the First on Singleness

Forewarning: my experience is not going to be the same as everyone else who is currently or has ever been single. I come from a background where it is almost like you automatically get pitied if you are not in a relationship. I’ll say something honest like “I’ve resigned to the fact that I might just not ever have a boyfriend or ever get married.” And people often come back with, “Oh, you’ll get married. You’re really pretty!”
I still don’t get that. It’s not like I was fishing for compliments; I was just recognizing a very real possibility.
Then sometimes after intentionally declining a suitor, deliberately choosing not to be in a relationship, I can just feel people’s disappointment in me. I tend to respond very defensively. Why is it that people care SO MUCH about that part of my life? It makes me rather caustic towards dating/marriage in general, though I truly am not opposed to the idea (even if the reason why I’m single right now is by my own choice).

So as I struggle through all sorts of dynamics of the life apart from a partner, I’ve found that literature has opinions across the board telling us how to feel and think about singleness. It goes beyond literature. I can hear two opposing views from people I trust—and both seem to make sense. Most of it seems so conjectured—like everyone is just making up these principles based merely on their speculations and there is no set way we can structure our thinking about it to be healthy 100% of the time in 100% of the situations we find ourselves in. Even in the Bible when Paul writes to the Corinthians about singleness he makes it clear that this is his personal opinion.

This is Paul’s concession (not command), his opinion (not the Lord’s). He says, “Now to the unmarried and the widows I say, it is good for them to stay unmarried as I am.” V. 8.

Then he talks about remaining where you are at. “Nevertheless, each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him.” V. 17, So I look at that and think how this goes along with the whole concept of knowing your ground or (as Jim Elliot says), “wherever you are, be all there.” If God has me single now, God wants me single now. So I should want me single right now… right?

Paul continues (again, not as a command from God, but as trustworthy advice), “I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord, but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife.” And he says the same thing about married women, that their interests are divided. (V. 32-35)

Then he goes on to talk about if a man is engaged, it’s fine to marry the woman, but the man who doesn’t marry her does even better. And then he says this crazy thing about how if a widow wants to get-remarried, that’s fine, but in his opinion, she’s happier if she stays single.

Now that’s kind of a very brief overlook of the richness of that passage, but we can kind of get this idea that Paul (who was a man who gave everything to pursue Christ) thinks being single is actually preferred over being married.

My first reaction is to be like, “HA! Take that, VALENTINES DAY!”

And it’s true that some days really I get what Paul was saying in how being single gives you greater opportunity to serve God. And some days I rejoice in embracing that freedom I have to not be tied to another person.

But sometimes I don’t feel like that at all. I just feel alone. And I feel deficient. And I feel inadequate.

And very truthfully and honestly, this is a giant struggle. This is my thorn to contend with. As much as I pride myself in my freedom of singleness and no matter how much I know my attitude should be, I still spend an awful amount of time thinking about relationships. What I am finding is that what I TRULY want most is to be satisfied in Jesus alone. I want it to be so that I feel so loved by Him and so well-taken-care-of in Him that to seek out the love of another feels almost like a waste of time because His love is all that matters. I want to know, TRULY KNOW the kind of love that IS all I need. I want being pursued by a man to pale in comparison to how it feels to share intimately in the heart of God. I want to comprehend how all human love falls short of what I already have.

But, I have no idea how to do that.

So I start to think that the real problem must be that somewhere deep down I must not believe that Christ can satisfy me as much as a relationship with another person could. But I a lot of times I go about changing this the wrong way. I start to think that the solution to this dissatisfaction is to just remove every other desire from my mind. Example: If I start to care about a boy, I will fight every feeling until I kill it.

But I’m not actually so sure that it is an achievable thing--to just try hard enough to rid ourselves of every desire that is not Christ. I’m not so sure that’s what He meant for us.

Our desire doesn’t need to be removed, but maybe it does need to be re-routed. What I mean by that is this: If we try to seek the blessings of God instead of just seeking God, we’re probably on the wrong track. The solution is not reactive (like, stop liking boys so much!) but it is proactive (start loving Christ more).

“The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself.  We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.  If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.  Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with [lesser desires] when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.” –C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory