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The best parts of being single.

After a breakup once, I hugged my knees on a living room recliner and watched sitcoms through teary eyes.

Another ending.
The hard part that time was not the saying goodbye or the feeling alone. The hard part was accepting how good odds are that – if marriage is my vocation at all – it will take longer than I would like to meet another guy who meets my standards: who loves Jesus, practices chastity, does what he says he’s gonna, acts his age (and not his shoe size).
Caught up in thoughts of how long it’s going to be before we meet other good men or women is a good way to miss the good that surrounds us — to forget the best parts of being single. With the help of readers, I’ve compiled a list of them, a list I’ll read as a reminder should I find myself watching sitcoms through teary eyes again.
The best parts of being single are…

…the nearly uninterrupted pursuits of spiritual, personal, and professional growth; the cultivation of patience, acceptance of what you can’t control, and maturity (all of which are transferable to relationships); and hosting your own personal living room dance parties (just me?).

And according to readers, the best parts of being single are…

…doing whatever I want whenever I want. -Monique

…being free to come and go as I please. -Mary

…saving money. -Caleb

…being able to focus on school and my relationship with God without any distractions. -B-Ran

…being a loner when you feel like it. Also, meeting new people when getting set up. -Greg

…not having to shave every day. -Shawn

…not having to give explanations. -Carlos

…using coupons when you go out to eat. -Abraham

… making your own schedule. -Dan

…going out with the guys. -Anthony

…having opportunities to be spontaneous and travel different places on a whim. -Kelsey

…fulfilling my (current) life purpose effectively. -Discipulae

…having time for God and reflection -John

…the free-ness to serve others, because you have nothing tying you down -Pedro

…the  having no pressure! -Angel

…time to read. Excessively. -Goo

…being able to marathon bad reality TV with no one to judge you! -MCN

…Spontaneity! -Jen

…drinking out of a milk carton. -Mario

…being able to fix myself instead of “fixing” someone else. -Julie

…having the time to help and share my time with others! -Ce

…having the freedom to go on random adventures without having to check someone else’s schedule! -Aimee

…saying yes to the craziest ideas, whether study, travel or just a night out. -Laura

…prioritizing my immediate family. -Julie

…knowing more people on a deeper level. -John

…detachment from worldly and sensible things, more focus on God.? -Jason

…flirting. -Anthony

…not having to put the seat down. -Trish

…sleeping alone. -Michelle

…more time can be devoted to ministry work.? -Nathan

…you still have time to change. -Daniel

…being able to do God’s work. – P Edward

…figuring out who I am. -Marybeth

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What are your best parts of being single?

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And the winners are…

In last week’s post, I invited you to share a secret: something you have learned so far in your 20s (or something you learned in your 20s if you’re already out). Big thanks to all who participated! As promised, two participants won a free copy of Paul Angone’s new book, 101 Secrets For Your Twenties. Here are their secrets:

No matter what you do or how you’re dressed, someone out there thinks you’re doing it wrong, and they can’t believe you’re wearing that. Someone else out there is really impressed with your accomplishments and fighting envy for your eyes, or hair, or outfit. Ignore it all. Do what’s right, as best as you can figure it out, and if you mess up, apologize, then get up and try again. “Defeated” is a choice (albeit an extremely tempting one sometimes). -Mary Petrides Tillotson

I’ve learned recently what a gift singlehood can be – particularly in growth in one’s prayer life. And after talking with young married couples, I’ve learned that one’s prayer life will never be the same after marriage (not unexpected since all of life changes after marriage). -Aaron Ledgerwood

Congratulations to Mary and Aaron! Click here to read all the secrets readers submitted.
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Book Review AND Giveaway: “101 Secrets For Your Twenties” by Paul Angone

Not yet 20 in the summer of 2004, I wallowed in self-pity on the walk from my car to my house after work. Inside, I dropped my purse at the door, audibly sighed, and asked my “roommate” a question:

“Is this what adulthood is really about?”

