A Conversation About Singleness

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Soojin Park
I think what you’re implying subconsciously is that marriage is this gift that you are given if you are completely content in your singleness, right? Which you’re also implying singleness alone is not a gift.

Anna Meade Harris
Partly also the way we we think about marriage in in the church that it is you really reach Christian maturity when you graduate to the marriages, or whatever it is. And we don’t really have this framework for understanding that marriage is not the goal of the Christian life.

Heather Ferrell
Welcome to the gospel coalition podcast, equipping the next generation of believers, pastors and church leaders to shape life and ministry around the gospel. On today’s episode, you’ll hear a conversation about singleness with Soojin Park, Lydia Brownback and Anna Meade Harris.

Anna Meade Harris
I’m Anna and I became a widow in 2010 when my husband passed away after cancer, and our sons at that time were 912, and 13 years old, and so that means that they’re all grown now when you’re listening to this podcast, but I was so I was single in The Church for 13 and a half years, and actually got married last month. So that’s a that’s a new development, but yeah, there, there was, I will say it was intense. Being a single parent is a very intense experience, raising children on your own without a spouse, and the church that we went to was very loving, warm. They paid particular attention to us. I was the only single mother in the church, and it’s a church of about 250 on a typical Sunday. So so if that tells you anything, it is hard to be a single parent in the church, because the church can be a very married place, and as kind and loving as everyone was, we still felt different in the church, and the pastor, and The youth pastor in particular, did an amazing job of looking out for us, being aware of our circumstances, and meeting needs where they could they drew close and got to know us really well. And there were some families also in that, in that congregation, that just really got to know my kids really well. I think one of the best things you can do to support a single parent is to get their know to know their kids really well and to love them and mentor them and, you know, stick by their side through all the ups and downs of teenager years. So so it was both beautiful to see the church in operation, the body of Christ, behaving like the body of Christ, and also really painful for some of the ways that we didn’t fit in. And I’m sure we’ll, we’ll get into that.

Soojin Park
Thank you. Anna Lydia, how

Lydia Brownback
about you? You talk about seasons. I have always been single, so it has been a my my one season, but in that, I’ve noticed a difference each decade of what that looks like. So I think in its most difficult, the hardest season of being single was my 20s, because that’s when everybody’s pairing off, settling down, and there’s a bit of panic that comes in, why am I being left behind? And for whatever reason, some some go through it because they’ve never had an opportunity. In my case, I had some opportunities to be married, and it just ended up not being an ideal fit. So as I’m entering my 30s, still single, and watching my friends pair off, there was, there was some loneliness to that. And then the season of being in my 30s and single, there was the additional challenge of a new kind of panic, which is, am I going to be able to have children so and just, I think once I hit 40, it became actually easier to be single. And instead of it becoming worse, it was almost like by that point, you’ve kind of come into your own. You’re not married, so you’ve you’ve gone out, and you’ve built a life, and you’re finding out who you are without just you recognize your identity isn’t going to be wrapped up in that and, and nor should it whether you’re married or single, and and so it’s and you’ve kind of made your peace with the fact that it might not be the case, at least having a family of your own. So the panic stops, and you start to say, Okay, if not marriage, then what? And you start to look at other things. So I did personally find that season to be a turning point about 40, and then ever since 5060 it’s, it’s, it’s easier ever. 30 every year. So and when you see how the Lord uses it,

Soojin Park
yeah, as actually, when I was listening to you, I resonate with some of that, because I’m in my I’m entering, like, my mid 30s and still unmarried. And I think actually, for me in my 20s, it didn’t really hit me. I think I was just so busy doing a lot of things. I want to I got to go to seminary, got to try different jobs. I loved it. And then it wasn’t until I entered my 30s where I felt a lot of that difficulty of, wait a minute, everyone around me is married. Everyone at church is married. The church seems very designed for married people. Where do I fit in? And the first few years of my 30s actually was really unexpectedly difficult, I think because of that, I think not necessarily wanting to be married, but feeling so out of place I don’t not knowing where I fit in. So yeah, I think singleness for me has been, in some ways, a really amazing and beautiful thing, where I just got to experience so much and grow so much, but also entering my 30s, it became almost a really difficult thing where I felt that I had to relearn, like, where do I fit in, in the church, in my community as an unmarried, older adult? Yeah, so thank you all for sharing. So I’m sure we all have so many stories to share, and we all have different experiences. And I love that we all have slightly different perspectives about singleness, too. But, you know, singleness is a topic where we do talk about it in the church, you know, I’m sure all of us have heard some kind of sermon about singleness, or maybe another podcast about singleness. But I also think a lot of times when Christians talk about singleness, even with the best intentions, sometimes the way we explain it, or the way we talk about it is unhelpful. And I also think there’s a lot of misconceptions about singleness in the church. What are some of those things that you have noticed in your own churches, or just as you’re doing ministry?

