I am what would be considered “slightly older” and have never been married. I definitely did not plan it that way. I planned on being married a long time ago and having children and grandchildren. Life did not turn out that way for me, but I am actually not bitter. Anyone else out there like this?
I have never questioned whether I should not have married one of the guys I dated, or some other man who showed me interest. Like Adam might have thought when he started naming all the animals in Garden of Eden and realized that none of them corresponded to him, I thought, “I don’t belong with any of these.”
It doesn’t bother me that I don’t have children or grandchildren. I have been told that I would have made a good mother, but at this point, I will never know. If my future husband brings children and grandchildren, that will be close enough for me. In fact, if he wants kids, my marriage covenant come with a BYOC—Bring Your Own Children—clause.
I have wondered how I will grow old alone when most of my friends are also old and have passed away, or they are in the care of their children and grandchildren. How long will I be able to live independently? Who will be around to put me in a place if I need to go? Though I have no dependents, I suppose I should update my will and power of attorney and handle those questions now.
Who’s going to paint my toenails for free? Who will drive me around when I’m too senile 
to drive? Should I be planning now to be that little old lady so poignantly featured in the poem, Warning (When I Am Old, I Shall Wear Purple)?
I have never bought a house. I don’t think I ever made enough money to buy a house, but I will never know because I never thought about buying one. I was planning to be a missionary for many years and didn’t think I should have bought a house. I spent a lifetime getting ready and not going. I wonder what else I spent a lifetime getting ready for and not doing. Marriage?
I did finally acquire the graduate degree late in life that I should have gotten long ago. My life now would have been drastically different if I had not added an extra degree and minor during undergraduate (which had nothing to do with my primary degree) and gotten my graduate degree straight out of undergrad.
There is nothing I can do about that now. The Lord knows my journey and all that I went through just to be where I am at right this minute. I try never to live in regret. That’s a good way to let the enemy hammer you into incessant guilt, depression, and inertia. No way am I living with that. Anyone else living free—or getting free—from all that garbage?I try never to live in regret. That’s a good way to let the enemy hammer you into incessant guilt, depression, and inertia. No way am I living with that. Click To Tweet
I don’t think I’ve been called to a life of singleness, but I won’t discount it, either. Those are the kinds of questions that I consider rhetorical with God: I want to ask, but I don’t know if I’m ready for the answer. I don’t know if He has not made it clear yet or I’m not listening well. Which call am I ignoring?
There are pros and cons both to being single and to being married, and I refuse to assert that one state is better than the other. As a married woman, I could have expected some measure of protection, providence, loyalty, affection, sex, and companionship in life, adventure, disaster, and ministry. Yet most divorced Christians I know reasonably expected to get these and no longer do so.
As an active, single, childless, Christ-centered woman, I like that I’m not accountable to a husband to cook dinner every night, keep the house clean, give a report for expenditures over $50, and work out to keep my body sexy for sex all the time. I get to do whatever I want, whenever I want, as much as I want, but I do much of it alone. It gets old sometimes.
I have learned to hike, travel, go to conferences, attend events, eat out, make financial and spiritual decisions, minister, and engage in spiritual warfare alone because I have to. Though I know I am not technically alone, I am humanly alone. It’s kind of existential in sentiment, except that we are ultimately never alone when we belong to Jesus. Anyone else relate?
I don’t regret not having married. I like being single despite new candidates coming and going through my life every year. Are my standards too high and my vetting unrealistic? Should I have not limited my consideration of a candidate to only those men who were going to go to that same country as I felt called to go to?
I won’t go as far as getting that T-shirt that says, “Yes, I’m single. You’d have to be amazing to change that” because I’m not so amazing myself. I’m kind of ordinary. I won’t be getting that bumper sticker that says, “I don’t play hard to get. I am hard to get” because if I don’t want to keep it, I don’t play. Simple.
I don’t flirt and mess with my brothers’ hearts and use them. That’s defrauding. God hates defrauding (1 Thess. 4:1–8) and I take all my relationships fairly seriously. I am also not an entitled counterfeit princess who demands perks and attention at every turn. I am a true princess and a kingdom warrior who is not afraid of transparency, serving, spiritual conflict, and hard work. Or singleness.
Would I be willing to get married if the Lord called me to it? I’d really have to think about that.
God would have to prepare my heart for it because, after so many years of being single, it’s easier for me to stay single than to interrupt my life with the intrusion of a permanent union. Maybe I’m just being selfish.
It’s clear that being the right person and finding the right person are only half the battle. Forging that new relationship permanently together is the other half. I think I’m ready, but I don’t know. I do realize that, though I am not accountable today to a husband, even if I get married, I will always be accountable to God.
Whether I stay single or get married, I will always be accountable for properly managing all that He has given me and doing what He called me to do. I keep telling others to stay engaged and busy for the kingdom as their active waiting stance. I guess that means I will go back to taking my own advice and staying in God’s game for me as I know it.
PS. If you have been reading through Sarah Koontz’s newest free women’s Bible study, “Wisdom Whispers,” you know that yesterday was Day 22. Yesterday was when you found out that Sarah described wisdom as something I despised as a child, but love as an adult: a rose.
We grew roses when I was a child, as my dad was somewhat of a flower and vegetable garden aficionado. I hated the way roses smelled; I preferred irises, which I thought smelled like oranges. I only started appreciating roses when I started dating my first boyfriend and he got me roses. To learn about my first boyfriend and all that I loved and learned about being in a relationship with him, click here: http://www.singlematters.com/eleven-things-learned-first-love/
