Brenda Rodgers

Category: For Single Women

  • Guest Post – How Not to Encourage a Single Woman

    For more years than I desired the status box I checked was “single woman”. Even though my deepest desire was to check the married one.

    One night in my late twenties I found myself at a Bunko party with women from my church. They were all nice women, but they were all married, so immediately I felt like the token outsider with their eyebrows raised and minds asking, “I wonder what’s her story”, “What could she be doing wrong?”, “I’m so glad I’m not her”.

    As we sat around rolling dice and matching numbers the conversation turned to married things. You know the married things I’m referring to without saying them, don’t you?

    So I just sat there and listened.

    And then it came. From the one who wore her married status proudly and her identity wrapped up with it. “We really shouldn’t be talking about these things with Brenda here. She shouldn’t be hearing these things.”

    Suddenly their thoughts were no longer just in their minds. They were there. Out in the open. For all to hear and for all to see – me. I could no longer pretend in secret like I was one of them. And they could no longer pretend either.

    My face turned bright red as the secret escaped. The label across my head read, “Yes, I am different from you when really all I want is to be you.”

    Now, please know that I understand what the married woman was trying to say, and I agree with her. It is not wise to talk about certain married things around single women in order to guard their hearts and help them in their diligence of purity.

    However, in that moment I was confident her words were not words out of love. Or if they were, I did not feel them. I felt isolated, alone, and even scorned.

    It is so easy in each stage of our life to forget what it’s like on the other side of our grassy, green lawns. It’s easy to forget what a young woman may feel who wants so badly to be married or an older woman who has watched her dreams of marriage and family fade away in time.

    But highlighting these circumstances is not a way to encourage her.

    She really just wants to fit in. To be your friend. To know she’s at least a little like you.

    We all have single women in our lives even if we don’t immediately think of them. It might be the woman who comes into the sanctuary every Sunday and sits alone. You see her, but you don’t think to sit beside her. Maybe it’s your sister or cousin or niece. Maybe it’s the woman at the Bunko game.

    Reach out to this woman, wherever she is, and encourage her. 

    Let her know: 

    ~ that you’re more similar than different

    ~ that you, too, have struggles and heartaches and worries

    ~ that she is worthy just as she is

    ~ that God, her Creator, has a marvelous plan for her life

    Don’t remind her that she’s different from you. That’s not the way to encourage her. 

    Instead, show her how much you are alike.

    Who is the single woman in your life (or maybe not in your life yet) who you could encourage? How could you reach out to her as someone one is different and yet at the same time so much the same?  Share with us in the comments!

     

    For years I believed that God was holding out on me by not giving me the husband and family I so desired. Finally, I surrendered to the truth that God loves me and has a perfect plan for my life.  I wrote an eBook out of this experience called Fall for Him: 25 Challenges from a Recovering Single. It is now available at FallforHim.com. The purpose is to help single women see that their life is not waiting out there in the future for them. Their life is now. But it can only be fully revealed by being surrendered to Jesus – allowing Him break the cycle of defeat in their life by believing His truths.

    If you are single, this book is for you, to help you take a tarnished past and create a clean future based on truth. If you’re married, this book is a great gift for that single woman in your life who is struggling with the desperate desire to be married. Maybe your niece, cousin, or sister. Maybe your best friend.

    Go ahead. Reach out your hand. Bless this special woman with your love. Give her an eBook that will help. You can purchase a copy by visiting www.FallforHim.com.

    Brenda considers herself a “recovering single” after years as a single woman chasing her dreams instead of God’s dreams for her. Now she lives with her two miracles: her husband who God physically saved from Cardiomyopathy after a dramatic heart transplant and her baby girl who will be born this month from those three hearts. Brenda encourages women to live a life surrendered to Jesus in every season on her blog, Triple Braided, and she recently published her first eBook, Fall for Him: 25 Challenges from a Recovering Single. You can also connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

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  • Can I Find a Life of Joy and Contentment?