Lydia Brownback
Where do we start?

Anna Meade Harris
Oh, you know, I think one thing that comes to mind is that we don’t have as much responsibility.

Soojin Park
We have a lot of time. We

Anna Meade Harris
have all this time and and, you know, in my case, I had kids, and then there are also have elderly parents, and so I actually had a lot of people I was responsible for and to and no one to share that with. So so yeah, I still had a lot of people who were looking to me, and I didn’t have a lot of free time because of that. Glad to have them, but it’s so true,

Lydia Brownback
isn’t it? And what I’ve learned to say to that question you have or that that misconception you have more time than others, it’s no but we do, as single people, have more control over our use of time, yes, so it’s the same that that’s a given. So I think about how I can go home at five in the afternoon and read a book, and I don’t have to prepare meals for a family, so, so it’s the same time, but it’s what I’m doing with it. There is also the misconception that in the church, that we should be we would want to be naturally, a great fit for, say, children’s ministry. And there’s an assumption that if we don’t have our own children, then we must. Here’s an outlet for that. And then there can be that can be guilt inducing if you don’t want to get involved in the nursery and the Children’s so there’s a there’s a conception that misconception that single women want to be plugged into that, and some do, and for many it can be a wonderful opportunity. But it doesn’t mean, because you’re single, that that is the place to plug in the single women in your church. Yeah, it’s not always. So don’t. And I think sometimes they can be made to feel guilty if they don’t want to do that. And

Soojin Park
I also, I think just kind of building off of that, the kind of notion that, you know, the single people are the most faithful people in the church. Or they should be the most faithful because they should be serving the most Partially, because they have the most time, right, or that that is their particular calling, is, instead of being married and having a family, they’re called to just serve the church with all their time Right. Which is, I think, interesting, because then it kind of takes away that responsibility and calling of serving the church together with all people, whether they’re married or not. Yes, that,

Lydia Brownback
and that’s it. That is another that builds right into the fact that when I think when churches break out into demographic groups, and you have your you know, 40 plus something singles group, and you’re 20 to 30 singles group, and you have just a single moms group, and they, you know those, those can be wonderful ways to come into a church, but when they become sort of a parachurch within a church, you’re not getting incorporated into the larger body. And then they lose. Is what they were really meant to be. They’re supposed to incorporate you into the church, so you become part of a church family as a single woman, as a single mother. And I do, I have noticed over the years that there are, there is a lot available for single people, but for for single mothers, that’s that’s a very hard demographic, and and having grown up with a single mother. In that case, there was the she was left by my dad, her husband. So there was the shame of the stigma of feeling divorced in the church, which was another whole issue. So, you know, it’s, it’s pegging people when they come in for their singleness and the misconception that they’re single because something went wrong, yeah, and that’s that

Soojin Park
wasn’t part of their plan, right, right, right.

Anna Meade Harris
I think something that happens along with that can be that, like, as a woman, you can kind of get siloed off to, well, they’re just, they do women’s ministry things and and they are invited to the women’s ministry events and and that is great and wonderful, but I found it really hard to connect with men in my church sometimes. And as a mother raising three boys, I really needed the wisdom of the men in the church, not just the pastor, but other men who were raising teenage boys, and in in my case, and and I was also, I really believe that men and women need to study the Bible together. They need to hear each other’s perspectives on what the scripture says. And if we have, if we’re only allowing single women to go to women’s studies, and they’re not ever studying with couples or people of various ages. They’re just with their little group. Then they just miss out a lot on the body

Soojin Park
of Christ. Yeah, they do. I think one thing that comes to mind as we’re talking is, I hear a lot again, people with the best intentions. I think sometimes when they speak to sing, especially younger singles who are desiring to be married, they they kind of throw out the well, just be content with your singleness, and God will grant you. God will gift you the you know, marriage in the future. And it’s on the surface, it sounds biblical, but what I think, what you’re implying subconsciously, is that marriage is this gift that you are given if you are completely content in your singleness, right, which you’re also implying singleness alone is not a gift, right? That it’s this thing you have to endure with contentment to get to marriage.

