I got married 6 years ago when I was 35 years old.
Phew, cutting it fine there, Brett. If I was a woman, people would have given up on me at least three years before and being male I probably had a few more years I could sneak out before the general public gave up on me.
Because getting married is the absolute pinnacle of life, right? Well maybe not marriage quite as much any more in the sense that the institution has lost a lot of respect in the world in recent times. But still the idea of having someone – whether it’s hooking up or living together, or as Gwyneth Paltrow so eloquently educated us, “consciously coupling” (I’m assuming that is the state that precedes “consciously uncoupling”?) is still seen so often as one of the key destination points that all life leads up to.
When you finally get together with ‘your person’, you have arrived…
Or something ridiculous like that.
IMMA LET YOU FINISH, BUT…
I remember back to the one place that used to push home this point more than any other – the dreaded singles table at the wedding. You know the one? And getting married at 35 combined with the fact that I worked with teenagers for many years and so had a lot of much younger friends too meant that I got to spend a lot of serious time at ‘The Singles Table’. (There’s a sitcom waiting to happen!)
But when planning a wedding (you know, to celebrate life arrival) you group all the couples together and those people will get on well with them and the Houstons know the Lloyds so they can sit together. And then you’re left with a bunch of singles who don’t really go with anyone and so you stick them all together at the reject table somewhere right at the back. Teetering on the edge of the abyss or something.
If that feels like too dramatic a picture, then you were clearly never at the singles table at a wedding. In its defense, it was one step up from the children’s table outside behind the bouncy castle.
SWIM WITH THE TIDE
There was a time, many years ago, particularly within the catholic church where the focus was on singleness as the way to have “made it” – nuns and monks and the gift of celibacy were the way to go and being single meant you were seen as more spiritual and closer to God and there were bible passages that could be used to ‘back this up’.
Then the protestant church swung the pendulum completely the other way and being married, and then being married with children was the way to have arrived, and so this unspoken goal of life seemed to be what was put on the pedestal and held higher than anything else.
TIME FOR SECOND OPINION
The point I want to make is this. Being single is not a disease. It is not a punishment. It is not something you have to escape from or get out of or dream your way away from. In fact, it can be an incredible gift. As can marriage.
Neither being single nor being married is ‘the better way’ – Paul, in his letter to the church in Phillipi (and us by extension) says this:
‘I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.’ [Philippians 4.12-13]
While Paul is speaking specifically to areas of finance in that passage, the concept can be carried through to every area of life.
Contentment is the key – be where you are and enjoy where you are at – if you are single then embrace your singleness and make the most of it in every way possible – and if/when you get married then live that to the full. Don’t sit in the place of one desperately wishing that you were in the other. BUT, that also doesn’t mean that if you are single and do want to be married that you should not keep on gently presenting that desire before God.
Those of us who are married also need to take a moment to own how we add to the idea of singleness being a bad thing, both with what we say and how we live (show this to your married friends!). We sometimes use language that seems to indicate that real life only began when we got married or for some when they had their first child. And we can treat you as if you are diseased in some way. No wonder you start believing that.
BE ENCOURAGED
I invited a number of my older single friends to share their stories with me a few years away and it became one of the most popular series on my blog ever. Something like 15 stories on my blog ranging from people who desperately didn’t want to be single, to those who were single and hoping to find someone to be with and also those who could not imagine a life where they were not single.
Probably the stand out point was that they were all completely different. Of course there were some similarities, but because people are so different and complex, each story was as well. And your story is too. And that is great. Because it means you don’t have to accept the diagnosis that has been blanket spread over everybody else. You can figure out what you are hoping for from life and share those desires with God.
And then go about your life living it to the absolute fullest until such time that something changes. Don’t regret the single thing.