Jesus redefines everything. Our ultimate belonging is in the family of God. In this episode Sherri chats with Danielle Treweek author of The Meaning of Singleness. First, you’ll love how Sherri found her. Then you’ll spend the whole episode nodding your head and laughing along as these ladies break down what is really means to be single, how the church can do better in this area and how if you are single you are valuable, seen, and loved as you are! God has purpose where you are in your journey!
Co-Host: Angelique Struthers
Special thanks to Vision House for sponsoring the Snacks And Good Company Podcast!
Show Notes:
Book: The Meaning of Singleness by Danielle Treweek
Find Sherri: Online | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
Transcription:
Danielle Treweek:
With Jesus, he redefined who our ultimate family is, where we ultimately belong. I don’t ultimately belong in my biological household, even as those ties and at that love remains absolutely vital to who I am as a person. My ultimate belonging is in the family of God.
Sherri Lynn:
Hello, friends and welcome to Snacks and Good Company, brought to you by Vision House. I’m your host, Sherri Lynn. And man, I just want to jump right into this episode, but I do want to say thank you to all of you who have been sending emails and saying how much you’re enjoying the series and how you’ve been sharing it with your friends. I really do appreciate that and I do pray that it’s being a blessing to them as well.
All right, here we go. Let’s jump right into it. I am interviewing Dani Treweek. The title of her book is The Meaning of Singleness, and she is going to tell you … Well first, before she talks about why she wrote this book, I talk about to her how I came across her name and how I knew she was someone that we needed to interview. I finished this podcast series and then I was like, “I think I need something else.” And so I went to, I know there are so many different thoughts on this, all right, but I’m just going to tell you what I did.
I went to ChatGPT and I said, “Hey, if …” and I’m always really personal with my ChatGPT. We’re really good friends. I’m like, “Hey, are you?” And it’s always like, “Fine, how can I help you?” And I was like, “Look, if I wanted to interview somebody about singles in church culture, who would I interview?” This is the truth. ChatGPT said to me, “Try a pastor.” Or they gave me titles, which was nice. I said to ChatGPT, “Hey, that’s nice, but if I wanted someone specific, do you know of anyone specific that speaks to this topic?” And ChatGPT gave me a list of people, like four or five people, and our guest was one of the people I went through. So ChatGPT, Danielle, got you out there on the circuit. Congratulations. AI knows who you are.
Danielle Treweek:
This is the best intro I’ve ever heard on a podcast. The funniest thing is, a while ago someone said, “I put your name into ChatGPT, who is Dani Treweek.” It came up with this completely fictitious bio for me.
Sherri Lynn:
Oh, really?
Danielle Treweek:
Where I had done five different degrees. I was the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney.
Sherri Lynn:
Congratulations on that.
Danielle Treweek:
I’m glad it got me right on this one time.
Sherri Lynn:
We’re just going to jump into it, but I wanted you to know that that’s how I came across her name. Danielle Treweek is with us. She said I can call her Dani, so I’m going to do that. And the title of the book is The Meaning of Singleness. And when I saw it, I bought it immediately. I was traveling and so I started reading it, could not put it down and was like, “This is the last piece that I needed for this series,” because in talking to all of the young women that I talked to, young women, older women, everyone in between, I just wanted to complete that circle of purpose.
We had such a good time talking, but I wanted to feel like okay, and there is purpose. There is meaning. You do matter. He does see you. You are valid. He does affirm you. All of those things. I just wanted a really good way to do that and probably couldn’t figure that out. And then read your book and was like, “Oh yeah, that’s all. She did it. I’ll just talk to her. No need in me doing it. She did it already.” So the first question I wanted to ask you is, nobody stoned you for this book?
Danielle Treweek:
Not yet.
Sherri Lynn:
You didn’t get in trouble?
Danielle Treweek:
Well, it depends on your definition of trouble. Not yet. But there’s probably some quiet stoning going on in the background that I’m unaware of. Suddenly might get hit in the head one day by a rock and go, “Wow, where did that come from?”
Sherri Lynn:
Quiet stoning is the worst.
Danielle Treweek:
I do think that a lot of people assume, in fact, I know because I’ve had conversations, a lot of people assume that a book called the Meaning of Singleness must be an anti-marriage book and you’ve read it. So it’s not that at all.
Sherri Lynn:
It is not.
Danielle Treweek:
But yeah, our context is one that says, oh, if you’re going to talk about singleness being good and having meaning and value and purpose and dignity, you must be down on marriage. And that’s not the case. And so I’m enjoying thwarting some of those expectations as I engage with people, yeah.
Sherri Lynn:
Yeah, you know what? I never noticed that I did this until I was on with my co-host, Brant Hansen, and because I am single and he is married, a lot of times we will talk about those types of issues. And he’s really sweet about opening the floor for that and saying, “Hey, as a single person, what do you think about this?” And then as you would imagine, I get a lot of emails and correspondence from single women in church culture who quite frankly suffer a lot with shame and other issues. And I’ll start talking about being single and I will just inherently start doing this. “But marriage is great, and if you want to get married, you should. And I’m not trying to put anybody asunder. If you’re already married, you’re great.”
