Coping with singleness

There were a couple of girls in university who stole my heart and chose other guys without giving me a second thought (I guess I should have told them I liked them). There were a few more who outright rejected me in favour of staying single (which is to say they had no excuse for disobeying the Lord’s will to marry me). But it’s okay because I got my revenge by living a long and happy life without them. Well, I’m living without them, anyway.

To be honest, living without the dating relationship you thought you needed for fulfillment is one of the most freeing feelings you may ever experience—if you can stop crying long enough to see the silver lining.

And yes, there is a silver lining to being single. For instance, I can sleep with all my dirty laundry piled on the bed next to me. I can also scratch every awkwardly placed itch whenever I feel like.

Now, before you search me on Google to find where I live so you can kill me, I want to emphasize that I feel your pain. Whenever I tell my mom about how depressingly alone I am, she tells me to look on the bright side: at least I have more free time to myself.

Sigh. I think if mothers spent more time reading good books and less time giving advice from Oprah to their children about being single, we would see a decrease in attempted murders in North America.

Unfortunately, mothers are not the only ones siphoning from the bad advice tank when it comes to coping with singleness. One of my friends keeps telling me not to worry because, “This too shall pass.” Not only is this not true, as some people never end up with anyone, but it also brings to mind the bad joke about the pharmacist who says the same thing as he sells laxatives to a constipated man.

In an attempt to make me feel better, I’ve also been told stories about how miserable some relationships can be. I heard one recently about two forty-something women who woke up at 3 a.m. crying. The first woman cried because she was still single, and the second woman cried was because she was still married. The point of the story being similar to that of the German proverb, which says the grass is always greener over the manure pile.

While the above story is funny, and perhaps a little instructive, it too misses the greater point. Bashing the God-given, holy institution of marriage is hardly the solution needed to make singles feel better about themselves, especially when it’s marriage we singles are so looking forward to.

By now you’re probably waiting to find out what the real silver lining is to being single, so here goes: there isn’t one. I thought there was, but I realized there isn’t, and that’s okay because it isn’t necessary. All this talk about looking for silver linings assumes that singleness is a bad thing that can only be endured if one can find an emergency foil blanket to hold on to. This is just not true.

Being single is not bad, it’s just a part of life. And as such, it has its own blessings and challenges. We can choose to use our singleness for God’s glory and honour, or we can throw a hissy fit over what we think we’re missing out on.

Please don’t think I’m a celibate monk. I feel the single person’s pain. There are times I get so jealous of couples holding hands that I pray a comet will fall from the sky and smash them to bits. Other times I feel more gracious and forgiving and only pray that a few bears would come out of the woods and maul them.

So no, I’m not exactly happy with being single. However, despite the frustrations and loneliness that sometimes flare up, I am learning to be content with what I’ve been given. The best advice I have ever heard on coping with singleness comes from the Apostle Paul, who said “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 4:13).

At the end of the day, if you can’t be content with what you have now, you won’t be content with what you get in the future. Asking God for the strength to be content whatever the circumstances is the only way to find true peace, and incidentally, the only thing that keeps me from blowing up my well-intentioned family members who say, “just

look on the bright side.”