Believing and discovering is a risk, because men – like women – are fallen image bearers and can be schmucks as fathers, brothers, colleagues, friends, or husbands, and more often than not as strangers. They can spark deep, angry breaths and elicit sad, weary sighs.

But what I’ve discovered – beyond the endless if necessary debates around gender roles and traits, and beyond even the hurt inflicted by fallen men – is the relentless truth about the mysterious but real offering of men. I say mysterious because it’s hard to define.  It is like the blowing of the wind. I can’t put the offering in a box; I can’t measure its edges; but I can tell when it’s blowing by its effect on me. In my case, something mysteriously good transpires, and a part of me exhales. Put more concretely, my friend Cindi says it this way: “Think about getting a compliment from a woman versus getting the same compliment from a man. It’s different. Think about a girlfriend walking you to your car or a guy walking you to your car. That’s different. Those may sound silly, but I think there’s something there.”

No doubt many women, perhaps including you, will discover the image of God in men in a variety of forms. Clearly, my experience is shaped by a particular context and personality. But because God’s image, even if blurred, universally resides in men, there is an answer to the question, Men: who needs them? And while the answer is only a starting place, and begs many questions which I don't address here, it is nevertheless an answer on which we can solidly stand. Who needs men?  I’d humbly venture to say we all do.

¹²Whitehead quotes, on pages 172-173, from Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, he Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right" (New York:  Warner Books, 1995), 49.
¹³Genesis 1:27, NASB.

Adapted from "Revelations of a Single Woman: Loving the Life I Didn't Expect," © 2006 by Connally Gilliam.  Published by SaltRiver Books (an imprint of Tyndale House Publishers).

Connally Gilliam  earned a Master's of Teaching (English) from the University of Virginia and has taught high school and college writing.  She now works for Navigators as a Life Coach for Twenty-somethings in the Washington, DC, metro area.  She loves sharing coffee with friends and discovering how God is real, even in a crazy, changing and unintentionally single world.