new to you friday–old girls network

I started the week asking if there was some way to model masculinity for a new generation. So I’ll end it with a nod to the many ways women can also be mentors. It’s a responsibility for all of us—a comment on the original post asked if there might be a twenty-year-old girl who could benefit from a relationship with someone my age. Absolutely. And that girl could be a great role model to a preteen. We’re all “older” to someone.

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Dear older ladies,

First off, do not be offended—by “older” I mean older than me and my friends—not old. Trust me, I’ve been well-trained by my mother that old is at least 10 years older than your current age.

“I just want to age gracefully,” mom says. I’m so lucky to have her as my primary example of godly femininity and she definitely continues to model this as she gets older. Not old. OLDER.


But many women my age and younger don’t have such a great role model, and even those of us who do could benefit from relationships with more than one. I’m writing to ask you to consider committing a few hours each week or even each month for this important job.

As women’s mentoring ministries have hammered into our brains for years, the book of Titus teaches this. And if you want to join or launch a “Titus 2″ group to match older and younger women, that would be a great start. But you don’t have to create anything formal or enlist other volunteers to begin making a difference for the women in my demographic—just choose one or two of us and initiate a relationship.

I know, that’s scary, but if you wait for us to approach you it will never happen. Although I’ve asked a few women to serve as mentors in my life, most of us don’t know we need help—or, if we know, we don’t realize we can ask.


And do we ever need it.

We’re raising kids, raising step kids, trying to get pregnant, trying not to get pregnant. We’re reading “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” because we have no mother, big sister or aunt to clue us in. We’re choosing between homemaking and working outside the home and most of us are trying to do both, in houses with more convenience features than ever before that somehow we still can’t manage to keep clean. No one ever taught us to mend a hem or sew on a button. We can create websites from scratch but not a loaf of bread. We’re working in offices filled with men and holding our own (although still receiving less pay, but whatever). We’re looking at our marriages and wondering if we made the right choice and if we can make this last another forty years and if we want to and if we’re bad people when we don’t.


We need you—your wisdom, your sense of humor, your perspective, your practical help. We don’t expect the answer to every life question; we know we’re facing more choices than any previous generation of women. But we also know the important principles behind making those decisions haven’t changed. Some long-term coaching would be so helpful as we try to figure it all out.

Besides, there are still young women walking around in tube tops. Until every last one of us dresses attractively but modestly, consider yourselves on retainer. Because living gracefully applies to every age, young and old. I mean, older.

Jen

a few good men

“Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This “pre-adulthood”…… doesn’t bring out the best in men,” writes Kay Hymowitz in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal.

Pre-adulthood as a new life stage isn’t limited to men, of course, and “extended adolescence” is not a brand-new phenomenon. But Ms. Hymowitz digs deeper than the usual laments over irresponsible Millennials.

For instance, it’s popular (and too simplistic) to bash men for how they’ve kept women from learning and earning. But the statistics for the next generation tell a different story. More women than men are graduating from college, and doing so with higher GPAs. More women go on to graduate school and in some cities they even make more money than their male peers.


However,  Hymowitz says this “rise of women” has also given a generation of men permission to act like boys.

“Today….with women moving ahead in our advanced economy, husbands and fathers are now optional, and the qualities of character men once needed to play their roles—fortitude, stoicism, courage, fidelity—are obsolete, even a little embarrassing,” she writes.

Why should they grow up? “No one needs them anyway. There’s nothing they have to do.”


The entire situation raises (at least) two questions for me:

First, are we as a society going to tell our women to dumb it down, sit down, and pipe down because if they live up to their potential it might emasculate men? Young women have realized most men in their 20s are unwilling to think about commitments like marriage; is limiting our own choices and achievements during that decade the only way to make them catch up?

If not, who’s going to model a better way? As Hymowitz notes, if women take the reins men tend to disappear or disengage. But just telling them to stand up and man up isn’t the solution—we need to redefine masculinity for a new generation. Feminists have looked to everyone from Virginia Woolf to Tina Fey; who can inspire today’s men?


