The other night I was at a Bible study made up of less than a dozen 20-somethings. It was a good study, we actually got into the Word and had some good discussion about it. This same group (under different leadership) used to be simply a one-sided regurgitation of churchy cliches from the leader, mixed with copious quantities of “I feel this” and “I feel that.”
But what I found most interesting was comments made as we finished our supper, prior to beginning the actual study. One girl mentioned that the majority of us had graduated from Christian colleges without getting married, and posited that fact was prima facie evidence that those colleges had failed us. Another disagreed, stating that she felt the best age to get married was 35.
I wanted to start reciting Herrick:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a-flying : And this same flower that smiles to-day To-morrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher he’s a-getting, The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he’s to setting. That age is best which is the first, When youth and blood are warmer ; But being spent, the worse, and worst Times still succeed the former. Then be not coy, but use your time, And while ye may go marry : For having lost but once your prime You may for ever tarry.
The girls in this group are all right at or past their expiration dates. In fact, one of the girls in this group I recently talked to about pursuing marriage, but only because I heard so much other positive information about her from an old friend and several people at church that it outweighed the fact that she was already at the extreme high end of the acceptable age scale. When she told me “While my dream has always been to be a wife and mom, my focus is elsewhere right now.” I was sad for her. Not being interested in me is one thing, but putting off your dream when you are already at the end of the time when it is within reach is downright sad.
I continue to hope, for her sake, that she was lying to me and really just found me unattractive.
In this week’s sermon, the pastor shared how he and his wife lost their dream of children because, although they married in their early twenties, they chose to wait five years to become financially stable prior to having children, and by that time his wife had lost her fertility. Some of the girls from the Bible study were there–I can only hope they recognized that it was not a story of an unusual circumstance, but rather a reflection of the biological reality that on average, a woman who does not have a child before the age of 25 will have lost 90% of her fertility by age 30.
When someone tells me that they want to do something “someday,” I am sad for them. Like Creedence, I know that “someday” never comes.
I don’t know how to help those who say they want to be mothers but put it off past the time God appointed in human biology. But they next time a girl asks me my favorite poem, I may just start “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may…”