At some point during my mid-twenties, I remember confessing, slightly embarrassed, to a good friend that the thought of still being single when I turned 30 sounded like the worst fate I could imagine. She confessed that it was similarly frightening to her.
Now, we talk about it and laugh. Because, at 31 and single, I can imagine so many worse fates.
But still, it begs the question: what were we so afraid of?
In our heads, we knew that there wasn’t actually anything inherently wrong with being single: we could logically acknowledge that it was no better or worse than marriage, just different.
But somewhere deep down inside of us, there was this lie that whispered, “If you’re still single, there must be something wrong with you.”
It feels like our culture (especially Christian culture) often puts marriage on a pedestal, as though your life isn’t truly complete until you're married. And that can foster this subconscious belief that marriage is somehow the marker of true adulthood and maturity.
This feels particularly potent in West Michigan, where it seems as though everyone starts getting married as soon as they graduate college. The more years you continue to be single, the more you start to feel like an anomaly.
And, although people don’t say it outright, it sure feels like as though your relationship status has some sort of correlation to your value as a human being…
You hear it in comments like, “She’s 28 and still single? I wonder what’s wrong with her...”
“You’re so incredible. I don’t understand why you’re still single.”
“Come on, you’re almost 30. You can’t afford to be picky.”
Or, possibly the most painful of all, the overly-spiritualized comments like “Once you stop looking/are finally content with God, He will bring someone into your life,” or “Maybe the reason you’re still single is because God knows you’re not ready for marriage yet.”
You see it in romantic comedies that always seem to end in marriage (or at least with the two main characters getting together before the credits roll), as if marriage is the end goal of every story.
You see it in well-meaning people who try to set you up with someone, but it becomes clear that they really just suggested it because you’re the only two single people they know.
Why do we look at singleness in such a negative light? Why is it deemed “less than” marriage? And why does it seem as though we view marriage as the pinnacle of all human flourishing?
I mean, Jesus never married, and wasn’t He the perfect example of what human flourishing looks like?
Don’t get me wrong, there are things about singleness that absolutely suck. I wrote a whole blog post about it, for goodness’ sake.
I deeply desire marriage. And, even when I’m at a place of contentment with God, I still have to make space to mourn the fact that my life doesn't look the way I thought it would at 31. It's painful. It sucks.
But, from what I’ve heard from my married friends, there are also things about marriage that suck. And things about parenthood that suck.
AND there are also so many beautiful things about each of those seasons!
Like all of the best things in life, they are brimming with both beauty and pain.
I feel like we don’t talk about the beauty of singleness enough. We tend to view it as a temporary season that we try to get through as quickly as possible… when really, there’s just as much to celebrate about it as there is to celebrate about marriage, parenthood, and any number of other seasons that God may lead us through.
So, I just wanted to share some of the beautiful ways that I’ve seen God work, even in the middle of painful moments, during my time as a single adult so far.
One of the hardest things about singleness can be just... the deep loneliness that often comes with it. There have been nights where I’ve been so lonely that I’ve felt it like a deep ache in my bones: a loneliness so oppressive that it felt physical.
In those moments, I would look at my friends who were married or in relationships and think, “If I only had that. If I had that, then I wouldn’t be lonely anymore.”
But one of the first things that God started to show me was that loneliness doesn’t just magically disappear, even if you get married. The people in our lives will never be able to love us perfectly; loneliness is just part of the human condition, a result of our sinful world. So, we will always feel that sting, this side of heaven.
But, there’s something beautiful about that ache, too; it means that we were built for community, to be known and understood at the deepest level. That ache of loneliness is the deep longing inside each of us for that kind of love.
And guess what’s beautiful about that? A romantic relationship isn’t the only way to feel known. It’s not the only way to combat loneliness.
As I was wrestling with my loneliness and longing for deeper friendships, I realized, “Wait, I can do something about this! If I want community this badly, I can reach out to people myself and try to start forming new friendships!”
I started very simply: just asking some of the awesome women in my life to grab coffee. We would talk about our hopes, our dreams, our sorrows, and grow together as we shared the heaviness of life with each other. I found a community of beautiful weirdos within the young adults group at my church. I chose to intentionally invest in people, allowed them to see my brokenness, and let them know that I was a safe place to bring their brokenness to.
Over and over again, the New Testament uses the language of family to describe our relationships to one another within the Church, and that’s truly what it feels like: I have a giant family of brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, and words can’t express how grateful I am for them.