“Today’s pre-adult male is like an actor in a drama in which he only knows what he shouldn’t say,” Hymowitz writes. I’d add that today’s pre-adult female is still figuring out how her femininity and sexuality should fit into the script. Both genders—an entire generation—need some cues. What’s our role in the solution?

new to you friday–popping (a) question

I love to hear how couples met.

It’s one of my very favorite questions, both to break the ice with acquaintances or to spark reminiscing among old friends. Although love is ancient and unchanging, modern romance is very specific: he asked me out to this dance, she wrote me this letter, this friend introduced us at this party. I enjoy watching people share the details of the one love story in which they play the starring role.




These stories are, of course, as different as the people involved. There’s the woman convinced her bachelor beau was a player who would hurt her–until he slowly wore her down with his kindness and character. There’s the guy who asked his future wife to all the big college events and nothing in between, until his roommate told him to get serious or he would ask her out, too. There’s the youth pastor who developed feelings for a barely-in-college former youth group member and honorably talked to her parents about getting to know her. (They’ve been married ten years, have three young kids, and this winter alone have shared the flu among their family of five approximately 43 times.)

I wrote this blog after another sweet friend shared her story and, as many folks do, included phrases about “just knowing it was right.” Three years later I’ve decided some of this certainty is evidence of a good relationship, but some is a function of personality. I hid under cribs in the church nursery and I triple-check my alarm clock each night. I’ll probably never be someone who “just knows”—and that’s okay.


But I’d love to hear your thoughts, and I’d really love to hear your story. Pretend the coffee is hot, the evening is young, and I just asked how you met (or charmed, or chased) your Valentine. Tell us in the comments!

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Last weekend I attended a beautiful wedding. The night before, at the rehearsal dinner, I asked the bride how she met her groom and how long they dated before deciding to marry. She replied the whole thing had been rather quick; she knew she wanted to marry him after several weeks, and they got engaged within six months.

I am cautious and careful in most areas of life (other than cross-country moves) so I find this fascinating. My tendency is to double and triple-check everything, including my feelings, and to overanalyze situations until I’m exhausted. I would love to just “know” that someone is “the one” but I don’t experience total certainty in any other important decisions (college major, choice of career, location of home) so I don’t expect to in my dating relationships, either.

You married folks—is that okay? Did you have a total assurance and sense of peace when you met your spouse, and does the lack of that mean the relationship is doomed for divorce court? You single folks, do you expect to feel 100% sure about someone, and is that a requirement for you to commit to a marriage?

new to you friday–girl scout badges for today’s women

Guys, I’d love a companion post from your perspective. Anyone want to write about the boy scout awards today’s men are earning?

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The Upper Hand: Awarded for juggling three bags of groceries, a large purse, a cell phone and mail while successfully unlocking the front door without dropping anything. Bonus points if the grocery bag contains eggs or you are also holding a baby.

The Slim Chance: Awarded to any woman who can wear a size eight after age 40.

The This Too Shall Pass: For handing the communion tray to the person sitting next to you without bitterness that you’re not allowed to stand at the end of the row and receive it.

The Sick and Tired: For keeping one’s mouth shut when, after you’ve spent years of your life pregnant and endured the subsequent excruciating deliveries, your husband a) whimpers like a toddler from a splinter; b) takes to his bed for three days during his annual cold and demands 24 hour bedside service; c) refuses to consider a vasectomy because of his fear of medical procedures.

The Don’t Cramp My Style: For attending two business meetings, accomplishing four things off the to-do list, swinging by the grocery store, and attending a ballet recital/T-ball game/soccer practice while wearing heels instead of curling up under the covers with cramps like you want to.

The Clothes Call: One badge awarded for each shopping trip with a daughter age 8-18 in which you successfully prevent purchases of halter tops, low-rise pants, short-shorts, and anything designed to show one’s navel. Award is not invalidated by daughter’s tears or public outbursts proclaiming her hatred of you.

The Grace Note: For smiling and nodding when, after the meeting you helped lead, one of the male participants asks you to Xerox his notes.

The Big Event: Automatically awarded upon completion of your 20^th ladies banquet, tea or retreat involving hats, finger sandwiches, scrapbooking, and/or “spa” manicures.

The Shear Magic: For blowdrying your hair into a style remotely resembling anything you left the salon with after your last cut.

