Revelations of a Single Woman - Part 3 of 4

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

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

GILLIAM: Thank you, Richard, it is good to be back.

LAND: Tell us a little about who you are and why you decided to write this book.

GILLIAM: Well, I am Connally Gilliam, a 31-year-old, single woman, living in the Washington, D.C. area, on staff with the U.S. Navigators, working with folks in their twenties, and basically, this book came about as I started to really ask the question, “Lord, why aren’t I married?” and then as I was asking that and realized this wasn’t just about me, there are a lot of really sharp, savvy, attractive, believing girlfriends that I have who want to be married. It is not that they have something at all against married, really desired it, but weren’t, and really the book came out of my desire to look closely at that and to see where God was showing up in the mix with that.

LAND: Well, I feel sort of like an outsider in this discussion since I have been married for thirty-four years. But I have two single staffers, a male and a female, who I have asked to join us in the studio. Matt, introduce yourself and tell us about your response to this book in terms of the men’s group that you are leading.

HAWKINS: My name is Matt Hawkins. My responsibilities here are executive producer. My role includes perusing and reading and surveying some books that, otherwise, in my personal life I might not otherwise read. Revelations of a Single Woman was one of the those. However, I lead a men’s Bible study on Tuesday nights, and what I’ve read thus far of the book, I have already made the decision that I will be highly recommending it to these guys because I think it gives tremendous insight into single women and kind of what they are doing and by virtue, what we are doing at the same time. It might be one of those things I think Connally told us off air that other people had mentioned that there might should be a men’s edition, but I think we would whole-heartedly endorse that on For Faith & Family, so tell Tyndale.

LAND: Well, Connally, how have men responded to the book?

GILLIAM: Well, that’s a great question. I did have some guy friends who initially were interested and they said, “Make sure you have a cover that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to carry around,” and clearly, with the high heels on the cover, that didn’t meet their request. But I’ve had some great responses. There is a 25-year-old married guy who read it recently and came to me and said, “Connally, I feel like you really get it,” and I asked him, I said, “Scott, you’re a 25-year-old married man, and this book is called Revelations of a Single Woman; what did I get? And as he explained he said, “I feel like you authentically address the issues,” and he said, “Basically, I read the book as somebody who is struggling to see where God was at work in the life that he was living that didn’t look at all like he expected,” and he said, “I could tell you weren’t just trying to give the right answer or the right Christian answers, per se, but you were sharing what you had discovered about the goodness of God in the midst of everything.” So, that was real encouraging and then one other man recently put a review of Amazon and he said, “This book isn’t just for women, it is not just for Christians, and it is not for sissies.” That was a very encouraging review.

LAND: That’s good. Well, I have another single staffer, Amber. Amber is a single woman and Amber read the book and Amber tell us what your response was.

CHESSER: Yes, I am too a single woman and I just thought the book was right on. It really kind of helped me, kind of formulate in my mind exactly what I was feeling and to see that on a page and say, “Wow, I’m not the only one out there that is feeling this way,: and it even helped me, I think, to relate better to my other single friends.

GILLIAM: In what way, Amber, did it help you relate better to your other single friends?

CHESSER: I think because it did put it down there and I realized that I am not the only one that feels this way, and it just helped me identify that, yes, they are also going through problems and that together we can work together and we can find that community. I think it just kind of put it into perspective and really said, this is not just your problem, it is not something wrong with you, it is just where we are and it is where we are at this time in our lives and how are we going to choose to live that life.

GILLIAM: That’s a great one.

LAND: Well, you know, Connally, I may be just ignorant on my part, but at least at Southern Baptist churches, we have a lot more support groups for divorced people than we do for single people, and certainly for single woman. I think the thing about this book that is the number one value is that it helps single women all over the country to understand that they are not alone, that they are not the only ones who feel this, that it is not their fault, and that they are part of a much larger social phenomenon that they didn’t have anything to do with.

GILLIAM: And it sort of relieves then the responsibility of if you could just get this fixed in your life, you could get this whole marriage thing taken care of. There is so much pressure on women and so much pressure and say, no, you know what, the main thing is people are learning how to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus and know that it is confusing cultural landscape right now.

LAND: Well, it is. And I must say that I found myself feeling a little guilty when I was reading chapter thirteen, “So Why Aren’t You Married?” because as I was reading this book, now I confess that I have been accused, I think quite accurately, of having a penchant for smart woman. My wife has a PhD in Psychology, but as I read this book, you are obviously a bright, erudite, funny, and funny is a big thing. I mean, guys like funny. Guys like funny. And you are this funny, humorous person who can laugh at yourself and laugh at others, and I’m thinking, why isn’t this woman married? And then I read chapter thirteen, and I felt like a dufus. So, tell us about chapter thirteen.

GILLIAM: Well, chapter thirteen is probably my favorite chapter of the whole book and basically as the title makes obvious, it raises that question which I have been asked in a number of different settings, so, “Why aren’t you married?” And it is one of those questions you never quite know what to do with because I think there really is a compliment implicit in it, but it is very easy to feel like, gosh, you are doing or you are being something wrong.

LAND: Let me stop you for a minute, Connally, because I think that a lot of times single women don’t understand this, but it is a compliment, because I know women and I have said actually, I am thinking about some particular women at this moment, and I have said, you know, I am not surprised that so and so isn’t married, but what surprise me is that so and so and so and so and so and so are married. I would like to meet their husbands; their middle name must be Job.

GILLIAM: Right, it was funny when I was first out of college and I was back home for Christmas and would go to the same Christmas parties that the family always went to, and people would want to know about your love life, was there anybody special, and then when I hit about thirty, people stopped asking, and it made me nervous. I thought, oh no, have they given up hope for me? So I reminded them it was fine to ask, and I think people are just trying to be sensitive.

And the answer really to your question, Richard, is, I don’t know. I believe that God has called me of the same chapter thirteen to be single for today and I can’t say about tomorrow.