A few weeks ago I received an interesting question on my weekly Q&A show on Instagram. The reader asked: “Do you think dating is just practice for divorce, like many conservative groups say?” I was a little surprised I’d never heard this before, given my own acquaintance with purity culture. It’s the perfect lay-up to the courtship conversation. And it’s a question we really need to answer in an age of temporary love.
I'm posting this episode of the podcast a little late - it actually ran a few weeks ago. In it, Lisa and I discuss the different approaches Christians take to marriage, often summed up with the terms "complementarian" and "egalitarian". A summary of both views can be...
A few months ago I challenged married people to stop alienating their single friends. The relationship between married and single believers has, for many years, been anywhere on the spectrum from awkward to hostile. Singles feel left out and set up by their married...
There I was at 29, getting dangerously close to that next milestone birthday, feeling lost and wondering desperately what in the world was going on with my life.
Being 29 and single, especially in the South, will make you question everything. It will make you question if God is paying attention to you, like He seems to be your friends. It might make you question if you screwed up along the way and this prolonged season of singleness if just a form of punishment. It could even make you question if God loves you
We’re told, when we get married, we can accomplish more together than we ever could on our own. That when two become one, marriage is greater than the sum of its parts.
But what they don’t tell you is that marriage isn’t just the gain of a partner; it also involves loss.
After dating over two years, this reader’s boyfriend still isn’t sure he wants to move forward toward marriage. What’s a girl to do?
When we met and first married, my husband knew much less about the Bible than I did. I’d just spent four years getting a degree in religion from our Christian alma mater; his degree is in engineering. I’d just spent 24 years being discipled by parents who intentionally taught me the Word of God; he’d committed to following Christ wholeheartedly in the last three years. We entered marriage equally yoked in love for God and desire to serve Him, but I was, and still am, the more biblically-knowledgeable person of our pair.
If you’re one of the many young wives in my blog community, this is for you! The first two years of marriage are a season of incredible transition. Young wives sometimes struggle to communicate with their new husband, to understand their own emotions, and to navigate the new waters of home management and intimacy.
This week on my Q&A show, Ask Anything Monday (hosted on my Instagram), I was asked:
“Why are so many 20-30 somethings still single? Is there a reason people marry later or are Christians too picky?”
I answered with four theories why I think this trend is growing in western culture:
When I was in my teens, my bookshelf held titles like I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Beautiful Girlhood, Emotional Purity, and Ladies in Waiting. While I think these books contain some good concepts, I honestly wish I’d never read them. Their purpose was to motivate me to live my singleness for God; instead, they focused so much on waiting for a relationship, much of my early single season was spent wishing I wasn’t single! The emphasis on “waiting” made it seem like singleness was a holding pattern; some sort of in-between time until I arrived at the Destination: a relationship.