And I’d never noticed that I was doing that. Before I would talk about being single, I had to do this whole marriage treaties thing. And he stopped me one time, this was on the podcast, he said, “Hold it.” And he says, “The fact that she has to do this means that we have an idol in our midst.” And that was amazing that he said it as the married guy. I didn’t have to say it. Because I wasn’t even thinking about it, and even on this podcast, guys, you will hear me doing it. Even when I’m talking to, I’ll be like, “Hey, and by the way, we love marriage. Yay.” Because I don’t … Well, I do know what it is.
When I was reading your book, it reinforced that I knew what it was, is that there is, whether subconsciously or consciously, there has been put forth this right way of living, so to speak. And so then I won’t say that singleness is necessarily wrong. I’ll just say that it’s other. I think that’s how you put it, right, that it’s other, and then you just feel other, and then you don’t want to speak about the right way, the wrong way. Does that make sense?
Danielle Treweek:
What you just said there about that kind of, “Every time I talk about singleness, I start by saying, ‘Hey, marriage is good. I’m not down on marriage. I’m for marriage. I’d love to be married, but …'”
I do exactly the same thing. I heard the same words coming out of your mouth, because not only do I instinctively feel like that’s something that I need to say personally, because it’s been deeply embedded into my psyche that this is what we should say. But yeah, it’s what you said before, it’s the proactive, “Hey, don’t stone me. Don’t get me wrong here. Let me say what I’m not saying before I even get anywhere close to what I think needs to be said.” And I think that, as you have said, is indicative of exactly where we’re at as a Christian community in the present moment, that we feel we have to say that.
Sherri Lynn:
Yeah. So tell me a little bit about your background and what made you want to do this book.
Danielle Treweek:
Well, your listeners can probably tell already that I’m from Australia. Well, they’ve probably worked out I had an accent. So I live in Sydney, Australia. I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve never married. I’m in my mid-40s now, shall we say, and have never been married. And that was not my expectation. I grew up in a Christian Church, a great Bible teaching church here in Sydney. And my context was one where I expected “Okay, well, I’ll find someone in youth group, in youth ministry.” No. “Okay, I’ll find someone in university or college,” as you guys talk, but no. “Okay, well maybe my first few years of working,” well, that didn’t happen. Then I went to theological seminary and I thought, “Right, this is going to be where it happens.” And it didn’t.
It got to a point where I thought, “Maybe I need to think about this. Maybe actually this natural trajectory that I thought I was on is not necessarily what God has planned for me.” And at the same time, I realized there were other women, particularly women in my life, going through the same thing as well as some male friends. And so I started when I was studying at seminary thinking, “Oh, maybe I need to think carefully about what God’s perspective on my singleness is.”
I then started working in women’s ministry in a church here in Sydney and spent quite a lot of time with other single women, discipling them and reading the Bible with them. And that just continued to make me think, where we’re at is not sufficient for actually loving these women and men well. I don’t think we’ve grasped what God actually has to say on this and how he thinks and treats these women and how they think and treat themselves as well.
So yeah, that was my interest in singleness. I then was encouraged by some people I trust and respect to write a book. And I thought, all right, well, I could write another book on singleness and it will be just another book on singleness, or I can do the hard yards and work out what actually is the gap here. What are we not getting? And so long story short, that turned into a PhD. So I did a PhD to write a book, essentially. And yeah, the book you read was the Fruit of that.
Sherri Lynn:
Gosh, I feel like I need to say personally, thank you, because there were things that I … You know how you know something or you see something and you’re like, “I think this is what’s happening,” and I won’t say that church culture is gaslighting us, I won’t say that. That says intentionality, and I don’t actually believe that. I’ll just say that it’s so intrinsic and so deeply embedded that there’s no other thought process. But I’m looking and I’m like, “No, but I think something’s not quite right here.” You know what I mean?
Danielle Treweek:
Absolutely.
Sherri Lynn:
I am single and when women write or call the show, I could hear the shame in the girls’ voices. That’s part of this process in this podcast series is, “Lord, how do I help? What do I say?” And the beauty of your book is to say to women, “You’re not crazy.” Well, let me put it this way. This is what I say about myself. I may be crazy, but not about this.
Let’s cut in right there. I had so much fun interviewing Dani Treweek and appreciated her joining us. We’ll have more with her coming up. She’s going to talk about what the church, whether consciously or subconsciously, communicates to singles. We’re going to talk about that, also us making soulmates, God-mates, just making whatever the world is doing into a God thing. We’ll talk about that. I did ask Dani, in all fairness, I’ve asked everyone who is participating, what their contentment number is on a scale of one to 10, 10 being you’re on the mountain of contentment with Jesus and Paul, and one being you’re curled up in a ball somewhere crying with a sleeve of Thin Mints. And she was so gracious to answer the question.
