I have a real heart for single women. Maybe it was because I felt like I was single
for so long. I know I’m being a bit
dramatic, but for someone who always wanted to be married right out of college,
being single for six years past that point, felt like an enormous wait. Add the wait to the fact that I could never
make a relationship last more than four months and I stayed frustrated. Please understand, too, that my relationships
were few and very far between. It would
not be at all unusual for me to go an entire year without a single date. During those college and early post-graduate
days, singleness was easily my biggest struggle. It was the answer I almost always gave to the
Bible Study questions about where I needed to trust God, and it was at the top
of my personal prayer list. However, it
was also an area about which I was often deeply ashamed, and this is where the
church gets it wrong. As a single woman
in a Bible Study group or a Sunday School class or chatting with another
Christian, the answer I almost always got when I voiced my fears over never
being married or having a desire for a relationship was one of the two:
1. “You will never be ready for a relationship until you are
at peace with your relationship with the Lord.
If you can’t be happy as a single person, you’ll never be happy as a married
one.”
2. “Be thankful to be
single. You think being married will fix
all your problems. It won’t. In fact, it just gives you more problems.”
Typing these responses fills me with the same anger and
frustration they did when I was receiving them.
This is where the church gets it wrong.
The first answer suggests that the single person is not at peace with
their relationship with the Lord – and this is where shame came for me. I rarely voiced my struggles with singleness
because I almost always got that same response, and it made me feel like I was
failing as a Christian. I felt like the
friend was telling me that I wasn’t finding my peace in the Lord, that I wasn’t
looking to God for fulfillment. I felt
ashamed, and in great measure, I quit voicing my struggle. Now that I’m married, I feel like I can say
those women (and men) were wrong. They
were well intentioned in their advice, but they were still wrong.
Here is what I’d tell a single friend: God made you for relationship. It is normal to want to be married. God himself said that he saw Adam needed a
helper, so he created Eve. Should your
desire for a husband surpass your desire for God? Absolutely not, but my experience with single
women is that they are still single BECAUSE they have a greater desire for God
than for marriage. As a precious new
friend recently told me through her tears, “If I wanted to be married, I
could. I could marry my non-Christian ex-boyfriend
now, but I want to do this God’s way. I
want to marry a Christian, but I’m so afraid he won’t bring me a husband, and I’ll
always be single.” What she needed right
that moment was not someone telling her that she needed to fix her relationship
with God, that she needed to find her peace in him, that she was going about
her desires the wrong way. What she
needed was a hug. What she needed was
someone to say that God had plans for her – wonderful, special plans. That if he had placed a desire for marriage
in her heart, he would honor it. That
even if his plan for her was singleness, he’d make it beautiful, and she’d be
rewarded and loved and cared for in other ways.
What I told her was to keep trying, keep trusting, keep seeking – and to
stay away from the ex-boyfriend!
The second response almost always came from married women,
and it carried the same condescending implications as the first. It implied that the single woman was shallow –
believing marriage to be the magic pill to everything that is wrong in her
world. I know some single women do have
an unrealistic view of marriage – I watch The
Bachelor, remember? But, from my own
experience, I also know that most women don’t.
We know that a relationship won’t change everything that is wrong with
our lives, but we also know that a relationship means we won’t be sitting home
alone AGAIN on a Friday night, that we won’t have to walk into the group
setting AGAIN by ourselves, that we will have someone to talk to at the end of
a long day. I think many married women
take that relationship for granted, and now that I am married, I don’t think enough
women see how beautiful marriage really is.
So this part of the blog is to married women, to remind them
to have grace and kindness and compassion for the single women in their midst,
and it is to the single women to tell them that they aren’t crazy or bad
Christians or weird and desperate to want the be in a relationship. Here is what I’ve learned about singleness
and marriage.
