WHAT IF WE’RE JUST NUMBERS?

By Andrea Guachalla

According to a study carried out as part of a book titled The Rosie Project, women and men will date several different people before they actually marry (which entails going through several breakups also), and will be cheated on at least once. When and if they get married, both men and women will do so after they’ve turned 30 according to the latest trends. Sadly, but statistically speaking, 50% of those marriages will actually end in divorce, and infidelity will be experienced by up to 25% of the couples.

As a result of all of this 20% of women in their 40’s will still be childless either by choice, infertility, or because they were not able to find a partner in their youth. A similar scenario goes on for men too. From the people who actually have children, counting in the people who never got married, 82% of the women will raise them as single mothers, and 18% of men will be single fathers. To make the scenario even darker, a small percentage of these single parents will be single because they were widowed.

Overwhelming, right? You might have been aware of all these things before reading them here. And if you didn’t know, well… Now you know.

What the numbers say about family dynamics and marriages is even worse than what I just described though. But I’ll stop there, and hope you got the point: things have gone the wrong way!

The thing is that many of us – if not most – fall into these statistics in one way or another or are on our way to do so. Willingly or unwillingly.

Perhaps you haven’t divorced yourself, but you did see your parents getting divorced. You might be one of those people in their late twenties who is still unmarried, though you do desire to have a family. Perhaps you are one of those marriage-minded people who has dated several people already only to find heartbreak at the end of every relationship. You might be a single mother, or a single father, or you might be facing infertility issues which have prevented you from becoming a parent, something you’ve longed for dearly.

Statistically speaking, it is very likely that you, the reader, are part of one or more of these groups of people. If you are discouraged by that or not is a question for which you alone know the answer. In either case, living in this chaos is something we can navigate knowing that we are held fast by a loving Father who sees our pain, distress and discouragement. We can trust he is in control of everything, including these global trends.

However, I would like to address a different group today. And that is the people who don’t fall into these statistics, but are fearful they will at some point. I want to address the people who, like me, are tempted to let themselves be guided by the “what if’s” and the alarming numbers we see in research.

The “What If” realm

Seeing how the world is getting more and more perverted, and how these global trends are affecting people close to us, make it easy for us to believe that, no matter what we do, we will be reached by the humongous, reckless wave that is approaching us. Like so many other people around us, we will too become numbers.

We don’t see a way out… So we give into the realm of the “what if’s”.

What if I ask someone out and she says no? What if I start a relationship and it doesn’t work out? What if I marry and I end up divorcing? What if I marry and am not able to have kids? What if I get fired and I can’t provide for a family? What if I get cheated on? What if I have kids and they fall sick? What if my spouse dies? What if I never marry?

All of these things are not only possible, but some of them are also statistically likely. And it makes sense, to a certain extent, that we are compelled to reflect on all this and be fearful and anxious that we will become that which we don’t want to be: the person who divorced, the person who couldn’t have children, the person who went through a heartbreaking breakup, the widowed, the one who never married.

However, fearing these things is dangerous. It’s dangerous because the logical and practical consequences of it is to refrain from anything that we think could cause us heartbreak, though we also know it could bring us great joy and fulfillment.

You might refrain from asking someone out, out of fear of being rejected. Yes, even knowing that a positive response would mean starting a relationship with someone you like. You might refrain from entering a relationship out of fear of it ending in a breakup down the road. Yes, even knowing that the relationship could also lead to marriage and having a family. You might refrain from marrying your partner out of fear that it’ll end in divorce. Yes, even knowing that it could also mean spending the rest of your life with someone you love. You might refrain from trying to have children in the context of marriage out of fear of miscarriage, or infertility. Yes, even knowing that having children would mean growing a family for decades to come…

If you focus on the numbers, and the possibility of something going wrong, you will certainly refrain from many, many things that are actually good. And that, my friend, is terribly bad, that is not living. First and foremost because the Bible teaches us to live in faith, not in fear:

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

Matthew 6:25-27, ESV

God has called us to trust Him in all things. And yet our tendency is to go to the “What If” realm, where God is not sovereign nor merciful, and where every single detail of our lives depends entirely on our helpless selves.

No wonder we get anxious thinking about the terrible and imaginary future that awaits us. But here is the ultimate solution:

What if we are faithful instead of fearful?

Have you ever been afraid of becoming a meaningless number? Have you ever been so gut-wrenchingly anxious and fearful that you were not capable of rational thinking? Have you ever feared you would make the wrong decision so much that you imagined your life being a wreck afterwards?

I have.

And though over the years it has been difficult and it required a lot of effort to deal with anxiety, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can only do one thing when it starts to creep in: BE FAITHFUL.

Can I add a single hour to my lifespan by worrying and being anxious? No. Moreover, worry and anxiety can actually take hours away from my life, and they certainly have already. If we let them creep in they can cause us to rush into foolish conclusions and unwise decisions. And that cannot be something a Christian can be fine doing.

So, what if we are faithful instead of fearful?

Yes, I know the statistics say half of the marriages will end in divorce and that the person you are currently dating might not be the one you end up marrying. But… What if you are faithful to the Lord regardless of the numbers and the fears that you have? What if you obey the Lord every day, every hour, and every second and let the results to Him who knows what your future will be like?

What if you approach every decision you make in prayer, studying Scripture, and asking for advice to the wise people around you? What if you walk faithfully every step of the way and trust that God will teach you something even if you end up facing the “worst case scenario”? Because guess what! Even if you are faithful to God, that doesn’t mean things can’t take an unexpected turn. In those circumstances you will know this though: you were faithful to God.

An article titled “Living Faithfully with Anxiety” from Ligonier says this: “Freedom from crippling anxiety requires that we remain in the presence of painful uncertainty while maintaining faith”. And I don’t think I could have found a more accurate description of what dealing with anxiety can be like for a Chrsitian who is overwhelmed by all the statistics and our growingly godless world. It entails enduring the pain of being completely and absolutely uncertain of what the future holds while fixing our eyes on God. The God who is sovereign, the God who sees our pain, the God doesn’t see us as numbers on a sheet of paper, but as His very children.

When we fear we’ll become just another number in the statistics we see on TV, we can decide to be brave and faithful. We can decide to trust God.