Danielle Treweek:
I’m going to say on the contentment, I would put myself maybe around an eight, but I do want to say that I think the contentment meter is not the same as godliness meter. And so I still struggle with my godliness. I still struggle with temptation. And so feeling oh, this life is okay. I’m enjoying my singleness. I’m appreciating the opportunities that it brings me to serve God’s people. I’m at the good edge of that, but I don’t want to imply that that means that I’ve got everything together as super human, single woman, because that’s not the truth either.
Sherri Lynn:
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And she heard, thank God, about Vision House, and she went there and she found safety. She found relief. Not only that, the staff talked to her about her dreams and her future and helped her make a plan for steps towards that future for her and her son, Josiah. Now listen, you don’t want to be a part of that? I do. That’s why I gave, and I’m encouraging you to do the same. It’s $60, that’s it. 60 bucks provides a night of safety and care for women like Angie and their children. Check out what they do. And if you want to give, you can certainly do that too, at visionhouse.org. Again, visionhouse.org. You’re going to love seeing what they do and I guarantee you’re going to want to be a part. And we thank them for sponsoring this podcast series.
Hey friends, welcome back to Snacks and Good Company. You never really left. I mean, there was a break, but you’re still here at Snacks and Good Company, so it’s really weird to say, but all the podcasters say it, so I’ll say it too. Welcome back to Snacks and Good Company. I’m your host, Sherri Lynn. Let’s get back into our interview with Dani Treweek. The title of her book is The Meaning of Singleness, and here we are going to talk about something that was so powerful in her book. She talks about how the church will take the world’s idea, specifically about marriage, about singleness, about sex, take the world’s idea, and then change it into a God thing or into a Christian thing. But it’s still basically the world’s idea. That’s where we start this portion of the interview.
Danielle Treweek:
We’re pretty good at that as Christians, is we’re pretty good at not even realizing how much we’re drawing on the world’s pattern of thinking and then baptizing it in a way that fits it neatly into our Christian worldview. I give a couple of examples in Christian books and talks, which basically say exactly the same thing. There’s one author who writes about how we have been created with a spouse-shaped whole in our lives. That’s the completion idea. Then she goes on to say, and I think this is one of the worst things I’ve ever read, but anyway, she then goes on to say, “God has created us with this spouse-shaped void,” is what she talks about.
Then she says, “And that’s why spinsters often come in pairs, because they’re clogging up each other’s spouse-shaped void.” Yeah. And I tell you, I’m not even telling you what the name of the book is because I don’t want people to read it, frankly. But this is not some obscure book. This book has been endorsed by some significant people. It’s like the top four dating and courtship books of a very high profile Christian blogger who recommends books. I didn’t just go and find the worst of the worst. This is actually mainstream stuff.
Sherri Lynn:
A pair of spinsters. No way. Well, I will tell you that as I was reading your book, I was saying to myself, before reading your book, I said to myself, “I think that we are communicating to these girls in church culture that something’s wrong with them. I think that we subconsciously through our programs, through however, somehow in church culture we’re communicating to them, if you don’t have a man, if you’re not married, something’s wrong with you.” And then when I started reading your book and I was seeing the quotes, I was like, “Oh, so we just saying it then. This isn’t subconscious.”
Danielle Treweek:
We’re not beating around the bush.
Sherri Lynn:
No, we’re just going to go ahead and say it. Okay. All right. I’m sorry. Okay. That’s why they call them crying, we’re actually saying it, that if you have a best friend, you’re just a pair of spinsters. And there were some other ones. I actually, there was one that I actually took it. I was like, I can’t believe that was actually, it was something about you’re never more Christ-like than when you get married.
Danielle Treweek:
Yeah, getting married is the preferred route to becoming more like Jesus. And it’s said without any irony. And I don’t think this author, and I haven’t read a lot of this author’s work, but I’ve heard very good things about him. And I think that’s indicative of what you’ve just said. We don’t realize what we’re actually saying. We’re so used to saying it and thinking it, we don’t actually take the time to step back and go, oh, hang on-
Sherri Lynn:
Jesus wasn’t married.
Danielle Treweek:
The preferred route to becoming more like Jesus is to get married. Now, of course, and this is the problem. People then hear me say that and they think, “So, what? Marriage isn’t how you become more like Jesus?” I’m like, “No, no, no.” We become more like Jesus because the spirit makes us more like Jesus in whatever circumstance or situation of life we’re in.
Sherri Lynn:
That is right.
Danielle Treweek:
In singleness, in marriage, in youth, in old age, we don’t realize what we’re saying. And then when someone pushes back and goes, “Do you hear what you’ve said there?” Everyone gets defensive. “Why are you against marriage? Are you down on marriage?” It’s like walking a tight rope.
