Living Out My Single Worst Fear
I have become exactly who I never wanted to be. I am a single – never married, barely dated – 40 year old woman.
This is a post about a lot of things. It’s about singleness. It’s about sexuality. It’s about love and loss. Belonging and rejection. Friendship and family. Desire and disappointment and hope. It’s about faith.
This piece has been, in some form, on my mind to write for many years, though more acutely in recent months. It has been a lifetime in the making.
Hitting a landmark age and seeing some of my “greatest fears” become reality has caused me to reflect. Below I share reflections on the messages and desires that fueled my fears, the lived experiences that have gotten me to this point, and the foundations that allow me to live presently and look forward with hope and gladness.
Fair warning: I’m going to mention sex — but really only in the context of its absence. I hope to address some common stereotypes in this area as I reflect on what made me dread being where I am now. In my late 20s I went to a doctor who told me that I didn’t need to return to see him until I either started having sex or turned 40. I joked with my best friend at the time, “Dear God, please don’t let it be because I’m 40.” Well, here I am.
Not everyone will relate to my story and that’s okay. Yet I do hope that many who have walked different paths will keep reading (yes, even you, married men!). Mostly, I know that there are a number of people who can and will relate to much of it. If that is you, I hope it brings some encouragement and a sense of being less alone.
“Purity Culture” and “The Talk”
I grew up in a Christian home, mostly in the Bible Belt, in the height of purity culture. As I pay attention to others’ stories who were also raised within these paradigms, I realize that in many ways the odds were not in my favor to develop a healthy understanding of sexuality. I often hear people laugh about how conservative Christian households dance around the topic, if they speak of it at all, and bemoan that churches most often address it through a lens of shame, if they speak of it at all. So much of this is true. Yet apparently I experienced much grace. As with much of my faith story, if not for the direct and intentional influence of my parents, my perspectives would likely be much different.
I still vividly recall the first conversation in late childhood when my parents sat me down together – yes, together – to tell me about sex. “The talk,” as many refer to it. It wasn’t until later in life that I came to realize how unusual it was to hear about these things from my mother and father at the same time. Though I remember the conversation itself feeling uncomfortable as I absorbed new and mature information, I think I was still young enough not to be completely mortified. My parents created a home that was safe for questions and ongoing processing. In fact, one of my favorite parts of this memory is having told my parents, “wait…that’s not how [my big sister] told me babies are made!” And so many an informal follow-up conversation was had. I certainly spoke about it more with my mom than my dad as I got older. Encountering various other narratives from friends and the church (often equally as unhelpful or inappropriate), I could talk to her about what things meant and how to understand them.
I wore the purity ring. I signed the True Love Waits pledge card. As a part of volunteering at our local Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) in high school, I even traveled with a group of students to other schools to lead assemblies on teen abstinence (these included skits; I’m telling you, I was all in). I realize how cringe so much of this sounds and I laugh. I’m also aware how much harm such practices have wrought in the lives and faith of many and I mourn. But here’s the thing – I meant all of it. Somehow I made it through relatively unscathed. I didn’t wear the purity ring as any sort of symbol of “belonging to my father” until the day I got married; in fact I only wore it for a brief period of my teen years. I understood it as an expression of my commitment to live out God’s best for me in the way I related to my sexuality. In signing the True Love Waits card I didn’t ingest the idea that by doing so, God would reward me with a husband and great sex as a guarantee. I did (and do) believe that sex is intended for and best expressed in a marriage commitment, but I had friends all along who were not living out such a commitment and I didn’t consider that it made them lesser people or lesser loved by God. And though my involvement with CPC did emphasize and prioritize abstinence outside of marriage, we also learned in detail about various STIs and different forms of contraception. Again, I credit my parents with much of the grounding in these areas as I processed the various messaging I was hearing in these settings. Sex certainly felt private and was not something I wanted to discuss all the time, but I mostly didn’t relate to it as shameful. [Sharing my experience is in no way a refutation of others’ who experienced harm through these practices or even a defense of the paradigms themselves. It’s mostly a truthful sigh of relief at having grown through these eras with a semblance of wellness in this area.]
Of note: I did not partake in the craze around I Kissed Dating Goodbye, though it was extremely popular in my high school era. I never even read the book, but I felt like I gleaned the gist from its many evangelists in my life. I remember conversations with my parents and older sister about how though people were free to make their own decisions about dating or not, the framework of the book was mostly spiritually and relationally unhelpful and downright corny. I mostly just made fun of it. The irony is that I also didn’t date much! Just mostly not by choice.
Always the Unrequited Crush
Cue Kate Winslet’s opening lines in the 2006 rom-com, The Holiday, about unrequited love. Say what you will, but that always resonates.