Up at 6. To work by 8 to sit at a gray desk in front of a gray computer doing a lot of what means nothing to me. Out at 5. Home for dinner and back to back episodes of any show entertaining enough to deter me from dwelling on the truth: I will do this again tomorrow, and I will hate it just as much.

“Yep,” my mom replied, half-kidding. “Pretty much.”

Mad at the world (or at high school, at least) for releasing me into adulthood with no good prep (or so I thought), I cried a little. This is probably because of what I didn’t yet know:

Only I could change the life-sucking cycle in which I felt so stuck.

This is precisely what blogger and author Paul Angone proves in his new book 101 Secrets For Your Twenties, which I a) wish he’d written 10 years ago (but I forgive you!) and b) thoroughly enjoyed. 101 Secrets is easy to read, and fast and funny. It is also sometimes convicting. The secrets he shares challenge young adults to jump life’s hurdles instead of pouting about them and to accept that growing pains are part of young adulthood (if we are willing to grow up). Here are a handful of my favorites:

#4: Your twenties are about having the courage to write a frightful first draft.

“We have to be willing to allow ourselves to write some terrible first drafts. You can’t have a good story without a good struggle.”

#10: You grow INTO growing up. 

You might be an adult if “your body begins to ache from vigorous lack of movement,” “Facebook goes from being a hobby, to an obsession, to a chore you dread,” or “You don’t spend the week organizing your plans for Saturday night. No, organizing is your plans for Saturday night.”

#24: Love is blind. Enlist some seeing eye dogs.

“You’re being warned there’s a serious accident ahead, so why in the name of a 7-Car-Pile-Up are you still driving directly toward it? Enlisting trusted guides to help direct your relationship can save your life.”

#56: Watch out. “Official Adults” might stereotype you for being twentysomething.

“If you feel like you’re being stereotyped because of your age, your best ally is quiet confidence – a humble consistency that shows up and gets the job done. You don’t argue with them about your skill set, you just show them every single day how awesome your skills are.”

#76: No one knows what they’re doing.

“Are you freaked out that you have no idea what you’re doing? Perfect! So is everyone else.” 

Now that I’ve given away some of Paul’s secrets, I’ll give away a couple copies of his book. Wanna win one? In a comment on this post, share a secret of your own – something you’ve learned so far in your 20s (or something you learned in your 20s if you’re already out). Include an email address or Twitter username I could use to tell ya if you won.  Entries will count only through 11:59 p.m. EDT Aug. 4. All entries will literally be put into a hat, out of which I will draw two random winners on Aug. 5.

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Visit Paul’s site, AllGroanUp.com. Click here to learn more about the book, and here to read 21 Secrets for Your 20s, a blog post by Paul that went viral and inspired the book.

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Calling the case for early marriage into question: Part 2 of 2.

In a post last week, I called the case for early marriage into question. One proponent of early marriage – Mark Regnerus – proposed in a 2009 Christianity Today column that early marriage is ideal because marriage is formative. I agree that marriage is formative, but I do not believe we postpone formation by postponing marriage.

Because marriage might mature us is not the sole reason proponents of marrying young encourage it. Another reason is sex.

“Many (young adults) plan to marry in their mid-20s. Yet waiting for sex until then feels far too long to most of them,” Regnerus wrote. “…when people wait until their mid-to-late 20s to marry, it is unreasonable to expect them to refrain from sex. It’s battling our Creator’s reproductive designs.”

Unreasonable? I beg to differ. Here’s why:

None of us are spared God’s “reproductive designs,” but not all of us are going to get married. Whether we marry isn’t always within our control, but what we can control is ourselves. To push a person toward early marriage in order to avoid experiencing the sexual urge outside it is to tell a person dominion over our urges isn’t worth it or possible (and for a person who believes it’s impossible, it will be). A person who says it creates and perpetuates, then, the very reason he or she says we ought to marry early.

