to give God and His sovereignty some of the blame?   In my last post, several of you made comments that touched on a couple of these ideas. I don’t have space to discuss all of them here, but for now, there is a point I’d like to make.   The world is not as it was, back in the pristine days of Eden. That garden is no longer part of our earth, which is now tangled and weeded. Life comes with stinging thorns and thistles, with painful disappointment.   Circumstances aren’t...

Lovely lady, why are you still single?   Maybe I should clarify why I ask. Prolonged singleness is an obvious trend in American society today. Did you know that half of the women in our nation are single?   Consider this. When God made the world, He thought everything He made was good. Genesis 1 records His thoughts after each act of creation: “…and God saw that it was good.” Sky and land? Good. Moon and stars? Good. Plants and animals? Good.   And then, the first man came on the scene—Man, created in the image of God. Yet, God made this observation: “It is not good for the man to...