Introduction

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Chapter 1: Loss

“I’m just not ready to be married yet.” When I heard those words, my world came tumbling down around me.

This chapter opens the book with my personal story. When Brian called off our relationship, I felt as though the foundation of my world had collapsed. I determined, with God’s grace, to get back to a place of contentment and to be able to thrive in my single life.

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Chapter 2: You may not get married.

“You know, the right guy is out there, and he’s worth waiting for.” People think that’s the most encouraging thing they can say. The problem is that it’s not rooted in truth: God hasn’t promised all of us a husband or a wife.

Our faith has gotten sloppy. We deem faith to mean believing that God has good things in store for us. We emphasize His goodness, kindness, and love, and the tangible ways we know they’ll work themselves out in our lives--a new job when we’re suddenly laid off, a beautiful new house when we’re forced to move, the perfect roommate, the health of a loved one, the perfect spouse.

God takes pleasure in giving us good things. But it’s often in the most difficult times that He becomes more real to us and makes us more like Him.

Genuine faith is believing that whatever decision God makes is the right one, and that He’s still good. It’s faith like that of Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.

This chapter also examines Jeremiah 29:11 and Psalm 37:4, verses often used to justify the belief that God is going to give us what we want. Studying these verses in context reveals the depth of their meaning. Jeremiah 29:11 teaches us about God’s forgiving nature and that God’s best for our lives is tied to following Him. The main point of Psalm 37:4 is that delighting in God is the key to handling our desires.

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Chapter 3: You're right where God wants you to be.

This chapter examines God's promises to guide us and His blessings. God led us to be single at this point in time. He blesses us here, even if it is not our choice of blessings. This is God’s will for our lives.

Chapter 4: You have no need to be ashamed.

You haven’t fulfilled your highest calling. You’re too picky. You’re all alone. You could be fixed if you would lower your standards a bit, accept someone you don’t really like, or let me fix you up with the guy I know who would be perfect for you. You’re pitiable. You have less to give to God because you aren’t married. Your married friends are more valuable than you are. You’re awkward in social situations. You aren’t acceptable the way you are.

Thoughts like these haunt single Christians. The truth? If this is what God has chosen for us, we have no reason to be ashamed. While singleness may not be highly regarded in the church today, in the Bible it is presented as the ideal that few can attain. It gives us the opportunity to focus on knowing God and becoming holy.

Chapter 5: Marriage isn't better or worse—it's different.

“Marriage isn’t better or worse, it’s just different. If you're not a happy person as a single, marriage is not going to change that. If you have low self-esteem (or don't see yourself as God sees you), marriage is not going to change that. If you do not have intimate friendships as a single, marriage is not going to change that. If your walk with God is weak as a single, marriage is not going to change that.”

This chapter outlines a realistic view of marriage, using advice and examples from many married couples.

Chapter 6: You are fiercely loved.

According to the textbook, God's love is the truest we will ever know. Regardless of whether or not we marry, this relationship will be the most meaningful of our lives. And yet, it is perhaps the hardest to get your hands around.

Madeleine L'Engle, in her novel A Live Coal in the Sea, quotes William Langland's picture of the mercy of God: "But all the wickedness in the world which man may do or think is no more to the mercy of God than a live coal dropped in the sea." When we resist the love of God, it is as though we are walking up to the waves on the beach with our small burning cinders, wondering if the ocean will be enough to put them out.

This chapter examines that love. It looks at the depth of God's grace, at the love embodied in Christ, and questions the times when God acts in ways that seem far from loving. To quote C.S. Lewis in his classic, The Problem of Pain:

When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some "disinterested," because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the "lord of terrible aspect," is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as a love between the sexes.

Chapter 7: You CAN be content.

Karen Clark, thirty-eight and single, was at peace with her situation in life. She sat across from me at Starbucks, encouraging me to let go of the ball and chain of this dream of marriage. “What do you want to be like if you never get married?” She was the only friend bold enough to challenge me that way. I wanted to be content, like Karen.

Contentment is what we're all looking for, whether we know it or not. We give it names—different names for each of us, and different sometimes from day to day or year to year. We deem it "a date Friday night" or "an afternoon in the sun on the pink Bermuda sand" or maybe "an arm around me at 6 a.m. in the quiet morning." Sometimes we get even more specific: the bookish one in accounting, the guy who leads worship, the flirtatious friend. We name it these things to make it tangible. We track its patterns in the lives of others and imagine how it will be for us: It will arrive on the 6:04 from Crystal City, we will bump into it in line at Starbucks, and life will change. It is happiness, by definition. And until it comes, we sit and wait.

The thing we want, though, is the happiness itself, the contentment—not the nom du jour we've given it. Contentment is available without any of the extra packaging. It's elusive. Look for it in the Friday night date or the marriage proposal and it may not be there—and it may be too late for you to get out. Find it now, and it will be a constant companion. Expect it to come later, and it may always elude you.

This chapter examines the nature of contentment—it's a decision, not a feeling—and looks at five biblical characters who worked out contentment in their own lives: David, Mary, Asaph, Paul, and Christ.

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Chapter 8: Purity is part of your spiritual core.

Elisabeth Elliot, in Passion and Purity, describes our love lives, as Christians, as “a crucial battleground. There, if nowhere else, it will be determined as to who is Lord: the world, the self and the devil, or the Lord Christ.”

The main lesson most of us have taken away from the Bible concerning purity is that we shouldn’t have sex before marriage. The Bible actually doesn’t place much emphasis on that command—but this hardly means that purity isn’t an issue. Purity is the main consideration of the Bible in relationships between men and women. This chapter examines six in-depth passages that cover this topic, and its relation to foundational spiritual truths.

Chapter 9: You can change the way you FEEL about being single.

This chapter examines the basic principles of cognitive therapy, outlining the process necessary to change thinking patterns and, in turn, feelings. First, you have to take every thought captive. Examine your thoughts and feelings. What underlying belief is responsible for the way you feel? Is it true? Second, tear down strongholds. When you identify a lie, tell yourself it’s not true, and why. Third, replace the lie with the truth.

This is a battle in your mind which takes considerable time. You can’t expect to change your feelings overnight. It will take work. The chapter provides instructions for keeping a journal to help track progress.

It also examines over fifty specific lies that singles tend to believe, and replaces each lie with biblical truth. For example:

• Lie: God doesn’t love me because he doesn’t answer my prayers for a husband or a wife.
• Truth: God loves me immensely. He knows what is best for me. He is sovereign, and it’s His decision to give me a husband or wife or not to give me one. He knows what He’s doing.
  
• Lie: I must have some sin in my life that causes God not to be able to answer my prayer.
• Truth: I do sin--all the time. When I confess my sin, God forgives me and makes all of me clean. Sin does have consequences, but God doesn’t make me pay for my sin; if He did, I’d be living in constant punishment. I could never be punished enough to make up for what I’ve done. Christ took my punishment on the cross.

Chapter 10: It's not all about this life: it's about the eternal.

This chapter frames the struggle with singleness in light of what the Bible teaches about the value of this life versus the value of the life to come.

We may miss out on what we wanted most in this life. That's OK. Our true life is hidden with Christ in God, and soon our life here will be little more than a memory. Our ultimate reward—and truest life—is yet to come.

Copyright 2002, Lori Smith.