One of the many temptations for the unmarried woman is to pretend to be happy. Now before you throw something, let me explain. I think that unmarried women should be happy, of course, and I know many who are. Contentment is required of us all, and the unmarried woman has much to be thankful for.

But here is the temptation: if you are struggling with contentment and longing to be married, it is easy to want to hide it from everyone else. If you admit that you want to be married, you may think you are admitting a weakness or a fault. Or you might not want to seem like a marriage nerd, always on the lookout for “him.” So you pretend to be doing fine when in fact you are not doing fine. You may even convince yourself (while dogmatically telling others) that you don’t really want marriage right now, that you’re not interested in a relationship because you don’t have the time. But we all know that if God sent the right man along now, you would happily drop everything in a heartbeat.

Imagine a conversation with a sweet Christian woman who is in this kind of jam. You run into her and ask how she is doing. She then falls all over herself telling you how much she loves her job, how busy she is, how much traveling she is doing, how she really doesn’t have any time (or need) for a social life. Or she tells you about her classes, when she’ll have her degree, and all the wonderful job possibilities waiting out there for her.  Now I’m certainly not saying that she is lying about all this. Don’t get me wrong here. But I am saying that it is possible that this is just all a very hollow cover to make you think she is happy, happy, happy when she would really like to cry and scream and say she hates all this. She might really want to tell you that she is miserable, frustrated, and lonely traveling by herself, that she wishes she could be doing something that would give her more fulfillment and make her feel more a part of the body of Christ. But this, she thinks, would be admitting defeat, and so she convinces herself that her career is all she wants after all.

Part of the way to freedom for women in this bind is to help them see, first of all, that it is okay to want to be married. In fact, it is not just okay, it is good. Of course there is nothing in the world wrong with wanting to be married. It is only wrong to be miserable or bitter about it. And wanting to be married does not equal discontent. Many women are feeling a false guilt about this. It goes something like this: “If I were truly godly, I wouldn’t want to be married. I would be happy to be unmarried for the rest of my life. But I do long to be married, therefore I am not rejoicing in the Lord, and therefore I am guilty of sin.” But you can confess false guilt all day long and never feel forgiven. God forgives real sin not our imagined sin. Continue reading ‘Don’t Pretend to be Happy’