Now and Not Yet
Making Sense of Single Life in the Twenty-First Century
by Jennifer A. Marshall
Multnomah, 208 pp., $13.99

The self-help section of your local Barnes & Noble is essentially a catalogue of human egoism, folly, and desperation. Bestselling titles include 1937's How To Win Friends and Influence People (Tip #1: Don't let them see you reading this book), The Complete Idiot's Guide to Amazing Sex (stop procreating), The 4-Hour Workweek (yeah, right), and Why Men Marry Bitches (helping single women maintain holier-than-thou attitudes since 2006).

Thank God for Jennifer Marshall, who turns these misbegotten recipes for self-actualization on their heads. In her debut book, Marshall presents a self-help guide which tells us that helping ourselves is not the point--a daring proposition in our era of individualism. Instead of attempting to micromanage ourselves into an uncompromising vision of the good life, what if we stepped back and lived for the sake of something larger than personal fulfillment?

As Marshall puts it, "What makes us think we can demand concierge treatment from God, as though He needs to consult us about whether we'd prefer the direct or scenic route? God isn't running a tourist agency. . . . Life isn't about finding ourselves; it's about glorifying God."

Marshall, director of domestic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, writes with thoughtfulness and an optimism that make this a rewarding read for people outside her target audience of "never-married Christian women in their midtwenties to midforties who are generally well-educated and living mostly in suburban or urban

Because Now and Not Yet is not marketed as an overtly Christian book--there is no mention of God or religion on the front cover, and only a passing reference to faith on the back--an unwitting browser may be put off if she flips open to the chapter on "God's callings." But taken as a whole, chances are that a married agnostic man or a Jewish teenager could find nourishment in Marshall's writing, which is spiritual but not unctuous, sensible but not prosaic. She offers original advice on how best to enjoy the life we're living rather than the life we've patched together for ourselves from snippets of romantic movies.

But because this is largely a work of sociology, let's get back to Marshall's target audience and the question of marriage. In the early 1970s the average age for a first marriage was just under 21. Today it is over 25. Three out of 10 American women are unmarried at age 30. But Marshall posits that this is not due to a lessened desire for marriage among women--nine out of 10 high school girls still say that a good marriage is an important factor in their future plans--but mackled romantic rituals and women's lib, which left women with more choices but did not necessarily arm us with the ability to choose well.

Marshall harks back to her parents' generation, when "life wasn't about finding yourself; it was about knowing God." But instead of mourning bygone social norms, Marshall challenges readers to adapt to the particularities of modern life.