On Being Single

Singleness is a gift.
I hear that regularly. In my circles singleness and marriage alike are both looked at as gifts. Because God gives good gifts to his children. God doesn’t give some the gift of marriage and say “forget you” to the rest of us. Therefore, if God is good, singleness is also a good gift.
But what about when it doesn’t feel like a gift, let alone a good one?

I am 39 years old and outside of a couple piddly relationships in high school that no adult would actually consider a relationship, I have been single my entire life. Typically when someone asks how long I’ve been single and I say that I have always been single they have a hard time wrapping their heads around that. They balk, scoff, stare in disbelief, and then somehow think it’s okay to ask me very personal questions. A modern freak show it would seem. Why is singleness such an oddity? I know many who will say it isn’t, that it’s a perfectly acceptable and normal way to live your life. But our culture doesn’t say that. And as one who strives to live in the culture but not of the culture, it can be hard to explain.
The easiest way I’ve found to explain is to simply say “well, I’m a Christian and I am waiting for God to bring the right man”. Which is true, but also kind of not true. For most though, this answer typically has people rolling their eyes at my naiveté, or laughing a laugh of disbelief and saying something along the lines of “you should really reconsider that unless you want to be alone your whole life”.

As if I haven’t considered that. As if I am not the one who has been single all these years.
 Believe me, when you are single as long as I have been, you have considered all sorts of things. You have considered things most of your friends and family have not had to consider. When you are single and most songs you sing and listen to are about God being worthy, or about being worth it all, or about how you will lay down your life, you aren’t thinking about giving up swearing. You’re thinking about giving up lifelong companionship, you’re thinking about giving up children, you’re thinking about giving up dreams and hopes and desires you’ve had since childhood. Please hear me, I don’t mean to trivialize things people deal with and struggle to give up, but there is something much different about singleness than anything else I’ve known. It is a daily battle.

Maybe that’s the wrong word, it’s not as if I’ve been in a constant state of unhappiness or feeling unfulfilled. But there is a very real component that you know exactly what you’re missing out on. Because you are surrounded by it.

Imagine having to live without something you want more than anything, but everyone you know and even most everyone you don’t know is living with the very thing you want. To break it down to the absurd, say you want pizza more than anything. You’ve never had it fully, but you’ve had little nibbles here and there and you smell it and see it constantly. Everyone you know, everyone who lives around you, everyone you work with, all your friends and family live in pizza houses. You can’t escape it. You drive to work and all the houses are pizza, your coworkers talk about pizza all day, it is everywhere, it is inescapable. And while you haven’t fully enjoyed pizza yourself, you have thought about it every day since as long back as you can remember.
That’s what being 39 and single is like. You can’t get away from the fact that you are single. You are constantly bombarded with songs and movies and commercials and tv shows and radio hosts and magazines and books and friends and family all declaring the wonders and joys of coupledom, of parenthood. And you sit alone in your quiet house listening as they also say your life is a gift, that they wish you knew how lucky you were to have so much time to yourself. But what they don’t realize is that you would give it all up to be surrounded by as much love and people who care about you as they are. That when you have a rough day, you don’t come home to family asking about how your day was, ready to listen and offer advice or a distraction from the bad day, you come home to nothing but a single chicken breast who doesn’t give a flying flip about your day.

I realize I am sounding very down and out. While I can struggle with my singleness at times, I am generally okay with it. But what do you do in the times when singleness feels like the hideous sweater your great aunt gave you at Christmas without a return receipt? What do you do when it doesn’t feel like a gift?

Like anything in life, there are highs and lows to being single. Currently, I have been in one of the lowest lows I’ve known with it. It’s been months now, and I just can’t seem to shake it. What I am doing, is reminding myself of who I know God to be. Dwelling on his goodness to me, his kindness. I am working hard every single day to get my eyes off myself and lifted to Him. I am spending copious amounts of time in the Word. I am listening to nothing but worship music. I am talking about it. I am meeting with friends, even gasp married friends. It doesn’t matter that they can’t fully relate, what matters is they love me, what matters is they can see my life more clearly than I can right now. What matters is they know who I am and can speak truth to me over and over until I am strong again.

It is no different than any other struggle in life. But oh, does it feel different than any other struggle! But that too is something to submit again to God. Do I want to be ruled by how I feel? Or do I want to be ruled by what I know to be true?

I have become more and more aware as these months have gone by that there is also a very real sense of grief. I am grieving. Up to this point, I have always been okay with being single because I always believed I wouldn’t be single for my entire life. But something about being so close to 40 has me questioning this. I don’t want to live in a state of perpetual waiting. I want to live my life fully as I am now. This is forcing me to come to terms not with the possibility of being single my entire life, but with the reality that it appears this is going to be the truth of my life. That’s not to say I am giving up on the dream and hope of marriage, but I do need to stop waiting for it to happen. Even deep down in the depths of myself. Because it is causing me to be discontent, it is crippling me. If I let it, it could make me bitter and angry and that is not a way I want to live my life. So I am facing it head on. I am allowing myself to grieve the loss of a marriage and of children I’ll not have.

If there is only one thing I know to be true beyond any doubt about God, it is that he is faithful. And if he is faithful, it can be determined that he keeps his word. And his word is that he is close to the brokenhearted. His word is also that joy comes in the morning. So I grieve, I feel the weight of it all. I know that by continuing to choose to follow God, by continuing to live for Him, I am giving up very real desires and hopes and dreams. But it is not because he wants me to be sad and miserable. Quite the opposite—he wants something so much better for me if only I will follow him. This life is but a breath, a sigh and it is over. The things I live for are not of this world. I am already amid the greatest love story this world will ever know, I only need to make room for it, to remember this truth. I am my Beloveds, and He is mine.

There is a quote by Robert Frost that I have loved for decades. It holds true in every season, it brings hope to me. He said, “I can sum up life in three words—it goes on.” And so it does.