Lydia Brownback
But if you reach a certain spiritual plateau, then it will come as sort of not a reward, but almost like where did that? I wonder where that ever started, because it’s true and it’s taught, if you just get contented here, then God will do this. And I you try to, I don’t even know where that came from, but yeah, that’s a common misconception. Yes.

Soojin Park
And I think, I think for a lot of younger women, particularly who may be young in their faith too. It could be really discouraging, because if they’re not getting married, they could feel like they’re doing something wrong, like they’re not Christian enough, they’re not content enough in the Lord, and so they may almost feel like their singleness is a punishment, which, yes, you know, is not the point at all. No, it’s partly

Anna Meade Harris
also the way we we think about marriage in in the church, that it is what you really reach Christian maturity when you graduate to the marriages, or whatever it is and and, you know, we don’t really have this framework for understanding that that Marriage is not the goal of the Christian life?

Lydia Brownback
Yeah, I think part of that comes into play because it is God’s normal ordering, and marriage is and I’d say to people, I’m the exception. People who are never will be married. Most people will be and and yet, you know, this is people ask me, How do you know you were called to be single? And I say, if I get to the end of my life and I never get married, I’ll know I was called to be single. It’s a great answer, you know, and that’s that’s it. So it is. It’s kind of that idea of something must be wrong if this person’s single. So, and what they don’t realize about the contentment aspect is that if they are not contented single, they won’t be married either. So it’s not suddenly like you have to get contented single. I think maybe that’s where that came from. Maybe because it’s a contentment issue period. And they’re saying, they’re trying to communicate that matters whether you’re single or married,

Soojin Park
yeah. And I think even sometimes, underlying those kind of comments is this assumption that everyone who’s single is dying to be married, right? I sometimes get you know. I remember talking to a friend about how sometimes you know, because I think you could be content in your singleness and still desire marriage because it is part of God’s design, and not be totally upset and discontent in your singleness. But I remember my friend and I were sharing, sometimes it’s. Hard to bring that up at church as like a prayer request, because then people look at you like almost pitying you, like you’re just unhappy in your singleness, right? And so I almost think there’s this assumption that if someone desires marriage, it’s because they’re just unhappy being single, but you can actually have both. You could be happy single and content single, and yet still desire marriage in the future and be open to that. But I think sometimes we don’t allow that to co exist. Do you guys see that the

Lydia Brownback
pity thing you mentioned that is huge. So, so, you know, I’ve heard pastors praying for the single people in the church in the same breath they pray for the sick and the dying, and it’s like but some of that comes from the fact that that we will be viewed with what we project. So if we project that, we are to be pitied, if we walk around joyless and discontented, then yeah, we’re going to be pitied, and they’re going to pin that on our singleness. But there are, there are women I know who are who think that marriage is going to solve all their problems. They’re single, and they think marriage will solve all their problems. Solve all their problems, and if they just had a husband, then problem free life. And they they don’t realize that they’re giving that off. And that’s how they live. It’s how they think. So that’s how they’re going to be treated back so we can commute. We can avoid the pity if we give off that there’s benefits and advantages to this season, yes, and and they can look at that and say, Wow, that’s pretty great. What a contribution to the church that is. Yeah, you know

Anna Meade Harris
the verse in Psalm 16, the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places when I was newly widowed and I ran across that. I can’t remember what verse number it is, but I had to lament. You know, this does not feel like a pleasant place. And it was that God kept drawing me back to that psalm over and over again, and until I realized at about year 10 of widowhood, like, wow, okay, this isn’t what I would have chosen this is not, you know, this was not my plan, but there has been a lot of beauty in the ashes, and there are a lot of gifts in my singleness and the boundary lines have fallen in pleasant places. That’s not to say that they’re perfect. They’re not going to be this side of heaven, but, but it’s it was God was really kind with that particular verse to evolve me through my understanding of the boundary lines and and yeah, and teach me that I could be content and still long yes for something different,

Soojin Park
yes. So on the flip side, then, because we’ve talked a lot about, what are some unhealthy ways to talk about it? What are some of the healthy ways that we as Christians can talk about singleness? What’s some good language that we could equip our listeners with?

Lydia Brownback
It’s a great question. You want to start us off.

Anna Meade Harris
You know, one thing that comes to mind for me, this may this may sound morbid. We’re all going to be single in heaven, and that is actually the state that we’re going to and it is good, and we will be, you know, married to Christ and Christ alone. And that’s a a weird thing to wrap your mind around when you live in a world that you know prizes marriage the way that we do and and I admit, when my husband died, it was a real grief to me to think that I wouldn’t be married to him anymore. But it it also is teaching my heart to long for my true bridegroom, and I need to do that whether I’m I need to learn that and and yearn for Jesus that whether I’m married or not. And so it actually, it’s actually the true state of of the Christian

Lydia Brownback
is the single life that’s that’s great. And you think about how that shows up in Scripture, and how it’s mirrored from the Old Testament, where Be fruitful and multiply, and God’s family was grown primarily through the reproduction of families and growing a people biologically. And how, in the new in the New Covenant, in the New Testament, we see so much about the King, the multiplication happening spiritually. And the emphasis sort of switches there. So we though, who don’t have children of our own, can have many children spiritually. And so as singles, we can be pouring ourselves into that. So when the Apostle Paul talked about, you know, the advantages of that, and that can get thrown at singles and beaten over the head with it like a club, and it shouldn’t be that it’s actually a beautiful thing. And I think back to when I was in my 20s and really hating being single. I remember telling an elderly relative that death was preferable to singleness, and she laughed at me, and she’d been single a long time, and I thought, why is she laughing? And now I see that that you know, like the pleasant places you’re talking about. How, if we will let the Lord choose for us our life, and if we are willing to embrace his ordering of our life, and I mean, if we have an opportunity to be married and it’s within biblical bounds, great, that’s that’s how you find. But I’m talking about door crashing and trying to force something that God clearly isn’t giving. If we’re willing to walk in the path is he’s unfolding our life before us. We will not be disappointed in what he does, and we will see those pleasant lines.

Soojin Park
And I think building off that idea of growing spiritually, it’s really talking about God’s family, the church, right? And I think that’s a huge thing that I think we’re missing in our churches, is this emphasis of your church as your family. Because I think, you know, our a lot of our churches kind of mirror what we see in society and culture. And our our society is, you know, very focused on the nuclear family. And I think our churches are like that too. All of our programs are designed to mirror the nuclear family. Kind of you going through those stages of life, and so we kind of lose out on the fact that actually the Bible says what’s more important is your family in God, right? That you are bound together by the blood of Christ. You are united together in him. And we are supposed to be raising kids together. We are supposed to be doing life together. And I think the more we miss out on that, the more we think our lives are incomplete if we don’t have our own nuclear family. And I think the less that we actually do life as a family together, the more we’re going to think if I don’t have marriage, I’m missing something big, right? I’m not able to participate in family. Well, actually, no, you have your family here at church.

Lydia Brownback
Yeah, so significant. You say that? I think it’s Psalm 68, eight, where it said God sets the solitary in a home or in families, and that shows us God’s heart, and we’re not meant to do the Christian life alone, even if we’re single. And it’s just a matter of, you know, are we willing for that to be something besides a husband, two and a half kids, and a golden doodle, you know? I mean, are we? Are we willing for it to be the way God’s designed? He it is always his will for us to be in the church and to have that as a family? And I’d say, if our first single people, if they don’t have that, it’s worth changing your life to get it, yeah,

Soojin Park
and I would say, I love that you kind of brought that imagery. Because, you know, in some ways, that’s like the American dream, right? Is you have your two kids, a dog, pick a fence, a beautiful home, but I almost feel like that’s seeped into the church, to the American church, that that’s become an idol for us, and that’s become the image of what a faithful Christian life looks like. And I think the more that our pastors on the pulpit, our leaders at our churches. You know our teachers in Sunday school, the more we emphasize actually in the we this is what family looks like. We look different, we sound different. Life is messy together. I feel like that kind of language is what honestly, it helps us to forget this, this problem that doesn’t actually exist with singleness, right? It takes away the tension and the stress and the shame about being single that so what are some ways that you guys have actually experienced in your own lives, people in your church coming together and supporting you as you go through your singleness, and not only you being supported, but they’re leaning on you too to support them as a family together. So what are some ways that you’ve really seen churches do this well together, where they’re integrating you as a single into the life of the church

Lydia Brownback
in terms of being useful. I think about how as a single person finding finding the ways, not as a single but as a woman, as a person. How has God equipped me to love others, to serve in the church, and then cultivating those gifts and using them, and then finding that I have a place I’m wanted and sought for that not has nothing to do with my marital status. It has to do with my individuality and how God’s equipped me and every everyone can can do that. I love that.

Anna Meade Harris
Oh yeah. I mean, I’ve just experienced church as family in the most incredible ways. And in particular, there were a couple of families in our church where, because I was raising boys, the husband with the buy in of the wife and the kids, spent a lot of time with my children. There was a man who came every Friday and picked up my youngest and took him out to breakfast. He did that starting in third grade, and that continued through junior high. And when he got to high school, he they went out on Monday nights. And when that son there was a the Bible club. The local Bible club was always taught by one of the dads, and there was no dad in my son’s grade that would step up. And. He wasn’t my son’s dad, but he stepped up. And when my son graduated from college last weekend, he and his wife were there, and for scheduling reasons, they ended up moving him out of his dorm room. And I think what’s so strike like that is how a family acts like they’re there for the moments that really matter. And you know, these, these two dads in particular, they were there for summer jobs. They were there when I had a son that ran away. They were there with the flat tire. They could call on these men who weren’t trying to be dad, but as if they were a father. And it was such an incredible picture to me of the body, but my children got to see this is how a godly man behaves. This is how the church operates as family. You know, you go to people you’re not related to, you go to their house on Christmas Eve. It doesn’t matter that you’re not blood Ken, you’re welcome. And it has really taught my children that that they were welcome in spite of the fact that they didn’t have a dad, that they mattered to these other men, like deeply, deeply mattered. And yeah, they felt seen, and they were seen and known. And it has radically impacted my kids lives, and, of course, mine, because I wasn’t alone in it, I could call and say, you know, this one’s acting up. What do I do? Well, I’m gonna give him a summer job, and he’s gonna be really busy. Yeah, it

Soojin Park
was that is really beautiful, tearing up, listening to your story. It’s,

Anna Meade Harris
it’s a church really. I mean, it’s church as family could be a cliche, but

Lydia Brownback
it No, it’s not. Anyone who’s lived it and experienced it knows. And this is Psalm 68 eight. God sets the solidarity of him, and you could see his heart and that he wants that, yes, for everyone, every one of his everyone. And it’s there if we will, if we will embrace that as family, if we are willing for that to be family.

Anna Meade Harris
And can I say too that married parents need help and support from other parents and widows. Need help and support from teenagers and yeah, we, we all throughout the church, need each other. It’s not just the singles who need churches, that’s right. It is. It’s all of us. Yeah,

Soojin Park
I think just as I’m listening to you and just your last comment about how we all need each other, I think some of the times that I feel most loved as a single is when married couples, like older married couples who have children, who they just invite me over to do dinner, no, like we’re not, you know, cleaning the house for you. You’re just part of our family, and you’re gonna have dinner with us, right? Because it’s not this big deal, because family is casual and family is you walk in when you ever you can, and you have dinner together. And so these kind of seemingly mundane times together with other families in our church, I think, yeah, I feel so loved, and I think even in just small ways, of the kind of questions they ask me, right? Because I think it’s really easy to kind of like you said, beat people over the head with, Hey, your singleness is a gift. Your singleness is a gift, right? You should enjoy that, but it’s one thing to say that, but I think it’s really another thing to actually celebrate the life of a single and I think that really shows in the kind of questions you ask and the interests you take in the life of a single, right? So I think for me, when older married individuals ask me not Are you, are you getting married anytime soon? You know, what are the plans for that? Instead of those questions they ask me, like, when I was in seminary, Hey, how are your studies going? Or, how is ministry? You know, how’s your dog? You know, how’s your family, right? Like they take interest in my life outside from Are you going to be married? Because that’s kind of an easy question to ask, but I think that shows me that what you’re most concerned about is not actually celebrating my life as just me as an individual, but you just want to see me kind of go through these stages right, which, again, I don’t think people have bad intentions, but it’s just a natural thing that happens in our churches. And so, yeah, I think for me, it’s been the little things that have really been helpful for me, you know, we’ve talked about, kind of how others can use helpful language, but I think it’s important for us to be reflective, you know, and look inside of us too. And I know, you know, for many of us, singles, singleness is hard, and there are a lot of temptations. And. Trials that we can go through and pitfalls that singles can fall into. And so what are some of those pitfalls and singles can fall into, and how would you encourage singles out there to not fall into those things? Wow,