The Wonder Woman: For somehow summoning the superhuman strength not to say, “No, PMS isn’t the problem. You’re just especially annoying today.”

single minded

Last week during a meeting, one of the leaders of a national church planting network remarked, “We don’t allow single men to plant churches.”

A few years ago, the committee introduced me to a minister in another state. During one of our phone calls he shared how hard it had been to find a church willing to hire a never-married, not-currently-engaged man to serve as their senior leader.

As Paul Williams has written, the pressure to “find a good mate at college” still exists, and if a man knows he won’t be able to land a preaching job before first landing a wife, it’s that much more likely he’ll marry before he’s ready. Do we prefer a growing number of unhappily married leaders to some happily single ones?


Then there’s the other Paul—you know, the one who was single but also planted a number of churches and wrote half the New Testament?

Oh, and Jesus.


I’m not saying a singleton is better for ministry (although Paul did), but I’m not sure why churches are opposed to it. You’d think they would be clamoring for a single guy—theoretically the congregation would pay less money in health care and other benefits and receive more of the leader’s focus.

Instead, there seems to be a fear that an unmarried senior pastor will be unstable (because all the married leaders are so together) or promiscuous (because the married guys are never tempted by sexual sin).

Of the many biblical teachings we like to ignore, this one really does baffle me.

What do you think? Why this stigma against singles?

just asking–part two

Yesterday I alluded to this one, so let’s just go there.

I understand many of the arguments against women preaching or otherwise leading a church (serving as an elder, for example). There are the scriptures like 1 Timothy 2 (which beg questions not only of biblical interpretation but also definition of terms like “authority”). There’s the argument from the created order (equal but different roles assigned to the male and female in relationship to each other and within the home). There’s even the argument from Jesus’s own ministry (only male apostles, for instance).


I get it. But I still have problems with these explanations.

For one thing, this position automatically disqualifies 50% of the population from contributing their full giftedness in the life of the church. Are we okay with that?

For another, this disqualification means many smart, talented women are left out of the discussions and decisions of local church life (but still expected to staff the nursery and provide cookies afterward). Granted, many men are similarly uninvolved in church leadership, but at least it’s not because they have the wrong body part.

Finally, let’s just be honest. Some male pastors are strong leaders and communicators. Some aren’t. Some of the female preachers I know are even better. (Priscilla Shirer, I’m talking to you.)


Now, on the other hand, I will be the first to admit that many of our programs, buildings and even worship songs already skew toward the feminine. And studies have shown that if you get the man to church, the family will follow.

And no, we don’t get to choose our theology based on our feelings about it. Scripture is full of hard teachings.


So I don’t know.  I don’t want to preach.  I certainly don’t want to be involved in anything that’s not scriptural. But I also have to acknowledge that some of the traditional answers just don’t fit with the reality of how God seems to have gifted his people—of both genders.


What do we do with this?

frozen chosen

Years ago, one of my then-coworkers said I should consider selling my eggs—the inference being I might as well put them to good use and make some money since I wasn’t getting married anytime soon.

Didn’t.

Appreciate.

However, I did very much appreciate the question a different friend asked recently.

“So I was thinking,” he emailed, after reading an article about a former tennis pro who had children in her mid-40s after freezing her eggs as a younger woman, “let’s say that seven or eight years from now you finally find the right guy. It’s very, very possible, you know.”

(My friend is an optimist.)

“And you decide having kids is a good idea—very, very possible as well. It seems it would be pretty reassuring to know those frozen eggs were nestled somewhere.”

I appreciated his boldness in raising the issue (unlike the former co-worker, this friend has earned the right) and his compassionate approach. (“I cannot begin to understand the emotional strain of making that decision,” he concluded. “If the above scenario did take place, it seems it would have been worth it. On the other hand, if that guy never came along, I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to let those eggs go.”)


“Setting your own biological clock” is an interesting idea and one I’ve never really considered, mostly because it’s only in the last couple of years that the proverbial clock has ticked loud enough for me to hear. But the chance of having a healthy baby drops off rapidly after age 35 unless younger eggs have been kept in reserve.