Sherri Lynn:
All right, I’m going to cut in right there because I want to bring in a few clips from a virtual round table discussion that we had with a group of young women who are single. We had so much fun and it was so insightful and they were so transparent and wonderful and I wanted you to hear some real world experience. Dani and I are talking about our journey as single women and then what we’ve seen, but these young ladies are talking about how they feel being in church culture and being single. I wanted you to hear, literally, real time, what they feel about that, how they feel about it and what they feel like is being communicated to them. So we’ll just have a montage of comments here. We’ll have Anna and Cindy, and we’ll start off here with Jessica.
Jessica:
It’s a church I’ve grown up in and I absolutely love it. I’ve gone there my whole life. My dad’s a pastor and I struggle to feel like an adult there and I waffle, is it because I grew up there and they’ve known me since I was a baby? Or is it because I’m single? I am 32, but yet don’t take on a role that other people that would be that age would take on. And it’s not from lack of willingness on my part, because I do service roles, but it doesn’t seem like I’m doing a service role. But it’s like, “Oh, that’s so sweet. She’s doing a service role. Oh, I’m all fuzzy.” And it’s like I don’t know what’s in people’s heads. Is it because they held me when I was a baby or am I a baby because I’m single?
Sherri Lynn:
Well, you haven’t lived when at church, when you reach a certain age, it’s no longer that God will send you the right person, or he’s just waiting for you to improve. No, it’s “Let me pray for you.” That’s what I’ve gotten. I’m at the age where people are just like, “Let me pray for you.” I don’t know if I should say thank you or that’s just … I don’t know. I don’t know.
Speaker 6:
I started going to a new church and it’s interesting. And yeah, just the way they handle small groups and stuff, it’s young couples mixed with singles or you go in with family and the one that I joined, it’s with a lot of families and there’s only two other single girls in there. And it’s interesting, building that, because they talk like, “Oh, don’t worry. When I was your age I thought that I wouldn’t get married and got married later in my twenties and I thought I never would. So there’s still time.” I’m like, “Thank you.”
Yeah, so it’s not good or bad, it’s just like there’s something missing to support single people who may not have their number one goal to get married, which that’s where I’m at. It’s not my number one goal. So when people say, “Here, you want to hold the baby?” I’ll say yes because it would be awkward to say no, but I don’t really want to. So it’s an interesting navigation. All right, that’s enough from the baby hater. Mary Ellen, do you have anything to say?
Mary Ellen:
Well, I don’t know if I can top that.
Sherri Lynn:
Again, the older single women that we had last week, the round table discussion we had with them, hopefully you can hear that we had a lot of fun and we did. And that’s what Snacks and Good Company is about, by the way. It’s not really about snacks, even though you are encouraged to eat your favorite snack while you’re listening to this podcast, it’s more about company and not feeling alone. That’s why I always want so many different voices and so many different people talking, so that thing that you feel specifically as a single person, where you feel silly when you feel alone or you are contentment number of dips or you feel like something’s being communicated to you in church and you’re like, “They’re making me feel kind of weird here, but am I wrong?” I love that you can hear all of this and feel affirmed and feel validated and know that God is still with you when he’s on your side.
So that’s why we have all these different people chiming in and we did have such a good time with those young ladies. And now we’re going to get back into our interview with Dani Treweek. And we start this part of the interview off with, I had said to her that I didn’t think that married men were going to enjoy this podcast or married women, married people overall. I thought maybe married women would, just because either hopefully it’s entertaining and also a lot of women have single women friends, but I didn’t think they were going to enjoy it. And I said that I don’t particularly enjoy podcasts about people being married because I’m not married. And you know what? She took me to task a little bit on that and I appreciated it.
Danielle Treweek:
It grieves me so much that we think that a podcast on singleness where single women in particular are pouring out their heart, is going to be of no interest or benefit or relevance to married men. And the reason for all married women and vice versa, that married people pouring out their heart is no relevance to me. That grieves me because actually it ought to be.
Sherri Lynn:
You’re right.
Danielle Treweek:
And the reason it ought to be is because we are brothers and sisters of the same household of God. We need to understand how to love and care for each other, which means we need to listen to each other, but also we need to understand who we are together as men and women, as married and single, as young and old, because that is what the household of God is. That is what the family of God is. And so to go to your point, again, I’ll try not to talk too long. History helps us here. Yes, the household unit has always been, the core of that has always been mother, father, children.
That is the way that God has actually created units in society work. That is how God builds community, through mother, father having children. At least in this age. My whole book is actually, that’s not what’s happening in the next stage. So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about this for a moment. But the way that has been expressed, we think it’s always been mom, dad, kids behind a picket fence removed from society, entering out in society and then withdrawing to their own little unit.
No, no, no. For the majority of human history and in fact, still for the vast majority of places around the world, that is not what the household is. And it unlocked for me, when I was doing some research into where did this idea of the nuclear family come from? And that word, I think it was about the beginning of the 20th century, some German or Austrian sociologist with a name I could never pronounce, I think came up with this idea. It’s in the book, this idea of the nuclear family. But what he meant by that was mother, father, children are the nucleus of an atom.