     Do you struggle with experiencing joy and contentment when life doesn’t turn out as you expect? Today I am happy to have guest writer, Martha, from GrittyGrace.com. She shares with us two stories of young women who  found joy and contentment in the midst of their circumstances!

    joy and contentment
    Photo Credit: Philip Dickson

    These are some of the things I have observed by watching happy and miserable singles and marrieds… and from reading God’s Word.

    The absolutely true things are written in Scripture. Often however, we interpret Scripture through the lens of experience instead of the other way around. Scripture is true! Experiences of people can often be misleading.

    God’s Word says:

    “…for I have learned

    in whatever situation I am

    to be content.

    I know how to be brought low,

    and I know how to abound.

    In any and every circumstance,

    I have learned the secret of

    facing plenty and hunger,

    abundance and need.

    I can do all things

    through him

    who strengthens me.”

    Philippians 4:11b-13

    Let me tell you about some people I know.

    Eileen, a peer from college, graduated and started work. As time went on, she realized that men were not knocking her door down to marry her. She also realized that God had gifted her in counseling and she needed to get more training for a lifetime career in this field.

    She moved to a larger city to get graduate training and at about age 38, she stopped praying for a husband. She felt it was adding to her dissatisfaction. God knew what she wanted. During that year, she met a man who was in seminary and by the age of 39, she was married. It turns out, God had been working all along on this desire of hers. But He had to move the “man of her dreams” to the same country she was in. That took awhile.

    That really isn’t the happy ending. They have served together in a few churches since and have had 2 children, one by blood and one by adoption, who are now grown.

    Or meet Dawn. She was committed to marrying a Christian man when the time came. In college, she had guys who were good friends, but no one seriously dating her. She went on to get a job out of college in her professional field, but never met anyone that was a mutually serious match.

    As a teen, she had a number of single female teachers and friends at her church who made a point to get to know her, and they encouraged her to enjoy her single years. Through the lives of her friends she saw that they enjoyed their season of singleness. In their cases, they eventually married, but of course that doesn’t always happen.

    As time went on, she realized she didn’t want to pursue her career in the US when there were so many needs overseas. She worked hard to get her college loans paid off and started looking into options for short term service in her professional field. After looking at the options in the two or three available fields where she applied, Ukraine seemed to be the one that best suited her.

    Her two years in Kiev, Ukraine were wonderful, not perfect, but truly wonderful. They needed her skills. She was able to function well on the team. And she learned to speak Russian. Once again, she wasn’t meeting people who were mutually interested in marriage, but God had other plans. She gradually felt God leading her to serve in a more permanent capacity and applied for career status with the mission. Again, God provided and she stayed in Kiev.

    As a young woman, she had prayed for a husband for a time, but found more dissatisfaction when that prayer wasn’t answered, so she left it with God and moved on. The year she turned 36, she felt God leading her to begin praying for a husband again. She felt more of a desire for a husband at that point than she had before.

    Within a month after she started praying, a young man came to Ukraine on a mission trip. They met and the attraction was almost immediate! He was different from a lot of the other guys she had known in some ways, but over the next few months, it was obvious that they were meant to get married. Her furlough was due. She sold her things in Ukraine, moved back to the US and got married!

    Now, she is married with a 2 1/2 year old and a newborn, and they have returned to Ukraine to finish a three year short term assignment.

    Is the happy ending the fact that these women got married? Not really. The happy ending is that they learned to be content in their situation long before they ever met their husbands!

    This is a life skill everyone needs to learn from in every stage of life. They had people to whom they ministered to joyfully. They knew how to be hospitable in many ways and in many circumstances. They had friends and many relationships. They led full and happy lives.

    It wasn’t that “all of a sudden” they got married andhad a full and happy life for the first time! They had to learn to be content in their circumstances just like all of us do, single or married. Contentment is a habit, a way of thinking.

    They learned to be joyful in their present circumstances whether they were single or married, whether they had children or not, whether things were going well in other areas or not.

    They learned to rest in God’s sovereign plan for their lives when they were single and now that they are married as well.

    Have you learned to be content, even happy in the situation where you are, even though it may not be one you would have chosen for yourself?

    For some, this is learned in the context of marriage, often because they marry young. For others, it is learned before marriage. But it must be learned in life in many contexts.