Since the eggs are not fertilized before freezing, no new life has occurred, so I don’t see a moral issue with either the process or the eventual disposal of unused ones. (I welcome feedback/links that say otherwise.)


I also don’t believe the truism that if God wanted me to have children I would have married and had them by now. Life happens. Break-ups happen. Wasting years of my 20s with the wrong men happens. I made choices then and I get to make choices now.

But while God may not have determined the details of my current life, He did create our biology with certain parameters. Women aren’t designed to bear children in their mid 40s. And do I really want to chase a 2-year old when I’m 47?


Roy Mays used to say, “Just because it fits doesn’t mean it’s fitting.” I could do this, and I’m probably not completely done considering it. (That will come when I discover the cost.) But I’m not sure it’s right for me.

What do you think? Is this putting current science to its best use or “playing God”? What are the pros and cons?

new to you friday–american beauty

I’m seeing this video making the rounds on Facebook again, so it seemed timely to revive my post about the huge manipulation of images in today’s advertising. As a new blogger I wasn’t savvy enough to embed the video; now I am but the Dove people won’t allow it, so click here to watch the one minute transformation of actual pretty girl to manufactured supermodel.




As my friend (and hair stylist) Glory likes to say, “Inner beauty is for amateurs.”

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the expectations of beauty we have for Christian women in the public eye. As a follow-up, check out this short video showing the work involved in transforming a regular girl into a billboard stunner. As one blogger put it, “Seems those magazine beauties don’t really exist after all…which means that many of us guys have a subconscious measuring stick no female can measure up to without moving in and out of Photoshop at will.” You’re just now figuring this out?


But we shouldn’t come down too hard on the men. Many of the women who complain about our culture’s unreasonable standards of beauty are the same ones spending huge sums of money on Botox and miracle wrinkle creams. We claim to resent it, but our dollars and attention fuel the machine.

(And I can’t prove this, but I think we do it more to impress and compete with other women than we do to attract men.)


This video is part of Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” which promises to, among other things, donate grant dollars toward “the Program for Aesthetics and Well-Being” at Harvard and develop a “self-esteem fund” for young girls. I doubt Dove will single-handedly change the nature of advertising in this country, but it’s a brilliant advertising ploy in its own right. And I have a pimple today so I’m going to watch the video again.

new to you friday–men, man up

A few weeks ago, a guy I’m friends with said two things that made me smile.

The first—“I thought about dating you, but decided it wouldn’t work because I’ve been reading your blog and you’re too Christian”—because that deserves a trophy for Back-handed Compliment Of The Year.

And the second—“You need a strong guy, and there aren’t many strong Christian guys”—because it made me think of this post.




Let’s make up a statistic and see if we can get it to go viral. How about, “If you are a single Christian woman over 30, you are 64% more likely to get hit by a bus than to get married.”

Look both ways, ladies.

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At dinner with some friends this weekend, one of them described the guy she’d just started dating. He was raised in a Christian home but no longer attends church or “practices” any faith. My friend likes him and plans to see him again but she’s also approaching it casually; she realizes his lack of faith is a major issue.

Whether or not she should date a non-Christian at all is a whole other discussion. In his book How to Get a Date Worth Keeping, Henry Cloud asserts that dating unbelievers is fine if you approach it as a way to make new friends, have fun, and grow as a person. As someone who dated and subsequently did the love and loss routine with an atheist, I would argue the opposite point of view.

But wherever you land on that, the point is she’s dating this guy (let’s call him Jack) because even though she knows dozens of Christian men her age at our church, not one has ever asked her out. And before you ask—yes, she is smart, attractive, outgoing, and generally “together.” So are my other single friends, many of whom struggle with the same situation. Why the dating drought when it comes to Christian men?


I obviously can’t speak for the men, but based on the statistics I’ve read it doesn’t seem they lack interest in marriage and family. The majority of single men—believers and otherwise—say they hope to marry and raise children.

Yet many Christian guys don’t date—they lead Bible studies and singles events, they pray for a wife, they attend group activities for years on end, but they rarely exert a little energy or spend a little money to know any woman individually.

Nothing’s wrong with groups, but Jack didn’t wait for verification from five buddies as to whether my friend might be interested in him. He initiated conversation with her, expressed his interest, and took a risk.