I don’t have much of a dating history to recount, nor do I intend to share much detail from what little I have. I had my first and only boyfriend in high school and then didn’t truly date anyone again until after college. I measure much of my romantic history by who I had crushes on, because when I crushed, I crushed hard and long. From my teen years into adulthood I mostly fell for guys who were already good friends of mine, while those guys quite often became interested in (and sometimes eventually married) my close female friends. It was all too common to feel ecstatic that a guy I liked so much was sitting down to talk seriously with me, only for it to transition to him asking some more information about my good friend they wanted to ask out. One of my go-to anecdotes to portray this dynamic is my junior prom date asking out one of my best friends over my shoulder while he was dancing with me. The song playing during our dance would thus become “their song” for the next 2+ years that they dated.
It’s funny! But in some ways it’s had to become funny, because the ongoing pattern was also wounding. Obviously no one was obligated to return my feelings, but the lesson I gleaned internally at a deep level was that I am undesirable. Not undesirable to every person in my life – deeply known and loved by my parents, siblings, and many friends; not undesirable to God, who has made his great love for me known in Christ and through the Spirit. But undesirable to any would-be romantic partner.
The Many Messages Around Singleness
I have heard so many messages around undesired singleness, inside and outside the Church, that rise to the level of trope after 40 years of walking this road.
”Jesus is your husband”
Many Christians may want people like me to embrace this idea, encouraging us that once we truly believe that, we’ll find fulfillment. While it’s possible this brings comfort to some, it’s mostly produced frustration for me. Not only do we see the image of Jesus as the bridegroom mostly in relation to the entire Church collectively as his bride (e.g, Matthew 25; 2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:25, 32; Revelation 21:2), but the call to find our deepest intimacy with Jesus is extended to married and single alike. While truly Jesus meets us in all of our desires, the idea that those navigating unwanted singleness are simply not partaking of some special dispensation of intimacy from Jesus seems less informed by good theology than by a (well meaning) desire to avoid sitting with a complex longing with honesty and endurance.
“Marriage is a godly desire, so he will give it to you!”
A related encouragement comes from a problematic application of Psalm 37:5 which says, “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (ESV). The idea goes that if you truly desire marriage – which is delightful to the Lord – God has promised he will give it to you. Space does not allow for a full treatment of the theological issues with this logic, but suffice it to say, we will indeed experience even good and right desires that may go at least partially unmet in this lifetime. The witness of Scripture includes the cries of unmet hopes and expectations throughout human history even as it is indisputably about the good and fulfilling work of God among his people. To want a good spouse is indeed a God-honoring desire and there is no shame in hoping for this. But the ways God will meet us in that desire may or may not include the marriage we hope for.
”You’re just too intimidating for guys”
There’s this ever popular statement which my goodness we just need to retire. This is obviously articulated to women and it’s very often meant as a warped compliment (i.e. “you’re just too good for them!”), though I have also heard it with the sense of “tone it down.” While I believe marriage can be beautiful and holy, I’m not interested in a partnership with someone who is not secure enough to embrace my full personhood at all levels of interest, talent, experience, and growth. Nor do I believe we should be encouraging anyone, woman or man, to pursue less than full personhood out of fear of not finding a mate! I believe this messaging not only encourages women to be less for men, but also teaches men to expect less of both women and themselves. Good marriages will be richer with two individuals supporting each others’ health and growth.
”You must not be putting yourself out there!”
Often those who are already partnered are more than ready to offer suggestions on all that their single friend/family member is not doing. While there is certainly validity to this idea of pursuing interactive settings where relationships can form, it can be frustrating when others offer this up as if long term singles don’t know and haven’t tried — repeatedly. The simplified concept is, in my experience, far too liberally applied as a default assumption.
”Well, marriage is no picnic…”
There can also be an impulse to offer to a single person desiring marriage a perspective on the hard parts of marriage. Without a doubt marriage can be very difficult and singleness has its perks! Yet these well-meaning offerings can all too often serve as a way to bypass the difficulty of a real and complex longing that cannot so easily be dismissed. I have walked with dear friends through dark seasons in their marriages, some who made it through and a few that ended in divorce. My own parents have been honest in our adulthood about the tough times they faced. Marriage can still be desired without idealizing it.
“You must have so much free time!”/”Must be nice to sleep in…”
On the other hand, I’ve often had people make statements like this in comparing our lives, implying I must be taking for granted these bright spots of singleness. I certainly have particular types of disposable time and different levels of discretion in how I choose to use it, but this assumption ironically idealizes singleness in the way we can be encouraged not to do with marriage. While there may be more flexible time, depending on the life situation of a single person, there is also usually the sole burden of responsibility for all life tasks — working, relationships, managing finances, meal preparation, travel plans, medical care, etc. I recently saw someone remark that it seems those who married by their 20s or early 30s picture singleness through the grid of their younger selves and thus a single person’s life, to them, gets conflated with some of the bygone freedoms of youth. While I don’t mean to dismiss how it feels to be single in your 20s, the realities of the experience change and grow in complexity as single people age. Presuming that single peers do not also face serious relational burdens and inconveniences of life because they are not a spouse or a parent is a position that indicates to me that a married person may not be listening well or paying attention to their single friends.
”Oh you’ll NEVER make it out of [enter event here] single!”
