Revelations of a Single Woman - Part 2 of 4

This transcript has been adapted from the attached audio. It may not be in its final form and may be updated.

RICHARD LAND: Connally, welcome to For Faith & Family.

CONNALLY GILLIAM: Thank you, Richard, I’m glad to be here.

LAND: I want to ask you a really loaded question, and I know it is a loaded question that’s why I ask it, but I want to know the answer so I am going to ask you. Why is it that single men are viewed so differently and seem to be treated so differently in this culture, particularly in Christian culture, than single women?

GILLIAM: Well, I think in Christian culture, single men are a more valued commodity because they are rarer. It is supply and demand, if you will, and there is something intrinsically then that ups the value, I think, of single men. I think too in fairness to single men, I think men are going through an incredibly confusing time in our culture about what it means to be a man and how do we relate to women, romantically as well as just more in a broad-based sense in our culture, and so when you find single men who are figuring out to navigate that, they can easily be lifted up. I’m not saying that’s good. I think there can be a propensity among women to worship men in a way that is probably not good, but I do think there is incredible challenges men are facing so if they are rising to that challenge, there is something that is encouraging to everybody around them.

LAND: Well, chapter six of your book, Connally, is provocatively titled, “Men, Who Needs Them, Do Women Really Need Men, or Can They Take Care of Themselves?” So, what is the answer?

GILLIAM: Well, my answer I think is ultimately grounded in theology, is that, yes we do need each other. If God made man and woman in His image, that means both men and women reflect the image of God, so in the most fundamental level, I can’t know God as fully as He would want me to know Him without understanding men and the good of His image that they reflect. So that is at a real deep theological level. And then there is just practically with the stability and strength that the good men bring to women, it enables them at some level in the heart just to exhale, to not have to be omnicompetent and that’s a joy. I mean, there is a mystery to that. It is not always broken down into concrete rules of men do this and women do this, but there is still a distinct good that men bring that women need.

LAND: And you know, just on a practical level, being married to a wife and having two daughters who are single, you know, I have become sensitized to the fact that you know when I am walking out of a supermarket, I don’t think about safety. When I am walking to my car in the parking garage, I don’t think about safety. I mean, you know, I am a big guy and I just don’t think about it. Well, my wife and my daughters have to think about it when they are by themselves. They have to think about, you know, how far am I parked from the front of the store and is it safe, and they have to be cautious and careful in ways that a women with a man does not.

GILLIAM: I think it is true. I have one girlfriend tell me, this is interesting, she said she felt freer to walk down the street looking good when she was dating this guy and he was with her, because somehow she felt protected in his presence; but once they broke up, she said she found herself wanting to pull back a little bit and shrink back some because in a way it felt more vulnerable to go through life just on her own, fully responsible for her own self-protection.

LAND: Well, I think that is the reality of things and, you know, you really talk about this in ways, you’ve come to this understanding, and you give the impression that you are coming to these understandings not all at once and with a great deal of soul searching on your own.

GILLIAM: Well, I think, honestly, like many women in our culture, I was raised to think, well you can do it girl, whatever it is, and I think that I have had to be humbled honestly, Richard, in the sense of realizing that I can’t make the perfect marriage appear, and I can’t make all my heart’s desires filled. What that has done is it has really put me on my knees before God and said, “Okay, God, I want to be a learner,” and, again, that’s not just a one-time thing, that’s a posture with which we build life. So it is; it has been a slow process, and I have had so many friends and mentors, and the big jokes among my peers is that it has taken more than a village to raise this child.

LAND: One of the things I like about the book is that your humor shows through. You obviously see the funny side of life. On the back cover, here’s how they describe you. I don’t know if you have had any input into this but it says, “A little bit debutante and a little bit granola chick; a little pit pump, and a little bit Birkenstock—that’s Connally Gilliam: a confident, bright, and unintentionally single woman. On these pages, you’ll find her candid struggles to make sense of our many fragmented selves, the expectations we’ve met and failed, and the feeling that sometimes we’re the remainder in a couples world. Through Connally’s poignant and often humorous experiences, you’ll get a taste of the abundance that God promises, even when life takes us down a path we didn’t plan for.” My guess is when single women read this book, they are going to be going, yeah, yeah, that’s right, that’s it, she’s got it. But I am assuming the response has been great so far.

GILLIAM: It has been good. I was actually just at this gathering that I mentioned earlier, a young gal, she was probably just in her mid twenties, and she said she had just broken up with her boyfriend of two years, and she had been in six weddings since the fall, and she was laughing as I was reading these excerpts because she could so identify with them. And I think that is partially what women are looking for, is just somebody who will affirm what you are going through. It is not just you going through it, and then there can be some laughter in it, you know.

LAND: And I must confess as I read this, I thought about my wife when we were first married, we had three children in four and a half years. You know, my wife sort of lived from one Mother’s Day Out Thursday to the next Mother’s Day Out Thursday, and at one of the Mother’s Day Outs at the church, one of the minister’s wives who was older spoke, and she said, “Now when Jimmy and I got married, we had three babies in three years,” and she said , “I wish somebody had just sat me down and said, girl, you’re going to make it. And my wife said, you have no idea how that ministered to my life. That somebody was saying, girl, you’re going to make it, you are going to get through this, you are going to be okay.” And I can imagine that there are single women all across the country when they read your book, they are saying, “You know, I can make it.”

GILLIAM: I hope and actually I really do believe it’s true. I had one older wise woman say to me, after I had spoken to the gathering and she has read the book, and she said, “Really, Connally,” she said, “What you’re doing when you show up and you speak at these things and when people read your book, is you are demonstrating that life (with a capital ‘L’) can be found in places that people thought there would be no life.” And, I think in a way, that does sum up a lot of what this book is about. Saying, hey, you know what, there is a good God, and He is showing up, and we can make it, even if we can’t predict how it is all going to turn out.