So you think an atom, the nucleus is right at the center and all these other relationships in the household are circulating around this center. They are really important in holding that together, in forming the whole atom. But what happened over the course of the 20th century and peaked in the 1950s is the nucleus of the atom, the nuclear, was removed outside the atom and put over here on its own. It then relates to the rest of those relationships on its own terms, withdrew, moved back. And that is our notion of the nuclear family. I think the white picket fence is the metaphor for it. We think that the household retreats back into itself and then opens the gate and moves back out into the world on its own whims and demands. But actually, throughout human history that hasn’t been the intention of the household.
The household has actually been about this eclectic grouping of people who love and care and provide for each other within a broader community of collective groups. Now that’s our problem, I think, with family from a historical social perspective, that our 21st century notion of household family, biological family, is very unique and we don’t realize how unique it is. But from a biblical perspective, the biological, if we’ll call it household, remains absolutely pivotal to life in this world.
But with Jesus, he redefined who our ultimate family is, where we ultimately belong. I don’t ultimately belong in my biological household, even as those ties and at that love remains absolutely vital to who I am as a person, my ultimate belonging is in the family of God. And so you see that when his mother and brothers come to talk to him and he’s got a massive crowd of people there listening to him and they can’t get to him and his disciples come up and say, “Hey, your mom and brothers are here.” And Jesus said, “Well, who is my mother? Who are my brothers?”
That’s not suddenly Jesus saying, “I don’t love my biological mother anymore. She doesn’t matter to me.” It’s him actually exploding our idea who we belong to as his people. And I really think we have lost sight of that. We pay lip service to it. But I think we think as Christians today that we belong to that bigger household, is by first of all, belonging to a biological household who gets co-opted in. Church becomes a club for families rather than a family in itself.
Sherri Lynn:
All right, let’s cut in right there. I love the terminology that Dani used in that segment about the household of God. I’ve been using that ever since, by the way. We are all a part of the household of God. And I think if we thought about that a little more, we’d treat each other a little better and have empathy for each other. And that’s beyond single and married, that’s black, white, male, female, all of it. I just love that imagery of all of us in our father’s household and how do we relate to one another? So we’re going to talk more about that, have more with Dani. But right now I want to go to a part of an interview with Bridget and my co-host Angelique. And it’s a story I told, true story because we were talking about the pressure of being single. Is that internal or external?
And if external, where’s it coming from? Is it coming from church culture? Is it coming from culture at large, the world? Is it coming from family? And I talked about how I never really felt too much pressure being a young single woman, but that my grandfather would do something that … Well, here’s the story. My grandfather used to say it all the time. It used to make me upset in the beginning, but then it was kind of funny. A guy would walk past and it would be like the most raggediest, trifling looking guy. And my grandpa would be like, “Hey, there go your last chance.”
Danielle Treweek:
Oh, my God.
Sherri Lynn:
Yeah. I mean, comedy is comedy. That’s funny. I would be like, “That’s ignorant.” But inside I’d be like, “I know that’s kind of funny.” He knew just the dude, just the dude to walk past to do it. It would be the perfect dude when it was, “Hey, hey, hey. There got your last chance right there.” I had to learn, be okay. Once you are okay, and I would say that to if anyone was asking me what I have to wrestle with all the things, all the cultural things, all the Hallmark movies, all the Sirius XM channels, all the holiday. I got to wrestle with all of it. Once I get to the other side and there is another side, once I get to the other side, I don’t care if y’all came up. Culture didn’t have to come to the other side with me. Church didn’t have to come to the other side with me. I just said me and Jesus had to be okay.
Hello friends, this is Snacks and Good Company. I am your host, Sherri Lynn. Thank you so much for being here with us. Hopefully you’re enjoying it. Hopefully it’s encouraging to you. And if you know a single woman who is struggling being single and having some issues with it, please, please, please share this with her. I really do believe it’ll be an encouragement to her. All right, we’re going to get back into our interview with Dani Treweek, but before we do that, I asked her about a comment that was made in our young women’s virtual round table discussion and asked her if she had any thoughts on it. And instead of posing the question here, I thought I would let you actually hear what the young woman was saying. It’s actually not even a question, it’s just a statement that I believe a lot of young and old single women can relate to.
Speaker 6:
I would say I used to be even more discontent and definitely thinking that there was something wrong with me. I’m in this unique situation where I have never dated either. And so there’s a huge part of just feeling like I’ve never been asked. I’ve never had anyone that … I had one person that I thought maybe we were headed there. And it turned out as soon as I expressed any interest, he ran the other way completely. And we completely even lost the friendship. And so there’s just that sense of what is wrong with me? Why am I different?
Because it is something that I thought I wanted. I didn’t plan my wedding as a kid, but I was a kid that my job description was going to be, I was going to be a stay-at-home mom with kids. And so for me, the grieving has almost been more the fact that I don’t have my own family, I don’t have kids. And so it’s been some of that grieving too, of am I not worthy to have kids? Am I not worthy to be in that situation? Why is this not something that’s been brought to me when I know I have capacity?