Lydia Brownback
some of the pitfalls I would think around holiday time can be especially a challenge and to kind of become woe is me around the holidays. So So I think one year, I was set into a bit of a tailspin when it was like the day before Thanksgiving, someone in church said, Hey, would you like to join our if you have nowhere to be tomorrow, would you like to join our family? I’m thinking, Okay, well, it’s the day before the holiday, and you’re assuming that I have not thought about it until today. And you know, it was a pity invite, and it just it can launch you in all kinds of bad directions. And I thought about that later. And I think what would be encouraging is to say, we’d love to know it last minute. We’d love to have you come because you bake this spectacular cookie, and we’d love to have you come and bring that cookie, because then you feel like you’re wanted for something. You’re being a little in a little way, being a part of their family, and not just being asked last minute. Oh my gosh, I ran into her, and she might be alone tomorrow. So I think so the holidays can be an especially challenging, difficult time, and even even within a church. And so it’s almost plan ahead for that and form a What are you going to do? And I think sometimes you’re in a church and you have other singles you can do holidays with, but in other cases, you are on your own with that. So those are especially difficult times, and it’s something that we need to think about, how to address, what to do. And that’s my first thought, right off the top of my head.

Soojin Park
I think it’s so wise just to think ahead, knowing that you might feel those emotions right,

Lydia Brownback
like, what are your areas? And it may not be holidays for some, it might be something else. There’s certain triggers for certain single people, how are you going to spiritually prepare for that? What if you do end up alone on a holiday? What if whatever your trigger is that’s going to send you down? How can you know yourself, know your trigger and prepare spiritually for how you’re going to handle it? Yeah,

Anna Meade Harris
that’s really good for single parents. Summer is so long, it’s just, and that sounds it’s not a trigger, and then it’s a three month trigger, but it just gets really long, and to the extent that I love what you said about preparing spiritually, that’s that’s just just knowing this is going to be kind of a tough season, and you’ve got the loss of routine with the school it it gets really expensive, really fast. You have to go to work, but then you’ve got to figure out camps for your kids to go to, and what are you going to do, and who’s going to take them there. And, you know, the logistics can get really nutty. So I would just throw that in there. That summer is a is a really hard thing. I would say for me, honestly, I have a lot of pride, and I just don’t think that I knew how much pride I had, and I didn’t want to be invited to someone else’s family gathering when I was not biological family, because I wanted my own. I’m just, I’ll just say it. I’ll just, and I did not want to ask for help. I remember, not long after my husband died, my son opened the window to his room, and a bat flew in, and I had I was the only person to get the bat out. You know, you know, you can’t get your 12 year old to get the bat out, so I’m doing battle with the bat, and oh my gosh, I felt so angry and so sorry for myself. And so you know it, you’re on, and you’re always on, and just going to God with that, and saying, You got to help me not be so angry about this, or you got to help me not feel sorry for myself, or show me who to ask for help. And I but what I really realized that if I held on to those self pity, that anger and especially that pride, then I was going to deprive my kids of the support that they could have. And so ask for help, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I can cry uncle really quick and say, I need help with this. And and you almost always find that, you know, somebody wants to help, not always, and then you have to deal with it, but, but, yeah, so can

