Word to the world: Enough already. We get it. There’s a serious lack of good quality, emotionally-healthy, financially-stable, single men, in the dating market right now. We’ve heard you.
Word to the church world: Please stop moaning and groaning about it.
Single Catholic women need encouraging words of faith when it comes to the dating game.
Not negative nelly’s telling them their chances of snagging a decent husband are about as good as the chances Victoria will be rid of the ‘rona by the end of the week. That is, not good.
Yes, we can acknowledge statistics (depending on the demographic, single women generally do outnumber single men). But we can do so without donning our favourite frocks and heading to the closest pity-party.
As a Catholic woman, who’s done my share of time in and out of the Catholic dating pool, I refuse to wade into this ‘man drought’ narrative.
In my view, it’s negative and depressing. And (for the most part) it’s not been my personal experience.
But when people state it as fact, and repeat it, ad nauseam, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And for those who profess to be ‘believers’, it completely lacks faith.
As followers of an abundantly generous God, we are called to ‘walk by faith, and not by sight’.
One of the amazing promises to us as believers in Christ, is generous, ‘cup runneth over’ provision, even when the ‘outside world’ is in famine.
That is, generous provision, even in a ‘man drought’.
Over the past few weeks, the church readings have focused on the prophet Ezekiel. In chapter 36, the Lord gave him (and us) this promise: “I will send no more famines on your land”. There might be famines elsewhere, but not in the land of the children of God.
I don’t know about you, but I believe God when He promises something. And I believe him in this, regarding my dating season.
I’ve told many single friends over the years: “There is no man drought in God’s Kingdom. He has an abundance of good quality, committed catholic men for us. Let’s speak faith and life over our dating situation, rather than fear and despondency”.
Unbelievers walk by sight, and easily get discouraged by what they see (or don’t see) in the ‘natural’.
But we are believers in a God of the ‘supernatural’. Our God can multiply five loaves and two fish, to feed five thousand men. Our God can heal terminal illness. Our God can raise people from the dead.
I’m pretty sure God’s not up in heaven, saying, ‘Oh gosh, I seem to have run out of good men. Sorry ladies’.
We are people of faith. And the definition of faith, according to the apostle Paul in his letter to the Hebrews, is: “Believing something already exists, despite it not yet being seen”.
Or another translation, “Faith is the evidence and title deed of things hoped for”.
We have the opportunity to witness to an unbelieving Godless world, in our dating and marriage journeys. We can do this by refusing to moan and groan about the ‘lack of good men’, and instead encourage ourselves in God’s Word.
The Psalms remind us that believers in Christ “will lack no good thing’.
A top quality, committed Catholic husband is a ‘good thing’, and I choose to believe I will not lack in this area.
Long ago I set my heart, mind and mouth on this declaration:
“I don’t care what it looks like in the natural. I believe God will provide an abundance of good quality Catholic men for me to choose from, for a husband”.
And I believe the same for every Catholic woman who feels called to marriage. Where God guides, he provides. And as Louisa May Alcott writes, in Little Women: “You only need one, if he’s the right one”.
Amen to that.
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