Sherri Lynn:
So that was a comment from our round table discussion with young single women. And I asked Dani about it and I said to her, “Hey, I’m talking to these women. A lot of them are asking themselves, ‘is there something wrong with me?'” Because that’s what’s being communicated via church, that’s what’s being communicated in the world at large, that’s what’s being communicated in a lot of their family life. And so I asked her what would she say to this young women and other young women like her? And man, she was just so transparent and honest.
Danielle Treweek:
Let me be vulnerable now because you’ve had all these callers be vulnerable. I’ve realized in the last couple of years in particular, as a woman who has never been married or never been anywhere close to being married, let me say, it’s occurred to me how small I try to make myself in other people’s lives, how little space I try to occupy, not like I actually intentionally try to minimize my impact in other people’s lives because I realized deep-seatedly, because no one has ever said to me, “I want you to occupy a really significant place in my life as my wife,” because no one’s ever best pursued me in that way. The people, I’m well-loved, I’m very well-loved, but it feels like the people who love me are meant to love me. No one has ever gone, “Oh, I really want to love that person,” or at least a man hasn’t. And the world tells me that’s where I find my meaning and my value and my worth.
Sherri Lynn:
Someone has to pick you. I haven’t been picked.
Danielle Treweek:
I have, exactly. And so my mentality, I’ve realized I’ve just imbibed. Okay, well just enjoy the relationships you have, but don’t be a burden in people’s lives. Don’t be an imposition. Don’t insert yourselves into people’s lives. And I think that to reflect back on what your caller said, yeah, I think that’s me thinking, “I’m not worth this. There’s something wrong with me. I haven’t been picked, and so therefore I should take what’s given to me but not ask for too much.”
And there you go. There’s some deep-seated psychological issues going on for me. And I’m sure it’s not all to do with my singleness, but my singleness … Like you, I’m content, I’m secure.
Sherri Lynn:
But it’s still there.
Danielle Treweek:
It’s still there. It deeply informs you. So I want to say to that woman and all the others that you’ve had call and all those who are listening, and also let me say to our Christian brothers who are single as well, I get it. I feel it. But what you said before, we have to keep telling ourselves what is true. Don’t listen to Satan’s lies about you. Listen to who you know you are. If any of us want to talk about are we valued, Jesus left the throne in heaven to take on flesh of man and lived in a sinful, fallen awful world and died the most horrible death, unjustly, so that you could be in a relationship with God. Because God loves you that much, which says more about God than us, let’s face it. But we have to keep reminding ourselves when we are feeling like, “There’s something wrong with me.” Well, there actually is something wrong with us because we’re sinners, so let’s be honest about that.
But let’s also be honest that actually God doesn’t love us because of anything intrinsically good or worthwhile in who we are. He loves us because he’s loved. And as Christians, we are called to love others because God has loved us. And so we have to keep reminding ourselves our dignity, our value, our worth is not on whether we have a ring on our finger or not. It’s not on whether we have had children or not as good as both of those things are. Our value actually is that we are in Jesus, we’re found in him. And our hope is, and let me just give a plug really to the message of my book here.
Jesus makes it very clear. He gives one very specific insight into the eternity that is awaiting us as resurrected, embodied men and women. And it is an eternity in which we will not be married to each other. There will be one husband and one wife in eternity, and that is Christ and the collective church, but individually with each other, we are not going to be husbands and wives. We’re going to be brothers and sisters.
That doesn’t mean marriage now is of no consequence, of course not. But it does relativize it. It does actually say there’s a future coming, a perfect future where actually the value, the relationship that we’re going to share that is going to be perfected where we are going to know each other and be truly known [inaudible 00:38:50]
Sherri Lynn:
Which is what we all want. That’s what we’re all craving.
Danielle Treweek:
That’s exactly right, yeah. It’s actually as siblings in Christ is sons and daughters of God, which brings us back to the church, doesn’t it? But this is meant to be the community that is living that out here and now. And so if we have a church that’s obsessed with husbands and wives more than it’s obsessed with being brothers and sisters in Christ, we have a problem. We need to be renewed by the transforming of our mind so that it’s actually aligned with who we’re in reality in the household of God.
Sherri Lynn:
Oh my goodness, I want that so much for myself, let me say, and I want that for our brothers and sisters. I love when you talked about that scripture of him saying there’s no marriage in heaven, because that was one of the settling scriptures for me as I got older. I said to myself, “Okay, once you get to a certain age, you’re like, you’ve lived more than you are going to live.” Right? I could just be straight up about it. I don’t know why people be like, middle-aged is 50. You are not living to be 100. I know I’m not, not with all the pizza I’ve eaten. So you’re at middle age right now. So then I thought, “Well, dating apps and all that pressure, that pressure to find somebody.” I thought, “Is this something valid?” And if you do this, by the way, you’re listening to me and you still would like to have a companion here on earth, I am not disparaging that at all.