Lydia Brownback
I mention one more? Can we talk about the sexuality thing for a second? I think that there’s that today in our culture and and just everywhere we go, and even in some evangelical realms, we hear that that something is wrong if you don’t have. Sexual relationship, and that you are, you are not complete, that you can’t be complete, and and that’s such a that’s such a myth, and they, they think that it’s utter deprivation, and it that’s just, that’s just taught, it’s in it’s So everywhere we go. And I think about something a friend of mine said years ago, that you can go 40 days without food and four days without water and four minutes without oxygen, but you can go a lifetime without sex and you can still, that is, you know, and that’s that’s something that we need to counter. That’s a huge challenge today, is to think that you’re incomplete, unless you have a sexual relationship that’s

Soojin Park
so good. Thanks for bringing that up. And I think another kind of maybe obvious temptation is comparison, right? Comparing yourself to others who are married, who have children, and thinking, why don’t I have that? And almost, I think that pride gets in the way. Where you say, I know I’m not going to compare myself, you know, or I don’t need that, but then you find yourself longing for that too, and it’s so hard not to fall into that pitfall of temptation. And I also think kind of this language around I feel like there’s a high emphasis on motherhood and being a wife as a calling, which I agree. But I think sometimes in our circles there can it trumps your primary calling as a Christian, right? And then the fact that, like being a wife and a mother is a means by which you carry out that primary calling of being a Christ follower, right? And I think because we forget that, I think the temptation we fall into is I’m severely missing out on some way to be a faithful Christian because I’m not a mother, yeah? I think that’s a really big temptation, huge, yeah. So I do want to end on a positive note, right? And then encouraging note. And so to our listeners out there, who may be single, you know, who may be wrestling with singleness that looks very different in their lives. What encouragement would you give to them? What message of hope?

Anna Meade Harris
Um, to me, it’s always that God’s grace is sufficient. He’s sufficient. He is sufficient in my loneliness. He’s sufficient against those temptations. He is sufficient to bring me what I need, whether that be another person, or bring that elusive contentment. I think that’s sort of my overwhelming takeaway. Is that God can from from my season of singleness. Is that God can be so much more for me than I thought. He is so much more for me than I than I thought. And, yeah, he comes closer than I ever knew, and his presence really is satisfying in a way that I didn’t even dare to think about before. It’s

Lydia Brownback
beautiful. I would say, just remember that if you’re not married today, God has something else for you to do, and it doesn’t. It’s not marriage or nothing. And deliberately, purposefully, God always has something for us to do. And if it’s not to be raising a family, if it’s not to be your calling, if that’s not where the majority of your hours go, it’s to go somewhere else. And God, God has that mapped out for you. So I think about when my one of my dating relationships fell apart. I remember saying, Lord, if not marriage now, then what? And and so with a spirit of not even expectation, but expectancy. The difference there it was to, it was to kind of say, keep an eye out. And doors started to open that maybe had been opening before that I just wasn’t looking for, because I was so looking on just getting married. And I think it’s saying, all right, if not that, then what and I could suddenly see and step into what God has. Because since he has something, the doors will open as we step toward it. I think sometimes what stops us is just a willingness for it to be something else. And if we can just be, have that spirit of expectancy with our eyes on the Lord, He will show us.

Soojin Park
I think one thing I want to encourage everyone with is just having an eternal perspective. I know there are some listeners who you know for a variety of reasons, and I thinking particularly about some of us who long to be married, but it’s just not working out right. It can be a really painful thing. And I think sometimes this can be kind of like a throwaway answer, but I want us to hold on to it, remember it’s not a throwaway answer in that this life is so short. Yeah, what you feel like you are missing out on in this life, that pain is real. I don’t want to dismiss it, but it is so short in comparison to eternity that we’re going to. Have single, married to our Savior, and we’re gonna be in eternal bliss and joy and contentment, and we have that to look forward to, right? And so even if that means we just have to remind ourselves of that each day and cling on to that, I just hope that will be a source of like hope and strength for those of us listening who are struggling with this season, Anna and Lydia. Thank you so much for today’s conversation. I was so encouraged, and I’m so excited for this to go out into the world so that others will be encouraged and will learn from this.

Heather Ferrell
Thanks for listening to today’s episode of the gospel coalition podcast, check out more gospel centered resources at the gospel coalition.org