When I began my college career at Auburn University, and then joined a sorority, I soon learned how normal it was for couples to meet and marry not too long after graduation. Just as in high school, I asked every date to every sorority function that included dates; I attended every football game with many friends, but never with a date (for those unfamiliar, it was quite common to go with a date to college football games). I stood and sang through countless candlelight ceremonies with sorority sisters where the bride-to-be would blow out the candle we passed around the room to reveal her new engagement, followed by squeals and hugs and tears and the story. I often found these very special and exciting, especially when they were dear friends of mine; and still it was never me.
After graduation I entered into full time ministry for two years overseas. In the months before going I had numerous friends tell me they just knew I was going to return dating or engaged to one of my good guy friends who would also be there. Such expectations only increased when I arrived at my assignment to be educated on “the calendar” of how these relationships were known to start during these 1-2 year internships. Year after year couples would form and commit to one another such that it was often announced from conference stages that we were likely to meet our spouses. At the end of my overseas internship, not only did I emerge from yet another spousal factory still solo but such expectations certainly made an unhelpful contribution to what eventually became strained relationships with some on my team, including that guy friend.
This type of “meet your spouse” anticipation only continued as I moved forward in full time ministry at various conferences, trainings, and orientations. Again and again people would forecast the cycle of dating-to-marriage and I would experience it among friends first hand. I dated some during this season as well, but never to a serious extent. I would repeatedly hear that I’d never emerge from a particular event or season still single, but lo, and behold, I would defy expectations once more. Eventually I tried online dating for a season; so many of my friends have indeed met wonderful spouses in this way. Yet not only did it not lead to any meaningful connections in my case, but I also did not find that it brought out the best in me.
“As soon as you stop looking/are content being single — that’s when you’ll find someone!”
On the flip side there’s this all-too-common mantra that is less than helpful, though many seem to believe it to their core. I have lived through substantial seasons of “contentment” that have not produced the surprise relationship this trope promises. I personally know people who have experienced this very reality; that does not therefore make it a universal formula.
In my early 30s I attended a Christmas Eve service with my family at the church I grew up in. As usual, I made my rounds to connect with many people who had known me since childhood, some who I knew were faithfully praying for me and my ministry. I sat and talked with a particular woman around the age of my grandparents. She sweetly asked about my life and ministry. Then she moved to my love life. “And are there any special men in your life?” I answered that no, there was no one in particular. “Well how can that be?”, she pressed further. I told her that I didn’t know.
Her entire countenance then changed as she snapped, “So, what – you’re just going to be an old maid then??”
I said something about trusting in the Lord’s timing and good plans for me and then excused myself as quickly as possible. After years of making my way through the gauntlet of sure bets to meet my spouse, such a reaction was unhelpful to say the least!
A Meaningful Friendship**
Recently the local church I’m attending included a Sunday morning sermon on the topic of sexual wholeness. It was beautiful and helpful. And I wept sloppily most of the time. The pastor shared so compassionately about how much this topic could surface shame or evoke pain. I thought about what many in this small congregation, who are just getting to know me, might be assuming about my story as they witnessed my tears. I also knew they couldn’t guess the origins of the pain and memory I was experiencing around this topic.
———
In my late 20s I made a dear female friend who offered herself as a support and confidant as I navigated singleness and the celibacy I believe my faith calls me to in this reality. One of our earliest connections took place during a joint ministry endeavor as we processed with female students our pursuits of sexual wholeness. As I shared some of my story and my perspectives on living faithfully in this area, she snapped her fingers high in the air and pulled me aside afterward to gush over how encouraged she was by me and how she wanted to know more about me.
We grew to become the best of friends and shared much with each other at deep levels. She was a fierce champion of me in my singleness and brought renewed encouragement in my life by hoping with me that I would eventually find a husband. For many years she and her husband invested in opportunities to connect me to different people toward potential romantic possibilities. While none of these connections turned into much, my friends grew to incorporate me as a meaningful part of their family. We all still hoped for me to marry and have children of my own, but regardless, an explicitly long-term commitment was made and a vision cast for our connection with each other for life.
There were many meaningful parts of our relationship. For the purposes of this reflection, one worth mentioning is how my friend didn’t treat my singleness as if I couldn’t or shouldn’t understand her life as a married woman. She would freely include me in conversations related to marriage and/or sex rather than dancing around the topic in a way that would imply, “just wait until you’re older.” I’m ahead of her in age, but the impact of this habit was that I didn’t exist as someone “behind” her in life because I wasn’t yet married. She became a friend with whom I could share some of my deepest desires, disappointments, and insecurities. It was during our friendship that I began to truly ponder the reality that I might never marry and started to more deeply explore the question, “what is my sexuality for?”
To be human is, in part, to be a sexual being. So as someone who believes that God created, ordains, and reserves sexual union with another for the marriage relationship, it can be difficult to know how to relate to my sexuality as a single, celibate person. Much has been written about this question, some helpful and some not so much. Both inside and outside the Church, a range of responses can serve to make someone like myself feel less than human. When, among Christians, sex is spoken of mostly as something a single person such as myself is “waiting for,” it can suggest that I don’t truly know what it is to experience my full humanity until that “waiting” is over. But what if I never marry? Conversely, many inside and outside the Church do not understand sex as beholden to the marriage covenant and encourage consensual sexual expression as an essential human necessity. Adult virginity is mocked and derided as nearly subhuman, either depicting those who don’t have sex as desperate, unwanted losers or likely impossibilities, thereby erasing the existence and dignity of someone like myself.
