A Spiritual Depression

“Really? A person like you is single?”

“Why don’t you just try online dating?”

“You’re still so young. You have LOTS of time!”

“Don’t worry—the right person will come at the right time!”

Yes, a person like me is still single, and believably so, in my mind. I have tried online dating. You know, I don’t feel like the youngest person in the world. Yes, I know I still have lots of time. Above are things many people have told me when I vocalize my feelings about wanting to be a wife and have a family someday. They probably mean it to come off as consoling, but more often than not it comes off as condescending. I’m 26 years old, which isn’t exactly SO young, and for someone who wants to have a family someday, I don’t think it’s wrong for me to feel disappointed that this dream may never come true.

I see scores of single young women at my church like me—passionate for Christ, involved in their churches, excelling in their careers and still wanting to settle down and have a family. Yet they vastly outnumber the number of young men in attendance. Most men I spot at church are either married oron the arm of someone else already.

According to one website committed to changing the demographics and shrinking the gender gap in churches, on any given Sunday there are 13 million more women who attend than men (churchformen.org). Church congregations are, nationwide, 61% female and 39% male. This is not just a problem in America, though; it is pervasive worldwide. Apparently, “churches overseas report gender gaps of up to 9 women for every adult man in attendance.” Why is this? I blame it on the Spiritual Depression.

In 1920’s France, there was a high increase in the number of marriages linking a young woman to a much older gentleman. We’re talking 20+ years of a gap in age. Yikes. Look around Europe during the following twenty years, and you see a similar trend. Why? War. World War I decimated Europe’s population of young men, and the ensuing years heard them named The Lost Generation. In 1930's United States,  the same sort of thing happened, although it was the war of poverty that starved many women's hopes and dreams. My great grandmother was one of 12 children in her family, 9 girls and 3 boys. To my knowledge, less than half of the women were married. Why? The Great Depression. SO many were struggling financially and physically that marriage was out of the question. I would argue that we are seeing similar numbers of unmarried single women in churches today because of the Spiritual Depression.

We are entrenched in war. Not in a physical war, although that still remains a problem. We are fighting a spiritual war. Young men (and women) are falling as casualties in a war of lust, pornography, greed and narcissism. Pornography has raged rampant throughout our culture in the last 20 or so years since the birth of the internet and has ruined men’s minds in regards to how to have a healthy relationship with women, both platonically and romantically/sexually. The part that breaks my heart is that our culture has embraced and accepted this as “men being men.” NO! It goes SO much deeper than that!

I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the fact that there are many young men in my generation with whom I am good friends and who have confided in me that they, too, have experienced the frustration of feeling that all of the quality women who follow Christ are already taken or are greatly dwindling in number. I don’t want to ignore that women have fallen casualties to different sets of cultural diseases. However, the statistics don’t lie. Men are far more at risk.

So, what can we do in all of this? To those of you who are like me—millenials feeling the weight of disappointment and broken dreams—you aren’t alone. Change that frustration into fuel to pray for our generation and for those who will come after us. Pray for strong young men and women who will fight the good fight of faith together.

For those of you who have been the ones saying, “Well, you’re so young!” or “Don’t worry—you still have time!” please stop. It doesn’t help. Instead, let us feel the weight of disappointment and say instead, “I’m sorry it is so hard for you. It sucks. Is there anything I can do?” Chances are, most of us will react more positively to that and will be grateful for the empathy. In all of this, we need to remember that we are broken people living in a broken world, and though it might not feel like it, Christ is still Sovereign. I may never see the realization of my dreams of being a wife and mother, but thank God there is so much more to life than that. Thank the Lord I have family and friends whom I love deeply, a LORD who cares more about my soul than my happiness, and a faith to get me through. These are the things that will never disappoint.

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world's darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore take up the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you will be able to stand your ground, and having done everything, to stand...." ~Ephesians 6:12-13

On Conflict

“STOP IT! AH! STOP!!!!!” I was alerted to the conflict brewing in the back corner of my classroom by a shrill scream. My students froze and looked at me, awaiting my response. Immediately, I issued a request to the other students, “Alright class, please keep working on your end-of-the-day jobs.” As the classroom shivered to life again with bustling second graders, I quickly swooped over and separated the two students who were in the heat of battle. I asked the boy to quickly and quietly go to the buddy room, and had the other student take a break. Once her breath had ceased to come out in heaving gasps, I gently crouched by her and asked, “Could you please tell me what happened?” She choked out that she had been cleaning up around her table, and getting something off the floor when the boy had hit her from behind. She said he did it on purpose. I thanked her for letting me know her side of the story.

When I asked the boy about it, he explained that he had been jumping around, excited about the end of the day (I usually play some clean-up music and he likes to dance along to it), and hadn’t been looking where he was going. In his second-grade exuberance, he had flung his hands out and accidentally hit the girl as she was standing up. She thought he had done it on purpose. He had done it on accident. Of course, as seven-year-olds, their responses were purely emotional, and each reacted on a presumption of the worst about the other person. The fruits of these hasty assumptions were screaming and shouting at one another, disruption of the classroom, and inevitably, tears.

When I had calmed both children down (always step #1—don’t enter into a discussion before tempering your emotions), I was able to hear both sides of the story, piece together what had actually happened, and was able to bring about genuine apologies and reconciliation between the parties.

After this particularly heated afternoon, I sat, exhausted and drained, in my swivel chair. The incident got me thinking about how we adults handle situations very much like these in our own lives. Sure, we are beyond issues of someone hitting another person on purpose or by accident (I hope!), but we still have disagreements and unfortunately, I feel like most of them resemble this second-grade altercation more than a civilized and respectful conversation.

I love having conversations involving people with whom I disagree. Just the other day I was talking with a coworker about some political things. She and I disagreed with one another. Both of us are very passionate about certain policies and standpoints, and both of us are emotional people. However, she had the grace to hear my side of the story, and I had the compassion to listen to her and understand why she believes what she believes, and therefore why she sees things from a perspective that is different than mine. I walked away from that conversation with more compassion for people who have had more difficult upbringings than I have, people who have encountered more difficulties in life and have experienced more racism or negativity than I have.

I have another dear friend with whom I disagree on quite a few things. I love having discussions with her, because I always walk away with more things to think on. I have learned more about the world and different lifestyles by having discussions with people of an opposing viewpoint than I have from people with whom I agree all the time.

Next time you are in a conflict or discussion (hopefully IN PERSON—please, social media is NOT the place to have these discussions. That’s another topic though) with a person of a different mindset, I encourage you to step in with an open mind and a compassionate ear. Please don’t enter screaming and arguing, as this solves nothing and brings about no reconciliation, understanding, or compassion for either one of you. Take the time to listen. Agree to disagree if you must, and love that person for who they are and why they are the way they are.

You could walk out of that conversation learning what my second graders did: your initial assumptions of a person may not be correct, and in the end you could discover something you didn’t know before and come to reconciliation. Because, really, isn’t that what we all want? To be listened to. To be heard. To be understood. And to be brought together in harmony with others, not forever separated because of different ideals and beliefs. At least, that’s my opinion. J