    What is your biggest struggle with being content in all circumstances?

    Share with us in the comments!

    I am a pastor’s wife, mom of 3 daughters, grandmother of 7 grandchildren and oh yes, an RN and blog writer of GrittyGrace.com.  We have lived in various parts of Florida, Jamaica, near Peoria, IL, and Tyler, TX, our home for now.  We were often moving and being uprooted during our early and middle years of marriage.  Our firstborn was stillborn followed by our move to Jamaica for 7 years where I learned much about people and life while my husband taught at Jamaica Bible College.  Our three daughters were born then too.  Those were years of high stress when life was passionate, volatile and unstable.  At times, I was dissatisfied with the husband I had.  In the days before I wasn’t married, I craved a husband    Once I had a spouse, then I wanted a child.  When my desires for a child where blocked for awhile, I was angry and upset.  Dissatisfaction ruled my life.

  • Who are We Missing?

    Maybe it’s not you because you have a husband and possibly children. Maybe it’s not your friends because they have a family, too. But there’s a woman we are missing who sits really close by.

    This woman wants what you have so very badly – a family to love, serve, and spend her days with. But for now that is not what is there.

    This woman needs you. We are missing her.

    Today I am a guest writer at New Life Steward, and I am writing more about this woman we are missing  – the woman you don’t see. Will you join me there?

    NewLifeSteward.com

     

    Have you heard? My new eBook Fall for Him: 25 Challenges from a Recovering Single is now available on in Kindle, Nook, and PDF formats! With the holidays coming up this would be a great gift for either yourself or the single woman in your life – maybe a friend, sister, cousin, or niece. You know – the one we don’t see? It’s only $4.99. Give a gift of encouragement to this woman today!

  • Guest Post – Awakened Anew “A Single Woman’s Tarnished Past”

    Those early days when a girl is just about to be set free from the nest to fly on her own are the most crucial.

    Everything that has been packed into her mind, soul, and spirit from years previous is now ripe. If those messages are true, then her first flight will most likely be a success. Sure she might tumble and scamper on the ground a few times, but there won’t be any catastrophes like crashing into the earth and not being able to get back up again.

    However, if those messages of her mind, soul, and spirit aren’t true, if she wasn’t taught properly about her value to this world and to God – the unique treasure that He created her to be to accomplish His purposes – then her first flight will be daunting and possibly tragic. She will be on her own to sift through the lies this world tells her, and without even realizing it, she will make decisions based on what she knows.

    After realizing her mistakes, she’ll try so hard to turn from them, but truth still won’t be there to catch her. So she’ll make the same mistakes again – and again.

    About this time the Enemy – Satan – will begin to whisper to her that she’ll never learn to fly. She wasn’t fortunate like the ones around her.

    And she’ll start believing that lie too. 

    For so many single women this is the path they find themselves. During their teenage years and twenties they make decisions about boys and dating and marriage that were not God’s best for them, but it was all they knew.

    Then, years later, they are left with lifetime consequences and the Enemy’s voice saying, “It will never be different”, “You aren’t worthy”, “You aren’t one of the fortunate ones”.

    Throughout our lives we are susceptible to the Enemy’s lies. Sometimes they come in through our own inner voices, sometimes they come from the media hype around us, and sometimes they come from Pharisee Christians who know a lot about Jesus but only a little about the Cross.

    For single women, these voices whisper:

    “He’s too good for you. Your past is too bad.”

    “You will never be happy alone.”

    “If you don’t do this or this or this, then you will never get a man.”

    “I’m tainted. A good, Christian man would never want me.”

    “I’ll never find someone who will accept all I’ve done.”

    And they leave us in a cycle of defeat. 

    However, there is another path.

    Jesus came to break the cycle.

    However, we have to allow Him to break it in our individual lives.

    How do we allow Jesus to break the cycle of defeat from our pasts? 

    1. We accept Him as our Savior.

    Until we truly believe and accept Jesus’s free gift of salvation, then He cannot begin to break the cycle in our lives.