Just recently, I was rewatching one of my favorite, though short-lived, Aaron Sorkin shows called Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. In a particular episode one of the main characters, Matt Albie (played by Matthew Perry), scoffs at his love interest, Harriet Hayes (played by Sarah Paulson), for supporting the idea of teen abstinence by saying, “as a former teen, I can tell you it’s never going to happen!” Now as a former teen myself and a current campus minister who works in the realm of old or recent teenagers, I can attest that his joke is in many ways apt. Many teens and many adults, of any and all faith convictions, are going to have sex outside of the bond of marriage. Yet this often gets extended to the claim that it in fact can “never” happen. The implication being that to be human, or to be a happy human, one is going to have sex at some point, married or not.
So within the Church I can feel less than human until I marry, whereas among others, someone like me is often cast as the rarest of fanatical anomalies, at best.
My friend did not treat me as subhuman in either regard, though as a married woman (and even prior) she is well-acquainted with sex. (She has written extensively on her own story in this regard; I’m not sharing beyond what she would tell). We both held, and hold, to a biblical-historical sexual ethic, and yet she joined me on the journey toward truly understanding, “but what does that mean for me now?” It is all well and good to hold to a particular theology of sex, but how it plays out in real time is where we really test its mettle.
My friend and I would discuss the goods of marriage and sex including (among other aspects) the intimacy it creates, pointing toward our union with Christ, and procreation toward family. I am a kid person. I have always dreamed of being a mother. By my mid-30s I began to reckon seriously with the possibility that I might never know the joy (and trials!) of motherhood. I remember sitting on my best friend’s front porch and crying with her about how to conceive of my grief in this area. I shared how I was reading more and more from those rightfully seeking community and understanding in the grief of infertility. While I was (and am) in full support of my friends who seek to name their pain in not conceiving children, I was unsure of any spaces for me to grieve with communal support for a type of “infertility” I was feeling in never having the opportunity to conceive a child. I remember my friend being hesitant to frame my experience in this way, because she, like me, also considered singleness as a God-given good. She observed that not conceiving a child within the union of marriage seemed more like a result of living in a fallen world, in that it was marriage not producing all for which it was rightfully created. Yet singleness was blessed by God, explicitly in Jesus, and therefore not bearing children as a result of being single, though fair to grieve, did not seem to her in the same category as infertility among married couples. While I could agree with her on all these points in theory, there still seemed a sense in which my grief had no rightful home. Even in her theologizing, she held space for me in my vulnerability.
We would also discuss the goods of singleness. More than that, I believe that for a long season we together cultivated an embodied picture of how the goodness of singleness and the goodness of marriage complement one another for true, God-honoring human flourishing. My friend and her husband took seriously that my call to “be fruitful and multiply” is just as meaningful as a single person and they let that inform the ways that they invited and involved me in their family. In the grief of my unmet desires to be a mother, they gave me a meaningful place in the life of their daughter. Together we believed that my singleness was not only “good” in order to work harder or longer hours in ministry, but that I had unique energy, resources, and insights to serve and enjoy their family in particular ways. As a married couple they had particular types of stability, resources, and rhythms that could enrich my life not only for my own good but with a fullness that could extend to others. They repeatedly cast a vision for me that their daughter was and would be a part of my “multiplying fruitfulness” for a lifetime. We committed to one another as family in very real and intentional ways for our own flourishing and the flourishing of the Church at large.
In what would turn out to be the last week of our friendship, my friend shared about someone who lived out of state mulling over whether there was anyone she could set me up with for a date. Her daughter, who was in the car with us during the conversation, said, “Wait! I don’t want Fancy to meet a husband somewhere else, because then she wouldn’t live near us!” (“Fancy” is my aunt-name given to me by my sister, which my best-friend-like-sister appropriated into our lives when her daughter was born, signifying that I was truly a sister to her and an aunt to her daughter). My friend responded, “Oh don’t worry! Even if Fancy gets married, we’ll make him move here. We’re not going to stop living near Fancy.” Now even though this was said somewhat tongue-in-cheek, not truly promising that we’d never live apart, there was the reassertion that even if I were to marry and have children of my own, our commitment to one another as family would not wane.
On the morning of the day she pulled back from our friendship for good, I texted her after my personal Bible devotion time about how a particular passage of Scripture had just surfaced my longing for a husband. She communicated compassion for that desire and told me she would pray for me right then to see that desire met.
The presence of this friendship was such a safe place for me to process my longings in singleness; more than that, it was a manifestation of God’s goodness to me in my singleness, offering love, intimacy, commitment, and fruitfulness. It was in the context of this friendship that I could begin to see how God could meet my longings while not fulfilling them in the ways that I had hoped or pictured. Within this friendship, I could reimagine my participation in family and fruitfulness.