So please don’t hear me saying that. I’m telling you my process. I said to myself, “If this is not going to carry over eternally into eternity and I’m getting closer to eternity, is this something I should be really focusing on?” Because it’s looking more and more temporal. Does that make sense? It is just going to be for here on earth. And my time here on earth, quite frankly, is wrapping up. I know that sounds morbid, but it is what it is.
So to strive and strain and push and scratch and claw for something that when I die, it doesn’t carry over, I might as well find a way to enjoy Christ more, find a way that because that actually is carrying over. That was part of my settling in my mind, like “Well, that doesn’t make any sense, Sherri,” you know what I mean? That was part of my … So that scripture, when I read that scripture in your book, I was like, “Yes, that makes sense to me.”
Danielle Treweek:
And again, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all have this account in it.
Sherri Lynn:
Yes, yes.
Danielle Treweek:
How often do you hear a preacher at the front preaching, not just on that passage when they come to it, but actually incorporating that insight from scripture, which is a very specific insight about eternity into our thinking. Again, it’s a bit like 1 Corinthians 7. We deal with it when we get to it in the sermon series we’re working on, and then we put it to the side and keep calm and just carry on the way we think. So I want to agitate a little bit for us to go, “Hang on. There’s some things that we need to wrestle with you as a contemporary church that we’ve put out of sight, out of mind.”
Sherri Lynn:
Let’s cut in right there. Dani Treweek, the title of her book is The Meaning of Singleness. I cannot suggest it enough to you. I think that it’ll be a real blessing to you and that you will love it. I certainly did. So grateful that AI brought us together. See, AI can’t be all bad. It brought us Dani, right? So she’ll be talking later on in the series about how the church can do better in ministering to singles, not just ministering to them, just the way we relate to each other, the way we interact with each other in what she called and what I am now calling the household of God.
So we’ll be hearing more from her later in the series. Right now, we were talking about being picked. How come no one picked me? And I know that that is such a thing for so many of us. You know what I mean? Because that’s the big thing. If you’re by yourself, that means no one pointed to you and said, “Hey, I’d like to spend my life with you.” And that’s tough, right? But I told Angelica the story. We were talking about that, and I told her a story about being picked that changed my perspective.
Ange, I tell this story all the time about not being picked. That’s really what this is. Nobody picked you, right? Is that shame come from nobody picked me, I’m sitting in this pew by myself. I’m driving this car by myself. I’m going to this wedding by myself. I’m eating in this restaurant by myself. And what the culture says that means is no one looked at you and said, “I’ll take her.” And that’s a problem, right?
And so here’s the story that I always use, is at my family reunion, and this is a quintessential moment at my family reunion. If you bring this up to any of my cousins, they remember it. Let’s play kickball. Okay, now we got some thick people in my family, and I’m going to just say that, okay? Myself included. What made us think we’re going to go up and play kickball with the kids? So it was my nieces and all them, and play against the kids.
So we go and we’re like, “All right, we’re going to play.” And then we’re like, “No, not play against the kids because we’re going to lose. So we’ll pick teams.” So now it’s embarrassing because it’s pick kids. They’re picking kids because they’re faster, they’re younger, they’re skinnier. You are not getting picked. You seeing it dwindle down, you starting to get junior high flashbacks of not getting picked for whatever team. And so the folks wasn’t picking me. I was still like, I know I ain’t about to be last, right? Listen, I’m not getting picked, okay?
I maybe went second to last, third to last maybe. Embarrassing. Get up there. Now we got our teams. My team’s up first. My niece gets up, she kicks it, runs to first base, great. Next kid, get up. Now I’m up. Angelique, when I kicked that ball, the trip from home plate to first felt like I should have took four greyhounds. I ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran-
Angelique:
Keep running, running, running, running.
Sherri Lynn:
Running, running. Running? What was you doing? Running? Out pouring in sweat from home plate to first, because I’m out of shape. Right then I looked down at the pavilion, and the people who didn’t come up here to play, they had ribs, the ribs had gotten there, and then they had the cha-cha slide was playing and folks was eating ribs and cha-chaing, and right then on first base, I wish to God I wasn’t picked, and that’s what I wanted. That’s the story.
What I’m saying to you is, I love marriage, and if you get picked, you get picked and you play, go ahead and run. But sometimes there’s a benefit to not getting picked. There’s ribs and cha-cha down in the pavilion, or you get picked and you can play the game. So getting picked is not always what it’s cracked up to be, is my point.
Angelique:
It gives a whole new meaning to slide.
Sherri Lynn:
Hey, since this honest goodness true, we’re going to move on. The whole family that we played, all of us used that as the moment that we all started our fitness journey. Everybody started changing they food. Everybody started getting gym membership.
Angelique:
Except the kids, because they were good.
Sherri Lynn:
The kids was laughing, talking about, “Auntie, are you all right?” Because I’m on second base.
Angelique:
Do I sound all right? Auntie, you all right?