I won't lie: it’s hard work. Because, as it turns out, community and deep friendships usually don't just happen randomly: you have to seek them out. They’re messy. They require a lot of effort and vulnerability: showing up with your brokenness and sin and trusting that you won’t get rejected, seeing the brokenness and sin of others... and choosing to love them anyway.
It's impossible to do perfectly. I still feel lonely sometimes. But I am so so so grateful for the beautiful people I have surrounding me. They have blessed me more than words can say.
Another thing that God has taught me over the years is that I don’t have to put my dreams on hold until I get married.
That might seem obvious to those reading this, but in my head, there were just certain things that you did AFTER you got married, like get a dog, buy a house, go on vacations (but always with your spouse and kids).
Maybe part of that is because, generally, that’s the order my parents’ generation did those things in: first you get married, then you do all of the other stuff, together with your spouse.
Marriage was step one on the path to adulthood; I didn’t have a category for people whose lives didn’t go in that order… especially for doing those things as a single woman.
There are just certain things that I always imagined doing with another person. So it’s been a learning process, discovering that I have the freedom to do many of these things I’ve dreamt about.
Take going on vacation, for example. It might sound ridiculous, but I had a moment several years ago where I just realized, “Wait, if I want to go on vacation somewhere... I can just go by myself! Or go with a friend!”
And so, over the course of my adult life, I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to go on some adventures by myself, as well as with really good friends. And when I started dreaming about living in another country for a season, God showed me it was possible. So I quit my job and spent 9 months in different missions schools with YWAM.
Another example: for as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamt about moving into a neighborhood and living missionally: building relationships with my neighbors, trying to be the hands and feet of Jesus, cultivating a welcoming space in our home where everyone feels like they belong. I had assumed that I would do that once I got married, in tandem with a husband and family who shared my passion for our neighborhood, but God was able to slowly transform that dream into doing these same things with other women who love Jesus. Over the past few years, it’s been such a blessing to host worship nights and community dinners in our home (even though covid put that on hold...). And it’s been a gift to be able to pour into each woman who’s lived here, and to have each of them pour into me.
Some dreams that I’ve had—like getting a dog—have been fairly straightforward to accomplish on my own. Other things, like buying a house, have been a lot more challenging, and I have had to mourn the fact that it would be so much easier to do with another person, within the partnership of marriage. But it’s so encouraging to realize that—although some of these things look different than I pictured them, or are going to take longer than I wanted them to—singleness isn’t just a season of waiting. I’m not just stuck in some holding pattern until I get married: God wants to use me now, and wants me to flourish now, right where I am.
In my time of singleness, God has also helped me to fall in love with myself: with the ways He has uniquely created me.
I’m incredibly critical of myself, and tend to fixate on my flaws and failings, until they’re all I see. When I make mistakes, I beat myself up, forcing impossible expectations on myself that I would never place onto anyone else. I focus on the brokenness inside of me so much that I assume that that’s my identity, and I listen to these lies so often that they feel true.
Combine these lies with ones that other people have (intentionally or unintentionally) spoken over me, as well as lies that the enemy has fed me over the years... and I end up with a heartbreaking, distorted view of myself; I end up believing the lie that, at the core of my being, there's something horribly, fundamentally wrong with me.
So, it has taken years for God to peel back those lies, hold a mirror up to me, and say, “This is who I created you to be. And you are staggeringly beautiful.”
Instead of comparing myself to other people, or worrying about others’ approval and trying to become the person I think they want me to be, I’ve been learning how to lean into my own, unique “Lauren-ness:” the ways that God has made me to uniquely reflect Him. It’s been years of healing and slow growth—barely noticeable at times. It’s been painful, like when Aslan has to dig his claws into Eustace the dragon, in order to turn him into a boy again. Shedding layer after layer.
The more painful shedding I do, the more I start to look like the person He created me to be. The more comfortable I feel in my own skin. The more I am slowly able to start flourishing and thriving.
Yes, I still sin. Yes, I still fail the people around me. But I’ve finally been able to acknowledge that my sin and brokenness are not who I am.
It's taken a long time, but I'm finally able to recognize that my identity doesn't come from what I say about myself, how I measure up to those around me, what other people think of me, my relationship status, or anything else: it comes from what God says about me.