The loss of this friendship has affected this picture as deeply, if not more so, than its presence.
I didn’t just lose a friendship. I lost a family. I lost a support system. I lost a deeply ingrained relational vision for my future. I lost the embodiment of a theology and expression of the Church in which I so deeply believe. I lost trust in church leaders who caused much harm in their involvement, contradicting the very vision they so proudly uphold about singles in the family of God.
I have done, and continue to do, much work to sort through the messages I have heard both explicitly and implicitly in the face of this loss.
When I asked why the same priority in the church wasn’t being given to working through our relational difficulties as it might be if this were a marriage or biological family member in the same community, I was told by our/my then-pastor that “marriage and biological family are special types of covenant that differ from friendship.” While I certainly agree that marriage, parent-child relationships, and friendship have certain distinctions, applying any such differences as a reason not to pursue healthy conflict-resolution was (and is) beyond me.
Some have suggested that in seeing the friendship end, perhaps God was “clearing the way” for me to meet a spouse and “start my own family,” as if maintaining a deep friendship and getting married would be in competition with one another. In this there seems to be an implication that getting married and having children would be the better, more rightful, experience whereas this friendship in my singleness was perhaps a stand-in during the “waiting.” Those suggesting this to me were likely only speaking in love and expressing the supportive hope that my desires would be met; yet this idea plays into a dichotomy I ultimately find unhelpful.
The claims made as justification for ending the friendship didn’t and don’t match reality as I know it. No sins I confessed, no offer of reparation I made, softened any of the resolve to eliminate me and any form of relationship entirely. The promise of commitment was gone. The offer and reiteration of accepting me as forever family is as if it never existed. The mutuality and tenderness has become nothing more than a haunting memory. The place that was so safe for me to process and live out of my brokenness and gifts stopped being a safe place to fail in quite normal relational ways, confess, and repent. As my former friend and leaders in my former church continue to proclaim the good news of the church as family and cast a vision for the full inclusion of singles in the life of the community, I am ignored on the street, avoided in ministry settings, and rebuffed in my perspectives. I find myself treated as a worst case scenario and an asterisk next to the otherwise good news of the power of the gospel. The friend who so deeply affirmed my full humanity in my singleness now seemingly avoids my existence all together. The level of erasure has been devastating and has challenged all that I understood to be true.
———
My current local congregation couldn’t have known that my tears were related to a past broken relationship, but not one that was sexual in nature. Even as I encounter ideas and material in this area which are healthy and formative for Christ-followers, this carries with it stark memories and present grief in this unresolved, ambiguous loss. Conversations around sexual wholeness highlight for me where relational brokenness persists with some who lead these conversations.
And yet the kindness and commitment of the Lord never wanes. Even in the deepest throes of grieving this loss, the loving presence of Christ has been near, affirming that my identity and future are in him. It was during that Sunday service that I sensed the Holy Spirit impressing upon me to write and share my own story of singleness and celibacy. I have been surprised to find that even as the stability and safety of this chosen family disappeared, my vision for singleness enacted by the Lord in the context of those friendships has remained intact. In other words, in processing this loss I have not been drawn to more heavily pursue getting married just to fill a relational void. I haven’t tried to raise up any new best friends or families to take their place in order to meet the needs that were being met. After all, it’s not a relational connection that can easily be manufactured, as I did not manufacture that one in the first place. Yet I still believe that the framework my former friends and I pursued of an embodied family with singles and marrieds together is a Kingdom framework worth pursuing. However, I believe that the church must take more seriously the perspectives and needs of singles in navigating relational conflict than it currently does for any such framework to thrive. We must learn how to better shepherd marrieds and singles in dealing with difficulties that arise in any intimate relationship. I believe we need a more robust and healthier theology of friendship (a topic I have spent intensive time studying and intend to write more about in the future).
**A note about the above section: I speak fairly directly, yet with minimal detail, about a broken friendship. This relationship would hold a significant place in this part of my story even if it remained intact today. In fact, this friend and I used to talk about me writing my story of singleness someday. As she wrote the chapter on singleness in her book, she cried with me at a local coffee shop about how she would not have felt qualified to craft it without our friendship and what she had gleaned from my experience. She was often deeply encouraging about how I’ve navigated singleness, desire, and my faith.
It is my aim to share even just a few — of many — ways this friendship encouraged and blessed me. I wish with all my heart that that’s all there was to share. Yet sadly, the effects of this relationship ending against my will have also become a significant part of my story. While it’s not intended to be the focal point, I can’t tell my story without including this broken part. It likely comes through that I don’t believe it was necessary to end the friendship in working through our difficulties, yet she became convinced it was the best and only option. I am in no way seeking to malign my former friend; rather I am simply articulating a different perspective as I share the effects of living through what I would not have chosen. I hope it is abundantly clear how much I have respected and valued her. Expressing some differing viewpoints about our ending does not negate this. I love her and her family dearly and still desire healing and some form of reconciliation with them. I am seeking to share parts of my story and where that overlaps with her, I want to share only the pieces that seem appropriate. My former church leaders instructed me/us to make no public allusions (or even what could be perceived as an allusion) to this loss and that has seemed to be her preference, as well. I would much prefer to find interpersonal healing in private so that my story to share with others would be different; that option is not held out to me, even several years down the line. I’ve observed that silence and erasure can create narratives of their own even if nothing is explicitly stated.