Sherri Lynn:
Get an ambulance. Welcome back to Snacks and Good Company. This is your host Sherri Lynn, and it’s time for us to wrap up but before we do, I could not let Dani leave without answering the question. You know what the question is, it’s the Boaz question, friends, and yes, she does answer it. So the question I asked everybody, Dani, was let’s say that God was like, “Guess what? I have your husband for you. Here he is.” And the door opens up and there he is. It’s your Boaz, and he is 40 years older than you. Right now, at this moment, are you taking that Boaz?
Danielle Treweek:
Oh gosh, I’ve never been asked this question before. Look, if I had been convinced that I had a direct word from God, this man is a man I have prepared for you to marry, and I felt very convinced that that was God’s call on my life, then I would like to think that I would say yes to that.
Sherri Lynn:
You would like to think that you would say, you’re not saying yes. You would like to think that you would say yes, that’s your answer? I would like to think that I would say yes.
Danielle Treweek:
I’ve never contemplated this before, so it’s still coming out off the top.
Sherri Lynn:
This is an original question.
Danielle Treweek:
God could very well be preparing some work like that for me, that I become convinced of through the spirit. I don’t want to laugh at the fact that God could have something like that in store for me. I’m also not expecting that that [inaudible 00:48:43]
Sherri Lynn:
Not expecting an 80 something year old, but should it …
Danielle Treweek:
Should it happen, my parents might have a problem with it. So we’d have to sort of work it in, so. This would be older than them. But you know … Sorry, let me-
Go ahead.
Sherri Lynn:
Let me make very quickly again, a very simple observation, which is again, here we are actually recognizing the unique moment we have in marriage in our time and age. When we are looking at Ruth, that’s not going to be entirely unreasonable. It wouldn’t have even been unreasonable 500 years ago when people were marrying a spouse because they were a good hardy worker who could help them bring in the crops and we have to [inaudible 00:49:27]
It was a family thing too, right? It was a lineage thing. It was a family thing, right?
Danielle Treweek:
Yep.
Sherri Lynn:
Yes.
Danielle Treweek:
So we have to recognize that our, “Oh gosh, that seems weird to me,” that’s because we’re weird too in our own way.
Sherri Lynn:
Yes, yes. Absolutely.
Danielle Treweek:
We have to be willing to recognize that.
Sherri Lynn:
I will recognize that and also recognize it’s an awful question, which is why I ask it. It’s an absolutely awful question. Yes, for the record, I do know that it is a terrible question, but I love it and I’m going to keep asking it, and I’m very grateful for the people like Dani and others who graciously answer. So we’ll have more of Boaz questions the next episode.
Also, next episode, we’re going to talk about the gift of singleness. What does that mean? If you’ve been in church culture for any length of time, specifically in ministry, church ministry, you’ve probably heard that, and we’re just going to unpack what we think that means. That’s going to be fun. Also Angelique, my co-host, wanted to ask a question about celibacy. Here is a little snippet of what’s happening next episode.
Angelique:
God is practical. He’s not just telling you don’t have sex before marriage to be an ogre, but once you have sex with somebody, there’s chemicals that exude from the body. I won’t get into all of it, the biology of it, but what happens is your eyes have shut. They have shut, and you do not observe all the things, the red flags that you might otherwise see. God wants your eyes half shut after marriage, but before marriage he wants your eyes wide open to see all those possible flaws before you walk down the aisle so you can make a good decision.
Sherri Lynn:
Yeah, yeah, you heard that right? Next episode’s going to be a little spicy, so make sure you’re here. Please, like please share. Please subscribe. Please leave comments. It helps people find us, and just so grateful that you guys are with us, and we’ll see you in the next episode of Snacks and Good Company. Snacks and Good Company is presented by Purposely, produced by me. Co-host for this series is the one and only Angelique Struthers.
Music is done by Matt Mason of Mason Haven Music. Thank you, Matt. Art designed by Na’Toria Marketing. Sound engineering by Garrick Whitehead. Social media by Janessa Scholler. Multimedia recording was done in StudioME in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Make sure you subscribe to this so that every episode is in your inbox, and send it to a single person that you know that you think it’ll be a blessing to it or encouragement to. Maybe she’ll laugh, maybe she’ll cry, but at least she won’t feel alone.
So make sure you share this series as well. And if you have any comments or questions, you can always email me at Sherri S-H-E-R-R-I @snacksandgoodcompany.com. We’ll talk to you next time, friends.
About Sherri:
Sherri Lynn has been a radio professional for well over a decade. She has her degree in Communications as well as Biblical Studies. Sherri is a writer, comedienne, and former youth pastor. She wrote and produced a comedy DVD entitled “The Very Funny Church Comedy Show: Together We Laugh”, wrote and starred in the stage play musical “The Bold and the Sanctified” which starred American Idol Winner Ruben Studdard, and authored the book “I Want To Punch You In The Face But I Love Jesus.” She is the producer of The Brant Hansen Show and “The Brant & Sherri Oddcast.”
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