Whether we’re single or married, it’s easy to believe that marriage will complete us. But as Gary Thomas says, “Marriage doesn’t solve emptiness; it exposes it.” Problems like loneliness and insecurity aren’t solved by a relationship with another human; they are solved by a relationship with God. Single or married, we’ll never find fulfillment in our earthly family.
I often tell young people in my church that they’re not ready to date until they’re ready not to date. Because until you’re ready not to date, you’re going to try to use that marriage partner for something they weren’t designed to give. That marriage partner will never meet your deepest soul needs. They can’t supply the love that you crave, that complete acceptance where someone knows you completely and loves you anyway. That hole is a God-shaped hole, not a “missing lover” shaped hole.
Find your identity, security, and happiness in Christ first. And when you do that, marriage and singleness will begin to take on a different weight in your life. This doesn’t mean your desires will magically go away or that you will suddenly stop caring about those things. It simply means you can trust that if God withholds a relationship or marriage from you for some reason, he will give you what you need to endure.
One of my single friends said that singleness can be like a fast: You go without something that you want for a while, like food, and during those times of desire, you learn that God can sustain you even without that thing. You don’t have to ever give up asking for marriage, but just know that you won’t ever need it to be a complete person.
I urge you to reject the marriage = completion myth, which is a lot easier said than done because it is so ingrained in our culture. It’s the theme of our favorite movies; it saturates the lyrics of our favorite songs. Taylor Swift, for instance, sings,
I don’t wanna look at anything else now that I saw you
I don’t wanna think of anything else now that I thought of you
I’ve been sleeping so long in a 20-year dark night
And now I see daylight,
I only see daylight
Without romantic love, life is a 20-year dark night. But with you in my life, ah, the sun has risen! There’s daylight, hope, joy.
Romance makes us feel like it can keep these promises. But it doesn’t. The butterflies eventually fade. Even the best marriages don’t fulfill what is lacking at our deepest core. So we have to reject the myth. Jesus is the daylight you’re looking for. Only he can lead you out of your 20-year, or 40-year, or eternity of darkness.
When Veronica and I got married, we were trying to figure out what song to use for our first dance, and we both loved “There’s No Way” by Alabama. But I just couldn’t bring myself to make that our first dance. Maybe I took myself too seriously back then, but I knew the chorus was patently untrue: “There’s no way I could make it without you; there’s no way that I’d even try; if I had to survive without you in my life, I know I wouldn’t last a day; oh, baby, there’s no way.”
It’s a sweet song, and, I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to live any more days in my life without Veronica. I still don’t want to imagine any version of life without her. But ultimately, the words of that song are not true for us. As hard as it would be, I could make it without her, and she could make it without me. And that’s not because we are only half-committed to each other. No, we’re all in. But we’d make it because Jesus is our Savior, our daylight, our completion—and he’s a Savior who promised he’d never leave us or forsake us, and one who proved that not even the grave could take away his presence from us.
So instead, we opted for “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It.” (Just kidding.)
God can enable you to live a happy and fulfilled life without marriage or biological family. Remember, the most joy-filled, love-filled Man ever to walk the face of the earth lived without many of the relationships we desire. But God does give us companionship and offspring in the here and now, in eternal form, through the church. Rebecca McLaughlin says, “You won’t wither without sex; you will wither without friend and family connection.” The earthly connections we all desire were meant to be fulfilled in God’s family, the church.