1. Singleness is really hard. It is lonely and scary. It is normal to struggle and have moments of
fear. It is normal to think about your
eggs drying up and count the months, “Even if I met a man tomorrow, it would
still be three years at least before we’d have children, which means I’d be 33,
which means I probably can’t have four kids anymore.” It is normal to cry in your closet some
days. It does not mean you are a bad
Christian or you don’t love Jesus or you are one of those scary, desperate
girls who will grow old with cats. It
just means you are human. The point is
to keep struggling. Keep struggling to
trust God, to have faith, to seek him.
Keep trying to rest in him and believe he will provide, but know it is
totally ok to be afraid sometimes – God gets it.
2. Miracles happen.
When I was in the middle of a year without a single date, I loved to
think of Rebekah in Genesis. One day she
went to the well and met the servant of Abraham who wanted to take her home
with him to marry Isaac. In one day, her
whole life changed. Here’s what happens
when I was still single after college – my routine was set. I had my job, my friends, my church. It wasn’t like college when each new class
brought potential new friends or boyfriends.
I didn’t know where I’d possibly meet new people. But then I thought of Rebekah. She got her chance to marry Isaac in the
middle of her everyday life. Who would
have thought her life would change at the well she visited every day for
water. Don’t be discouraged wondering
where you’ll meet someone. If God has a
husband for you, you will meet him.
Miracles happen every day.
3. Marriage is awesome.
I know I haven’t been married long, but I also haven’t been away from
singleness for so long that I can’t remember it well, and I can say with 100%
certainty that marriage is a million times better than singleness. Women who say otherwise either don’t remember
or didn’t know what it was like to be single, or don’t have a happy marriage at
the moment. My absolute favorite part of
marriage is that I have a buddy. I don’t
have to sit home alone on a Friday night.
I don’t have to go into a new environment alone. I have someone to talk to at dinner instead
of eating alone in front of the TV.
Marriage didn’t fix all my problems, and it did create new ones – I have
learned that I’m selfish, I have had to adjust to doing twice as much laundry,
my house isn’t as clean as I would like, I don’t always get the last piece of
cake – but being married HAS answered the singleness struggle. It has given me hope that I won’t grow old
alone and that I’ll have kids before my eggs dry up. It has shown me the truth of God’s word when
he said, “Two are better than one.”
4. Married women should have compassion on single
women. My hardest critics when I was
struggling were married women. Here is
what I’ve noticed about many married women – they are either bitter in their
marriage and can’t offer anything good to say about it, or they don’t truly
understand singleness, and they are insensitive to the struggle. If you are an unhappy married woman, it would
be wise to remember that marriage, as God designed it, is good. Obviously everyone struggles in marriage, and
it is good to offer realistic points of view, but spewing negativity about
something God designed isn’t healthy – for the speaker or the listener. Also, if you are a married woman who never
struggled with singleness, be willing to admit that you don’t entirely
understand the struggle. Nothing is more
hurtful than hearing pious criticism from women who don’t understand a single
woman’s fears. Know, however, that never
being single does not prevent you from being a good encourager. Two of my best friends are girls who were
never truly single. They both began
dating their husbands in high school and married young. They did not personally experience the
struggles that come with singleness, but they have been two of my best
encouragers because they took time to listen to my fears and doubts. They admitted that they didn’t understand the
feelings themselves, but they took time to see from my point of view and offer
encouragement. They are also two of the
happiest people I know in their relationships with their spouses and have
helped keep my expectations of marriage realistic.
I would like to apologize to all the single women who have
been wounded by the church on this issue.
The church gets it wrong. It gets
it wrong when it makes women feel ashamed or embarrassed or less than Christian
when they admit these struggles of singleness.
The response women get in Bible Studies and Sunday School and even
through the pastor in Sunday morning messages is not the response Jesus would
give. Jesus would give compassion,
kindness, gentleness, and hope. Jesus
would whisper, “Keep going. Keep
trusting. Keep believing.” And that is what I want to tell single women
today. My prayer for you is that, You will hear a voice behind you saying, “This
is the way. Follow it, whether it turns
to the right or to the left.” – Isaiah 30:21.
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