    2. We learn and meditate on Truth.

    Every day we replace the lies we believe, hear, and tell ourselves with God’s Word – Truth – about who we are and what our pasts are meant to be used for. This is not a “once a day” prescription. It is being in constant conversation with God throughout the day and every time an untrue thought comes into our minds.

    3. We allow Truth to change our hearts.

    When our hearts change, then our actions change. And when our actions change, then we see different results in our lives.

    Two Truth Verses to Begin With: 

    God uses all things for good. 

    ” And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

    God makes all things new. 

    “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” 2 Corinthians 5:17

    When the cycle is broken you can then see it’s purpose. That doesn’t mean you necessarily like your past any more, but you appreciate how it fits into God’s ultimate plan of redemption and glory.

    The purpose of our past is to bring God glory for His power over sin and to bring other people to Him through the stories we live. 

    Are you believing lies about your past? Are they keeping you in a cycle of defeat? Do you wonder about the purpose of your past? 

     

    For years I believed that God was holding out on me by not giving me the husband and family I so desired. Finally, I surrendered to the truth that God loves me and has a perfect plan for my life.  I wrote an eBook out of this experience called Fall for Him: 25 Challenges from a Recovering Single. It’s available now in PDF, Kindle and Nook formats. The purpose is to help single women see that their life is not waiting out there in the future for them. Their life is now. But it can only be fully revealed by being surrendered to Jesus – allowing Him break the cycle of defeat in their life by believing His truths.

    If you are single, this book is for you, to help you take a tarnished past and create a clean future based on truth. If you’re married, this book is a great gift for that single woman in your life who is struggling with the desperate desire to be married. Maybe your niece, cousin, or sister. Maybe your best friend.

    Go ahead. Reach out your hand. Bless this special woman with your love. Give her an eBook that will help. You can purchase a copy by visiting www.FallforHim.com.

    Brenda considers herself a “recovering single” after years as a single woman chasing her dreams instead of God’s dreams for her. Now she lives with her two miracles: her husband who God physically saved from Cardiomyopathy after a dramatic heart transplant and her baby girl who will be born this month from those three hearts. Brenda encourages women to live a life surrendered to Jesus in every season on her blog, Triple Braided, and she recently published her first eBook, Fall for Him: 25 Challenges from a Recovering Single. You can also connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

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  • Are Single Women Included in Titus 2?

    When I read the words of Titus 2 my heart stings a little.

    “Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.” Titus 2:3-5

    It stings because I remember reading these words as a single woman and wanting so desperately to be included – so desperately to have the benefit of an older woman who could urge me on, encourage me, and train me.

    Even though I wasn’t married, I needed a Titus 2 woman. 

    And I think most single women do. 

    Today I am honored to be a guest writer at Teresa’s Thought for Today. Teresa writes about faith, family, and food.

    Will you join me there as we continue to discuss Titus 2 women and the single woman? 

     

    Have you heard? My new eBook Fall for Him: 25 Challenges from a Recovering Single is now available on Amazon, Nook, and in PDF formats! With the holidays coming up this would be a great gift for either yourself or the single woman in your life – maybe a friend, sister, cousin, or niece. It’s only $4.99. Give a gift of encouragement to a single woman today!

  • Who are You Leaving a Legacy?

    When I write the word “legacy”, who is the first person to come to your mind? Most likely it is your children. We are constantly in pursuit of how to leave a legacy to our children, and rightly so. Our children are who we are commissioned to in order to do just that.

    But what if there’s someone else who we should be leaving a legacy? What if there’s someone who’s not even in our family, but there, on the outside, needing someone to invest in her?

    My hunch is that there is a woman in your life who needs you to mentor and to leave a legacy.

    Today I am writing about finding this woman over at Leaving a Legacy, a blog that encourages women to leave a legacy. Will you join me there?

    Have you heard? My new eBook Fall for Him: 25 Challenges from a Recovering Single is now available in Kindle, Nook, and in PDF formats!  With the holidays coming up this would be a great gift for either yourself or the single woman in your life – maybe a friend, sister, cousin, or niece. It’s only $4.99. Give a gift of encouragement to a single woman today! Go to www.FallforHim.com for more details!