And that, I think, is unreasonable.

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Click here to read part 1 of this post.

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Calling the case for early marriage into question: Part 1 of 2.

I crack me up as I car-shop.

I crack me up because I like the coupe but I think the sedan is smarter. This is because my current car has been my car for 10 years, which implies my next car could be my car for 10 years, too.

If it is, I imagine (hope, pray, doubt, depending on the day) I’ll be single when I sign the title and married by the time I trade it in. Which implies I feasibly could have a kid while my next car is my car, and it’s harder to get a kid in and out of a coupe.

This exposes two truths: First, that I think a lot, and second, that I didn’t marry early. I am 27 and single with no obvious prospects. Depending on a person’s school of thought, how old I’ll be before I’m married, if I do marry, is one of the following: a good idea or not as good an idea as early marriage.

Lately – mostly online – I have encountered a couple of people who aren’t in the good idea camp. On the side of proponents of early marriage has been Mark Regnerus, who made a case for early marriage in popular articles in Christianity Today and the Washington Post in 2009.

His point is that marriage is designed to be formative as opposed to an institution into which you enter once you you are “fully formed.” Secondary to that point is this one: “A key developmental institution for men – marriage – is the very thing being postponed, thus perpetuating their adolescence.” Parents of young adults, he implied, encourage their kids to finish school first. Attain financial independence. Grow up, then get married.

In other words, Regnerus said, people – particularly men – mature by being married. To postpone marriage to the part of life post-age 25, then, is to prolong immaturity. If he is right, we create a catch 22; we wait to get married until after we’ve attained what we’re supposed to attain by being married.

But I’m not convinced that’s what we’re actually doing, or that we are disadvantaged by marrying later. Here’s why:

We don’t necessarily choose not to marry young. I am not single at 27 because I decided not to marry young. I’m single at 27 because I didn’t happen to marry young. I, like Regnerus, believe marriage is designed to be formative. But I do not believe we postpone formation by postponing marriage. Marriage is formative, but so are our families of origin, our educations and lines of work, our religious affiliations, circles of friends, communities, and life experiences. Marrying early does not mean marriage alone will form us. Marrying late does not mean we’re not going to grow.

We don’t completely control how mature we are. Rumor at work has it that the latest research says the male brain isn’t done developing until the male turns 29. For females, it’s 24 or 25. Marriage doesn’t make a prefrontal cortex grow faster. Regardless of by what we’re being formed (marriage, school, friends, or all three), if we haven’t hit our mid-to-late 20s, we generally aren’t our best at solving problems, foreseeing consequences, creating strategies, or knowing what to do with intense emotions. It is not impossible for a marriage to last when the wedding happens before the bride’s and groom’s brains are done. But it doesn’t hurt to start a marriage with a fully developed one.

How mature we are before we get married might affect how receptive we are to formation. A proponent of early marriage once told me it’s easier to marry early and establish one life than it is to marry late and merge two established lives. While each is different from the other, both strike me as difficult and formative. Both require us to solve problems, foresee consequences, create strategies, and experience intense emotions. We can do this when we’re young, but we can do it better when we’re older. We also probably expect it when we’re older, more than we do when we’re young, perhaps rendering us more receptive to working through it.

“How old we are when we marry” and “how prepared for marriage we are” are not synonymous. People exist my age and older who objectively are not ready for marriage. There are people younger than I who probably are. This means age is probably not as relevant to this conversation as we traditionally have made it, which is part of why I’m not opposed to early marriage. What I do oppose is this: pitying the people who push 30 (and beyond) and aren’t married, putting early marriage on a pedestal, and encouraging it widely without preparing young people for marriage — which our culture won’t do and our churches generally haven’t done enough.

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Click here to read what Mark Regnerus wrote about early marriage. Part 2 of this post will appear on the blog on July 28.