Myths Single Women Believe

Since November, my Home Community has been meeting once a month with the men and women separated into two groups. My husband meets with guys to talk about guy issues and I have been leading the women in a discussion on sexuality (the topic was decided long before the Women's Forums were initiated).

Following the second forum on sexuality, we had a lively discussion and I received some encouraging feedback. It worked out that our next split HC meeting was scheduled right after the second panel session. As I listened to the questions posed that evening, I realized that more time needed to be devoted to the plight of the singles, especially those who desired to honor God with their purity yet struggled to find a husband or wondered how to prepare for marriage.



In our HC, I presented 7 myths single women believe from an article I found on that subject. It was such a profitable discussion that I felt it was worthy of sharing with the larger Imago Dei community of women. So I asked Kristen Mira to write an article on these myths from her perspective as a single woman in her mid-30's who desires marriage. The following is her article. I hope you not only will enjoy it but that you will respond to it and share your own myths.

The Single’s Life
by Kristen Mira

Somewhere in my 20’s I came up with the idea that I needed to learn how to take care of a plant before I could get married. Not being much of a plant person, I was thrilled the day I finally revived my roommate’s dying Hibiscus plant so that the leaves were a deep, shiny green and its first pink flower bloomed as the glory of our apartment. I believed I was one step closer to marriage.

I thought that if I proved myself by taking care of a plant then I could move on to taking care of a cat and if I could take care of a cat then I could take responsibility with a husband, and if I could take responsibility with a husband, I would be ready to take care of our kids. It was a logical progression in my mind.

The only problem was I started mastering plants and I didn’t want a cat and I’m still not married.

Ridiculous as my thinking may sound I’ve found that I’m not alone in the myths I believe about singleness. Recently in our home community many singles resonated with our discussion about myths singles often believe. For whatever reason the media, our families, the church, our friends and ourselves develop views and ideas about singleness that can tug us away from the centering truth about God’s love for us.

Around age 26 I visited my college friend two years after her wedding. As we sat around in her kitchen eating breakfast I admired her shiny red blender and her 5-setting coffee grinder. “These were gifts from our wedding,” she explained after I commented how far along she had come from our college days of drinking out of mismatched jars. I sat there feeling jealous that my friend had “started her life”. Here she was married with grown up things. Somewhere along the way I concluded that my life hadn’t officially begun because no ceremony recognized my adulthood by sending me off with family sized crock pots or fondue sets.

The thing is Betty Crocker commercials and Barbie doll play sets shaped my ideas about “life” more than the Lifegiver Himself. While I was looking for life in rites of passage, God was portraying a noble wife, full of His life, who began constructive business pursuits and service to the needy (Prov. 31). Surely this wife didn’t magically poof into a praiseworthy woman on their wedding night. As Jesus urged me to find real life in knowing him I started seeking out the person He had created me to be. I realized I wouldn’t need a husband to buy a house in order to enjoy serving people with hospitality or to create a Christ centered home to bless other roommates, I would just go ahead and do it.

Later on I was talking with another single friend who told me she had been in a coffee shop and observed all the couples. “I don’t get it,” she huffed, “how do all these couples get together?” I told her that I had been wondering the same thing. We talked about how all these women were in relationships and they didn’t even look like supermodels. “How did they meet each other? How do they make the relationship work?” In some ways it was easy to conclude that something was wrong with me. Or that perhaps there was something I needed to work on before God would bring someone into my life.

Then I remembered about the couple I met in church who told me they met each other during a drug deal and I considered that maybe God doesn’t wait until we’re perfect to bring a spouse into our lives. According to God there is nothing intrinsically wrong with my person. He declares that I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. But I came to see that if I view myself as “needs fixing” or “not yet ready” to be loved then maybe some guys are seeing me that way too.

While it’s easy to conclude when my grandma asks me for the fortieth time if I’ve met any nice fellas at dances lately that something is wrong with me if I’m not married, it’s also easy to believe I’m a bit better than everyone else because I’m on my own. I have given off the impression that I don’t need marriage because I have my relationship with God to fulfill all my needs. I have felt proud about heading off on spiritual retreats to beautiful places by myself, only to feel the sting of loneliness even more. Still God has met me in my justified independence and gently guided me back towards trusting Him by in a variety of relationships.

The thing is most of us like formulas. So it’s easy as a single in a couple’s culture to fall into myths about our single state. We want to know how to fix what’s wrong, we want to know how to become satisfied, we want to know what steps to take to please God (or to get what we want from Him). In the time of waiting before marriage we’d much rather justify our singleness with family dysfunction or thinking we’re better off or noncommittal men or God’s need for our service or lack of a neon sign, which all of these could actually play a role. But I’ve determined to stop figuring it out and not miss all of the real life that’s right in front of me.

Did I tell you I was planning to get a cat this weekend? But don’t worry I haven’t set my wedding date yet.