When I am sharing parts of my story that happened during our friendship, l refer to her as my “friend”/”best friend” for the sake of ease. When reflecting back I will call her my “former friend.” Though my feelings and commitment to her have not changed, she no longer holds this commitment to me and I respect that a friendship is not active if both parties do not agree to it.
A New Stage of Singleness
Some of my “worst” fears of aging in singleness have come true.
For years I feared that my younger brother by six years would marry and have children before I would. In my younger mind, that was an indication of my life being “behind” or less than it could be. When my brother married seven years ago it was personally challenging due to this notion, but joyful all the same in celebrating with them as a couple. I wore one of my then best friend’s former bridesmaid dresses to the wedding and sang and danced the night away with family and others in the bridal party. When they announced three years ago that they were pregnant, not only did I reach another “dreaded” milestone but I could no longer reach out to my former best friend for comfort and encouragement; I couldn’t even let her know that it was happening. I experienced this very complex sadness while simultaneously feeling gladness for my brother, sister-in-law, and whole family. In the ensuing years, their precious daughter has brought so much joy and it’s nothing but delight being her aunt, even from a geographical distance.
There are other impending fears with which I grapple.
For some time now I have hoped to have a daughter so I could name her after my mother. My dad’s side of the family has a tradition of including his late mother’s name in some form of the first daughter’s name of children and grandchildren. I have hoped to honor both my mom and my dad in naming a daughter; my former best friend and I would speak of this would-be daughter by name in hopes of her eventual existence. But it increasingly becomes more likely that I will not have the opportunity to do so. I’m only too aware that even if I were to get married later in life, not only are there more biological risks at this point for child bearing, but I don’t have the guarantee of bodily fertility even so. I hold the potential of this grief while hoping both to be surprised by its possibility and to find different ways to live out the spirit of this desire.
Recently I did some work in putting together a “genogram,” chronicling some of my family history and its attendant relational functions and dysfunctions. The instructions guided me to make a family tree with two generations above me and then extending the line below me. As I followed the video guide it struck me how “incomplete” my diagram looked in comparison; the instructions were certainly taking for granted that people had family lines below them. It threw into stark relief that my biological line may well end with me, even as I could make observations about the lines above and beside me. Where the Christian encouragement would come in that I can bear fruit as a “spiritual mother,” this exercise (done in a Christian context) was not considering those relationships as actual family. What’s more, the pain of the lost “spiritual child” that I had in relation to my former friends became all the more acute in the process. Were we family or were we not? A question I may deal with in some form or another for many years to come. A complex grief that’s difficult to diagram.
In the midst of impending fears and present grief, there is also hope and joy.
I have been immeasurably blessed by parents and family who do not pressure me to be married or import their hopes for grandchildren onto me with any type of shame. I’m only too aware that this is not the case for many singles. My parents have hoped alongside me for a spouse and children because it is something that I have so deeply longed for. Certainly they treasure the grandchildren they do have and would no doubt be delighted by children of mine. For years when I would visit home in early adulthood, I would cry to my mom about the possibility of never getting married and having kids. For years she would assure me that I was young and it was likely to happen. Our conversations around this have had to change. They too have grown in their relationship to singleness as they’ve walked this road with me. My parents had embraced my former friends and their daughter as part of our family, sharing homes and exchanging gifts, time, and much prayer for many years. They lost family when I lost family. This has only deepened in complexity as we have also recently navigated a painful divorce in our family. Within a matter of a few years, both of their daughters’ lives and relationships looked drastically different than any of us hoped for or imagined. Yet in this there has been grace, love, acceptance, support, and space to be messy. My relationship with my sister has grown closer than ever as we have held each other up through immeasurable grief with both tears and laughter.
Losing my friends-like-family took place just months before the onset of pandemic lockdown. To say this exacerbated the feelings of loneliness and isolation would be an understatement. Still, in this season the Lord continued to provide his presence and the loving presence of others (even though often at a distance for some time). Out of my grief, I have seen God deepen my compassion for others and draw me close to himself.
I continue to process how to invest my time and talents as a single woman in full time ministry. I do not believe it is therefore my call to work harder and longer than those in ministry who have spouses and/or children. I have taken intentional steps to invest time and resources in graduate studies because I believe this utilizes many of my gifts, provides some helpful boundary lines in my schedule, and gives me ample opportunities for personal growth and faithful service to others. I continue to seek opportunities to invest in a local church community, in old and new friendships, in physical neighbors, and in the needs of my surrounding community. I stay tightly connected to my immediate family. I try to make time for play, for reading, for “doing nothing,” for moving my body, for laughing and listening to others.
