Thirty, flirty, unmarried, and childless

The fives stages of maturation and me

The Arnolfini Portrait, Jan van Eyck, 1434

I turned thirty two weeks ago, and I’m enjoying all that comes with it: a hairline in recession (just like the economy…ba-dum-bum-CHING), a newfound interest in saving for retirement, driving around town on a Friday night at eight wondering why there are so many kids out doing things.

Really though, not much has changed about my life. I still live with roommates to afford Los Angeles rent. I still work in college admissions. I still write these words and post these thoughts. The things that make for Instagrammable changes—the girlfriend and future wife and future children—they’re still a mystery.

The only life update I have to post on IG is this:

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Kayleen Schaefer, in her book But You’re Still So Young: How Thirtysomethings are Redefining Adulthood, highlights the five stages of maturation as defined by sociologists in the 1950s:

1. Completing school

2. Leaving home

3. Becoming financially independent

4. Marrying

5. Having a child

It’s seventy years since the 1950’s, and so much has changed. Civil rights. Women’s rights. Smoke-free flying. But the expectation of following the script hasn’t. 

For so many of us—especially those of us who grew up in mid-80s and 90s Christian homes—the idea that we would jump from one milestone to the next was a given. Almost all of my high school friend group went to college right away, and many of us continued for graduate degrees (the reality of privilege and means should not be overlooked here). We completed school, left home, and became financially independent.

The final two steps—marrying and having a child—also happened for many of my friends. My best friend in college met his future wife on the second night of our freshman orientation. They dated for three and a half years, had a six month engagement, and got married the month after we graduated college. Five years later they gave birth to a set of twins.

Personally, I’m three for five. The other two, well, they’re still a mystery.

I’m embarrassed by this but I tried to solve that mystery a few nights ago.

I didn’t have plans after work and went to my local bookstore hoping to spend a gift card my brother gave me for my birthday. After perusing a bit I went back to the Christian section to see if there were any books that interested me. The bookstore is across the street from a large seminary, so I also wondered if maybe somehow a midwestern female seminary student might be reaching for the exact same Henri Nouwen book as me. 

There was no one in the section, so I moved on with my perusing.

Reader, I went back to that section TWO MORE TIMES, just in case I was too early in my previous attempt(s).

Here I am, thirty, treating the Christian book section like a well in the Old Testament. The mystery has not been solved.

Am I not mature?

I’ve written about this before, but my Grandma Sue was single my entire life. Once, when she was in her 70s or early 80s—I can’t remember exactly when—I asked her why she hadn’t dated anyone in all the time I had known her. She looked at me and laughed and said, “I just like myself too much!”

I remember her saying that, and I remember thinking I wanted to be able to say it too. I wanted to be able to exist as a single person—if I had to be single someday—and say I liked myself too much as well.

I think of that now as I write these words, with the mystery of my maturity still very much alive.

I think my desire for marriage stems from dueling motivations:

1. I just flat out want it. Pretty simple. I’d love to fall in love and practice a sustainable relationship with someone who also loves God and loves me.

2. I’ve allowed the 1950s sociologists to become prescriptive of my success. I think that if I don’t achieve numbers four and five—marriage and children—then my life is not full, I am not mature, and I am not as worthy as those with all five notches on their belts.

When I’m being honest about my selfishness, I tell God I have earned a marriage because of my faithfulness. I show God my shiny trophies of spirituality in an attempt to prove why I should be the next in line for marriage—as if there is some heavenly list of marriage donor recipients and a degree in theology and active church membership will bump me up to the top.

But I know that’s not true; that’s not what I believe. I believe that marriage is not the main goal; at best, it is an echo of a greater beauty. Jesus is the thing itself, the great ground of being. It is to him I aim my attention and my life, trusting that he knows my desires and honors those as well. 

That’s what Grandma Sue did. Every morning. That’s why she loved herself so much.

Frederick Buechner, who passed away last month at the age of ninety-six, wrote about his conversion to Christianity.

He said he was “moved to astonished tears which came from so deep inside me that to this day I have never fathomed them. I wanted to learn more about the source of those tears and the object of that astonishment.”¹

My Grandma Sue spent the second half of her life single and discovering more and more “the source of those tears and the object of that astonishment.” She died content and in love with herself because of the deep and abiding love of God.

I’m working, yearning, stretching to practice that same life. I believe that in the eyes of God, the five stages of maturation are nothing but a mist in the much realer pastures of Christian fidelity. I want to live into that belief, “the object of that astonishment,” rather than the echo of that astonishment, no matter how beautiful an echo it might be.

I am becoming mature.

And you are too.

1. Buechner, Frederick, Now & Then, San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983. 10.