God created men to be initiators, so this kind of assertiveness gets our attention. My friends and I are strong women, but we refuse to usurp that role and act as the pursuer. If our Christian brothers won’t, either, what’s the new strategy? My friend summed it up well as we finished our coffee. “I don’t know what will happen with Jack, but it’s frustrating to have few alternatives. I guess we’re just supposed to be ‘waiting on the Lord.’ Okay. We’re waiting……”

I’m really not trying to be down on men here. I know it’s hard to take those kinds of risks, and I know women can be confusing and contradictory. But I do believe that, despite the difficulties, God created men to step up and take action in every area of their lives—which includes “finding a wife” (Proverbs 18:22).


Guys, we don’t expect you to quote poetry or be able to benchpress your car. We just wish you’d spend a little less time reading Wild at Heart and a little more time living it.

new to you friday–twilight zone

Movie #3 in the series opens next week, and today’s issue of Entertainment Weekly calls it “the best Twilight movie so far.” Which wouldn’t be a stretch, considering the caliber of acting in the first two. (Yes, I saw them. I’m proud to say I did not give Sex and the City 2 my $10, however.)

But the millions of women (and the dozens of reluctant boyfriends) who will converge on theaters this summer aren’t going because this is Oscar bait. As I wrote in the original post, Twilight is not about high-quality writing. It’s not even about vampires. It’s about romance, and our cultural confusion about gender roles, and our desires as women.

I don’t plan to see “Eclipse,” but I like the questions it’s raising: in a society where strong women want to be treated as equals, can we also want relationships with strong men? How does that work? How much of our roles are cultural and how much are hardwired by the Creator? And how did pasty-white Robert Pattinson and his bad teeth win the role of dream hunk Edward Cullen?

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In a February USA Weekend interview, author Stephen King compared “Harry Potter” novelist J.K. Rowling and recent phenomenon Stephenie Meyer. “The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn,” he summed up. “She’s not very good.”

In case you are a man without a wife, sister, mother or teenage daughter, Meyer is the author of Twilight and its three follow-up young adult novels about a teenage girl named Bella and her vampire boyfriend Edward. Meyer’s books have been translated into 20 languages, sold 22 million copies just in 2008, and took spots 1-4 on last year’s best-seller list. That’s right, the Twilight series monopolized all four top spots last year.


The only good thing about this is it pushed The Shack to #6. Because King is right—the books aren’t very good. They include run-on sentences even the most junior editor should have caught, repetitive descriptions (we know Edward is hot because his eyes blaze, scorch, or smolder most of the time), and a whole lot of melodrama.

But just as people don’t visit Hard Rock Cafe for high-quality food, people aren’t reading Twilight for high-quality prose—they’re reading for the love story. Meyer has created every woman’s ideal man: mind-bogglingly handsome, funny, intelligent, articulate. He dotes on Bella’s every word and every mood swing. He’s got piles of money, a shiny Volvo, and nothing but time. (He is immortal.) Most of all, he’s Bella’s protector in a way no real man could be, able to run at lightning speed, read thoughts, and stop out of control cars with one hand.


When Charlotte asserted “Women just really want to be rescued” on an episode of Sex and the City, the other women at the table looked at her like she spit in their coffee. This desire to be cared for and protected is one of the few off-limits topics among modern women, because it’s something we’re not supposed to want. We can open that door, schlep that luggage, and fund that retirement account ourselves, thank you. But one or more of these books has been on the NYT bestseller list for years. We may not admit this desire, but we’re spending an awful lot of money to read about its fulfillment for someone else.

Perhaps it’s because God created us this way, and no amount of equal pay (which I firmly support) or power pantsuits (which I don’t) can negate it. The healthy expression of this inner wiring doesn’t include vampires and shouldn’t include victimization; it’s less “rescue” and more regard for our differences as women. For our part, it also includes recognition of men’s equally-unique role as provider and protector.

And, I think, the end of apologies for wanting that. We stopped waiting for the knight on a white horse a long time ago, but the so-pale-he’s-white Edward still entrances us. The books may not be good, but they point us, however melodramatically, to something that is.