I am still open to getting married, though its value in my life as near-necessity has shifted. Seeing up close the underbelly of what began as “strong Christian marriages” only to turn toward abusive divorces has certainly played a role. Nevertheless, I don’t believe that the worst situations discount the very real goodness and fruitfulness that marriage can be. I believe marriage is indeed a good; yet marriage is not always good. I have also experienced goodness and stability in my singleness. For a long time I feared becoming content in my singleness because I worried that would mean God was readying me for a lifetime alone. What I am learning is that first, I do not know what the future holds and realize that my desires and circumstances may/will shift again from what they are now and second, if the Lord is preparing me for a lifetime of singleness, that is not the same as him preparing me to be alone.
Within Christian circles, in many ways I have the “right” story — until I don’t. Jokes abound about hoping daughters don’t get married until they’re 40, but when or if it actually comes to that, eyebrows raise. Some may well be proud of my celibacy, yet I suspect it’s also questioned and probably even pitied; the question of “what’s wrong with her?” likely lingers even subconsciously. I believe the way the Church navigates, relates to, and disciples toward singleness has far reaching implications. I don’t know what it is to experience the isolation, othering, shaming, and outright persecution of the LGBTQ+ community. Yet I have experienced my own levels of the first of these three — in ways I think could actually help us care for one another. I can’t help but wonder what the church is missing as single, celibate, cis-straight people don’t have tracks to navigate sexuality, wholeness, and lasting intimacy for the long haul within the full embrace of the larger community. How do we expect to offer wholeness and wise guidance to “sexual minorities” among those who identify as LGBTQ+? I believe we need each other.
Hope from God’s Word
In 2017, I spent some time researching and writing on a particular passage in Isaiah as a part of a seminary course on Old Testament prophetic books. In it I found hope for someone like me, navigating “unwanted” singleness before the Lord in faith. Isaiah 56:3-5 says,
So let not the son of a foreigner who is joined to the LORD say,
“The LORD will surely separate me from his people”;
and let not the eunuch say,
“Behold, I am a dry tree.”
For thus says the LORD:
“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths
and choose that in which I delight,
who hold fast to my covenant,
to them I will give in my house
and within my walls
a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters;
an everlasting name
I will give to each of them
that will never be cut off.”
[my translation]
These verses occur at the outset of the third of three major literary divisions in Isaiah’s prophecy. After addressing the sinful depravity and complacency of Israel (and all mankind) in Chapters 1-39, Isaiah has just spent Chapters 40-55 proclaiming the hope of the glory of God to overcome all present and future evil; the Servant who will make intercession for the transgressors (Is. 53:12) has been announced and the Lord has beckoned “everyone who thirsts” to come and drink (Is. 55:1). He has called for the people to seek him while he may be found, to forsake their wicked and unrighteous ways, so that he (YHWH) may show them abundant compassion, for his ways are not their ways (Is. 55:6-8).
So Chapter 56 begins by commanding righteousness and justice for those who await the promised salvation of the Lord. Verses 3-5 build on this instruction by using striking and unexpected examples of people who would never have been considered righteous in that context: the foreigner and the eunuch, though the focus of these few verses is primarily on the eunuch. What good news for a people who could not imagine their position in the presence of God’s people and what a wakeup call for the complacent Israelites who would prefer to rest on their family heritage! The Lord can, and will, bring salvation to anyone who would submit to him in righteous obedience.
In an Ancient Near East context, a physical eunuch was broadly understood as one who could not procreate due to defective or absent genitalia, either as a result of a developmental defect or volitional castration; society viewed such anomalies as a sign of inferiority and disgrace. Even so, over time many eunuchs made their way into positions of respect, especially government positions. They were often confidants to rulers, attendants to women, and overseers of harems; one titled as a eunuch was most typically understood to be a “foreign official.” Though cultural context allows for the assumption that some of these royal officials were indeed also castrated individuals (such as the eunuchs in Esther), there is not enough evidence to prove that every OT reference to a eunuch by title implies the same physical deformation.
Of all the OT references, it is significant that Isaiah 56:3 alone mentions the eunuch’s physical condition disconnected from any title in the royal court; in fact, it is not a title that is important at all in this instance. By addressing this Jewish castrate’s physical and spiritual condition, the Lord brings particular attention to what is special about his power to save. Isaiah’s original audience would have been well aware of the Levitical code prohibiting such impurity from entering the temple and presence of YHWH (Deuteronomy 23:1). Regardless of royal titles or social implications, God declares shockingly good news through Isaiah: even the least likely person can be a servant of the Lord if he lives out a righteous obedience to him. The outworking of the Servant foretold in Chapter 53 undergirds and inspires such a radical hope.
The most likely interpretation of the Hebrew term yad, translated here as “monument” in verse 5, relates to a few other OT passages. As Absalom set up a monument of remembrance in lieu of children to carry on his name (2 Samuel 18:18), so here the Lord is giving a monument (and a name) to the eunuchs who also cannot produce earthly offspring. Still, it’s compelling that Isaiah (and the Lord) intentionally plays on a dual usage of the term (Isaiah 57:8,10), where it discreetly refers to a male reproductive organ. God’s monumental gift is not just a consolation token of remembrance, but it is a sure promise of human and spiritual wholeness in his presence.
