When God Is Quiet, and the Dating Apps Keep Churning

Katelyn grew up in a faith-centered home. Her parents raised seven kids to love both God and people, and she often saw her mom and other women dedicate themselves to their families. It was a beautiful model, and Katelyn assumed her life would look the same.

“I definitely went to college expecting I would get married and not have to figure out a full career,” she told Kelly.

“I definitely went to college expecting I would get married and not have to figure out a full career.”

Katelyn Carr

Now in her thirties, the plan hasn’t gone as expected.

Katelyn had to slowly, and sometimes painfully, renegotiate everything she assumed about her life, work, community, and purpose. She’s had to ask questions as the only single woman in the room, and wrestle with wanting to be joyfully content while privately not feeling that way at all.

“This is not what I wanted,” she said plainly. “So how do you navigate that when that’s not exactly what you had hoped for?”

It’s the kind of honesty that many are too afraid to say out loud.

Desiring To Be Known

Fort Collins, Colorado, is a transient college town. People come for school, get married or move on, and Katelyn has often been the lone single woman in a sea of young families. She has learned to love those families well. She babysits, prays for sick kids, and asks about potty training.

But she’s also learned to name what’s hard about it.

What she most wishes married people and church leaders understood isn’t complicated. Just have the conversations. Ask the single women in your life how they’re actually doing, not just the polished version. And when she says that, she means it practically.

One night, Katelyn babysat for friends so they could go on a date. When they came home, she gathered her things to leave, but they stopped her. They’d known she was walking through a difficult season at work, and they wanted to hear about it — not just the wife pulling her aside for a quick check-in, but both of them, together, sitting down and making space.

“At the end of my work day, I don’t have someone to debrief that day with before showing up at a social gathering,”

Katelyn Carr

“That felt so, so meaningful,” Katelyn said.

“At the end of my work day, I don’t have someone to debrief that day with before showing up at a social gathering,” she told Kelly. “I feel like a lot of times I’m showing up to church or small group, and I haven’t had any check-in with anyone beforehand. So those little check-in questions mean a lot.”

Everyone is different, but also don’t underestimate the power of a hand on someone’s shoulder. “A lot of my friends can be touched out at times with their kids,” Katelyn said with a laugh. “Send your kids over to me. I’ll snuggle them all.”

Swiping For A Spouse

For most of her twenties, Katelyn trusted she would find her person in college, like many of her friends. But she didn’t. And as she approached thirty, she made a decision that was both practical and a little humbling.

She got on the dating apps.

It wasn’t impulsive. She’d actually felt a nudge from God to step into the world of modern dating with open hands and an open profile.

What she found on the apps was a complicated, emotional wilderness where you’ll be dismissed with a tap, and men often don’t reflect the godly love Katelyn is hoping to find.

“Even on Christian apps, there are a lot of folks commenting on body image or different things. It just breaks my heart that there’s not more honoring of one another in a way that honors God.”

She has tried to counteract with kind intentionality. Still, she finds it confusing when you repeatedly put yourself out there and get no response, trying to find love in a system that feels designed to dehumanize.

“The depression I was experiencing was largely from disappointment with singleness in general and how dating had been going. I feel like it’s very much something I’m still learning and growing and trying to figure out in each season.”

Modern dating wears on your romantic hopes and exposes your theology. Katelyn wasn’t just tired of the apps. She was tired of feeling like she was doing all the right things and getting silence from God in return.

So how does she keep going without becoming cynical? Carefully, and with a lot of self-awareness. There are seasons when she steps away from the apps entirely. She’s taken up running, started going to the gym, and is finding places to put the emotional energy when it has nowhere else to go. She fills her mind intentionally with good podcasts and audiobooks, not to distract herself from the longing, but to keep it from becoming the only thing she thinks about.

“I’m just trying to fill my mind with good things so that I’m not so focused on finding a marriage solution, and thinking this app, this effort of my own, is going to produce that.”

She also points women to Sara Hagerty‘s writing on breath prayers — learning to bring God into each moment rather than waiting for the big ones.

It’s a quiet, unglamorous kind of faithfulness. But it’s faithfulness.

Looking For A Breakthrough

However, she felt like she was quietly falling apart, hoping for something that still hadn’t come.

Her pastor and his wife had recently gone through a structured reflection process built around the concept of the Emmaus Road in Luke 24 — the disciples walk with the risen Jesus, pour out their grief and disappointment before He opens their eyes to recognize Him.

What followed was a week in which her whole community held together. The pastor and his wife found childcare for their children for the entire week. Small-group members who were out of town offered their home so Katelyn would have a quiet space for the hard conversations. And the night before the week began, the women of her church gathered around her and prayed.

She didn’t do this alone. That matters.

She examined the last decade of her life by highlighting every celebration, every loss, turning point, and crisis to find where God had been in it.

And then, at the end of the week, she felt almost nothing.

“I got to the end of the week, and thought, am I broken? There’s no breakthrough. I did the whole thing and needed God to do something, and I just felt so bad. Was I a waste of everyone’s time?”

She wasn’t. But she couldn’t see that yet.

The Slow Work of Transformation

Anyone who has ever walked away from a retreat or a prayer without a breakthrough knows God doesn’t always answer in the moment. Sometimes, He answers in the weeks after, in sermons that land differently, in friends who keep listening, in a heart that has become a little softer.

That’s what happened for Katelyn.

“God used the kindness of my friend to listen for more than a little coffee date,” she said. “To actually hear the hard things, the gross things, the things I’m ashamed to admit from the last 10 years. And I think all of that together, God used to help shift something in my heart.”

“The point isn’t to have clarity and to live a clear-cut life. It’s just to walk faithfully with God in our circumstances.” —Katelyn Carr

Setting a Table of Hospitality

Not long ago, she went on a hike with a few single women from her church. One of the women started dreaming out loud about doing more together. Then, that same week, an invitation arrived from Mission Single to host a Holiday Homes gathering.

So Katelyn opened her not-quite-big-enough apartment and did the thing she loves most. She set the table, prayed over the women who would fill the seats, and trusted God to bring exactly who He wanted.

He did.

And it didn’t stop there. Katelyn is now co-leading group conversations around Single Ever After by Danielle Treweek, exploring what Scripture actually says about marriage and singleness. She has been blessed by bringing women along with her into the questions she once wrestled with alone.

Don’t wait for the life you imagined. Start living the one you have. Sit in silence when God doesn’t answer on your timeline. Walk through the open doors in front of you. Ask the hard questions.

Following Jesus isn’t easy. But single or married, that’s the only path worth being on.

This article was adapted from an interview with Katelyn Carr. To hear the full conversation, watch the complete episode on the Mission Single Podcast, hosted by Kelly Werner.