He is captivated by me. He is enthralled by me. He loves me more than I could ever imagine. He delights in me and is proud of me. He weeps when I weep, He’s overjoyed when I’m overjoyed. He loves that I get giddy when I see a beautiful sunset and laugh with joy when it starts snowing outside. He loves my yearning for adventure, my heart for those who don’t know Jesus, the way I’m able to see beauty in the most broken places, and even the way I geek out about Lord of the Rings.
He says of me the same thing that He says in the Song of Solomon:
“You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you.”
And, if there’s nothing else you take away from this blog post: He feels the same way about you. The God of the universe is madly in love with you. He is proud of you. He delights in you. And He gave up everything to be with you.
But the biggest, most beautiful thing about this season? God continues to help me to fall more and more in love with Him.
Several years ago, I felt like God called me to lay my dream of marriage down—to give it up and completely surrender it to Him—without the promise that I’d ever be able to pick it back up again.
It was an incredibly painful moment: how could I give up this dream that meant so much to me? And yet, as I knelt in surrender, in a tiny moonlit prayer room, it felt like... a holy moment.
Maybe I’m being dramatic. But even as I cried and mourned my dream, I could feel God’s smile. I could feel His love for me.
And, you know what? A funny thing happened in the years following that moment: contentment snuck up on me.
I had known that marriage & relationships were idols in my life, but I didn’t fully realize the depth of it until I had finally left them on the altar (no pun intended, haha). For the first time in my life, I think I truly understood what it meant for God to be enough for me: for Him to be the only person who can ever truly satisfy me.
Since I laid that dream down, God has been showing me that, while I have spent years desperately wanting a relationship, He has been romancing me that entire time. In fact, He’s been showing me His love over and over again for my entire life.
And, guess what? He’s done it way better than any man will ever be able to.
He’s shouted His love for me from the top of candlelit towers and whispered it in the midst of the tallest mountains on earth. He’s declared His love for me on the edge of the Grand Canyon and painted it in sunsets. He’s shown it to me in gentle raindrops upon my face and in late night times of prayer, on city rooftops in Lebanon and Nepal.
He knows how to romance my heart in ways that no one else does.
He’s the only one who knows exactly what I need and exactly when I need it: who perfectly knows how to love me, who makes me feel whole and complete.
Content.
At peace.
Safe.
He’s enough. He’s more than enough. He’s all I'll ever need.
God is the only one who will ever truly satisfy me.
I’m not telling this story as a formulaic, “one step process for contentment as a single person;” I’m just saying that this is what finally brought be to a place where I’m able to say—confidently, truthfully—that I am completely content where I am. And that I’m even joyful and flourishing in my singleness.
And even though He’s now told me that I can pick that dream back up again, the contentment has remained.
Because marriage is not the end goal of my life: becoming more like Jesus and following Him is.
And you know the beautiful thing? Being satisfied in Jesus takes the pressure off of other people.
Even if I do get married, and the man I’m with tries his best to love me well, he will fail. He’ll disappoint me. And I’ll disappoint him. Because we’re both human. And God is the only one who is able to love either of us perfectly.
I don’t need to look to the men in my life for my worth or identity.
It also takes the pressure off of dating, and allows me to feel more free. I can say yes to dates I wouldn’t normally say yes to, because… it’s just a date. There’s no pressure. One date is not a marriage proposal.
And, at the same time, I also feel the freedom to say no to some dates that, in the past, I might have felt pressured to say yes to. I’ve grown, and I know myself so much better now, and trust my God-given intuition regarding the kind of man who would be a good fit for me, and who wouldn’t be.
Heck, I have the freedom to step into the terrifying world of online dating if I want to! And also the freedom to not be looking for dates!
Because I’m not in a hurry. I love where I am. I love who I am. And my relationship status won’t change that.
One final note, since I ended up finishing this on Valentine’s Day: if today was really really hard for you, if all you were able to do today was cry, if you’re not at a place where you can rejoice or see the beauty in your singleness… that’s ok. Heck, I’ve been there a few times this week myself. Contentment and sadness are not mutually exclusive. I often find myself in the tension between the two of them, all at once.
And I hope you don’t feel ashamed at all, if you’re not able to feel content at the moment. Jesus loves you right where you are. He weeps when you weep. He hurts when you hurt. He sees you. And He loves you.
And, honestly, if you need it, I wrote a whole blog post from that same place of despair. I don’t know if it will be helpful at all, but please know that you’re not alone.
Photos taken by the wonderful Joy Rhine!