The emphatic examples of the foreigner and the eunuch in Isaiah 56:3-5 would have been surprising not only to the Israelites, but also among their contemporaries. Such groundbreaking news as YHWH’s inclusive salvation for any and all who would come to him in obedience surely conveys power, love, and compassion yet unknown and unmatched in the ancient world. How typical for a god(s) and the religious elite to wield their privilege to the exclusion of those deemed inferior; how scandalous and magnificent that the Lord would display his power by welcoming the most unworthy into his temple presence!
Although Isaiah 56:3-5 is never directly quoted or referenced in New Testament literature, there are important thematic connections to this passage and significant allusions to the eunuch. In Matthew 19:10-12, Jesus speaks five times of the “eunuchs” as he acknowledges the difficulty of receiving his preceding words about divorce. Though he describes various types of eunuchs to make his point, similar to Isaiah 56 no mention of these eunuchs refers to a government title or position of court official. Jesus delineates between eunuchs born of physical defect, those who have suffered or self-imposed castration and lastly men who would choose to live as eunuchs “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” Essentially, Jesus’s message is one that elevates the eunuch in a society and religious climate where marriage reigns supreme; there is a role for eunuchs in the kingdom of heaven, in fact their position is a gift (v. 11). One can hear echoes of Isaiah 56, as both here and there God offers hope and dignity to the eunuchs who would follow him. Just as Isaiah revealed that there was not one type of obedience for the Israelite and another for the outsider, so here Jesus makes clear that the married person has no more inherent worthiness before God; both are called and equipped by his grace as they submit to him their bodies and their very lives.
Indeed we may note that Jesus — the embodiment of perfected humanity — never married and never experienced sexual union in his earthly life. The Apostle Paul, as well. (Yes, there are those who disagree with this understanding of biblical texts, but I find their speculations unconvincing). We see Jesus express directly that marriage will not exist in eternity (Matt 22:30) and so we may conclude that sex as we know it also exists only for this lifetime. We will not be less human in eternity but more fully human than ever before as we live in our glorified bodies, unburdened by the weight of sin. Sex in itself certainly is not sinful, having been created by God for the good flourishing of humanity before the entrance of sin and encouraged throughout Scripture as something to be practiced and celebrated in marriage. Yet in conjunction with Jesus’s words above and his embodied life it would seem that it is a temporal gift that points beyond itself.
The key message of Isaiah 56:3-5 foretells and reflects the heart of the gospel story of redemption throughout the Bible. God has always been the God who can and does bring something out of nothing; the Lord who spoke the entire cosmos into existence ex nihilo (Genesis 1), who provided drinking water from a rock (Exodus 17), he who brought life from a barren womb (Genesis 21; 30; 1 Samuel 1; Luke 1), even this God can “make the dry tree flourish” (Ezekiel 17:24). I receive hope as a single woman living “as a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” I have longed for a family of my own and I can feel rudderless as I seek to understand my place in the community of faith where most of my peers are married and raising children. Yet if God can give a physical eunuch assurance of salvation and the hope of an everlasting family line, then humbly I may know that he sees me and will surely bear fruit through my life as an honorable member of his family even as I wait on him. What joy to serve a God who delights to give good gifts to his children, restoring life even to the driest of trees!
To Those Who Don’t Want to Be Me…
I understand. I get it. I have been you and I don’t blame you.
Still, I have experienced the truth that what God calls us to, what he wills for us — for that he will prepare and provide. Yet there will be times we do not feel prepared or fulfilled; we may only be aware of intense, unmet longing. The mystery and the promise is that God is still doing his good work of love in us even in that space. Some of you may be choosing singleness joyfully and with sure calling; I suspect many relate to my experience of living into a reality you wouldn’t have chosen for yourself. If and as you see any of your “worst fears” come true in this area, hear this encouragement from me: it’s okay to hope, it’s okay to grieve. It is right and good to do both at the same time. Even if you and/or others in your life have trouble bearing the weight of such a complex emotional load, know that you are not alone and that the Lord sees and knows you perfectly in this place.
I also encourage you to continue pursuing growth and connection as a whole person, regardless of a particular relationship status. Use and develop your gifts. Invest deeply in all types of relationships, including but not limited to other single people. Ask the Lord what it looks like to be faithful in your ‘right now.’ Advocate for your needs and boundaries while also seeking plentiful opportunities to be generous with your time and resources. Fight the lies that tell you you are less than entirely human for not marrying and/or for remaining celibate. Be ruthlessly honest with God about your desires, hopes, and disappointments. Pray for people in your life that you can be this kind of honest with, as well. Cling to Jesus and love others as you love yourself.
To Those Who Aren’t Like Me…
I’m so glad you are you. Please listen to people like me. Just like those who get married and have children, our stories will be unique and nuanced and valuable. Seek out ways to love and include people like me in your life and families. Even as you encourage us in our gifts and contributions, bear with us through our failures, treating us as worthy siblings who will carry forth into eternity.