My "Single" Hope

Weddings. Engagements. Couples. It’s Facebook official: everyone is in love. Except for everyone else, who is single and very aware of it. We walk from class to class without a hand to hold, we carry our own books, and we open our own doors. We keep moving forward, but we look to the future, because only the future offers us a way out of this loneliness.

            This week, I felt the disease of loneliness spreading inside of me. I moped. I pouted. I ate some chocolate. Despite the fact that I am only twenty, despite the support of my friends, despite my relationship with my Creator, I felt lonely. The disease had nothing to do with my surroundings or circumstances, and everything to do with my mind.

            This is for everyone else feeling that disease creep into them. Before you pull out the cookie dough or type in ‘romantic dramas’ in your Netflix search engine, take a moment to reflect on what is True. I know this is hard. When I’m in a bad mood, I tend to feed that mood, somehow believing I won’t get better until I get worse. This is a lie. I’m writing tonight because I have a hope that I just can’t wait to share, a hope that I have to be reminded of every day.  

1.      It’s not the end of the world.

Sometimes I look at my singleness like there is something wrong with me. I think I’ll never be “complete” until I am married. But have you ever met a couple, whether married or dating, who would say they are fulfilled through their relationship? That they are always happy? That they want for nothing? I doubt it. Married people still have problems. They still have needs and fears and doubts. This made me wonder--what if my fear has nothing to do with singleness? What if I am in a constant state of want and discontent because I am not finding my joy in God? It's like when I was little and I would save up for weeks for a toy from Toys R Us. I would do chores and sell lemonade and search under cushions for cash. Finally, I would go to the store with my money in my 101 Dalmatians wallet and I would buy the toy. For a while, it would be my favorite toy, the toy I slept with and brought on car rides. And then I would find myself discontent again. I needed a new obsession, a new toy, a new reason to be upset. But maybe I wasn't upset because I wanted a toy. Maybe I was just upset, and so I made up a reason why.

 

Maybe I'm doing the exact same thing when I wallow in my singleness. I am discontent for reasons beyond what anything on this earth can fix, and so I come up with a reason for my discontentedness. By doing that, I think I have found a cure. But the cure for loneliness is not acquiring a hand to hold or a person to obsess over. If I ever did find that, I'm sure I would find another reason to be discontent. 

 

Marriage is a beautiful thing—love is a beautiful thing—but if we looked at our lives from an eternal point of view, would we not see that marriage is only a small part of the big picture? The ultimate purpose of our lives is not to decide who we will marry, but whether or not we will follow God.

2.      God is not your matchmaker

It is a common belief that God brings people together (specifically Christian couples), and they just know they are meant for each other. I am not entirely against this belief. I believe if you place yourself in God’s Will, He will guide you. What this idea did to me, however, was it made God merely a mythological cupid that I could pray to when I was lonely and wanting some arrows to hit their marks. I realized that I prayed to God more about His intervention in my life than about seeking His Will. It was all about me. God may intervene—he loves us and cares about every aspect of our lives, including our loneliness—but imagine if you constantly told your husband that you were lonely. He tried to comfort you. He bought you flowers. He cooked your favorite food. He told you he loved you whenever he had the chance. You accept his gifts, but you continue to cry and try to make him understand just how lonely you are, and all the while he is right there holding you and saying “I’m right here.” Sometimes I realize I am doing this to God. He has told me that He is the only one who can fulfill me and make me whole, and yet the only time I come to Him is to tell Him how empty I am. And instead of running to His arms and seeking comfort there, I ask for Him to send me comfort through another person.

3.      There is hope.

God puts the lonely in families. He will not let you be alone. But true comfort and wholeness is found in Christ alone. Your spouse should be there to point you back to God. He is your partner through life, but not the purpose of your life. As for me, I have time. I still have moments when I desire relationship, but to desire relationship is to be human. The worst thing I could do is suppress that natural desire. At the same time, I can’t fall into despondency and despair. God is with me. That sounds cliché, but sometimes clichés are repeated because they are true. I can put my trust in the One who made me, who created Eve while Adam was sleeping, because He saw his loneliness. I can sleep in peace tonight and tomorrow knowing that I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to manipulate things to work out. I can sleep because I know that my God cares for me, and that He gives good gifts to His children.