What if all my dreams, hopes, and talents lie in that direction? Can I still be a homemaker if I don’t have a home? What if I love being with children, but I don’t have any of my own? Who can I serve if I don’t have a husband?
If you’re an unmarried young lady raised to be a keeper-at-home or even a single woman now longing for a more traditional role after pursuing the feminist dream, these questions may have passed through your mind at one time or another. After all, the dream to be a wife and mother isn’t one you can just go out and achieve on your own. It’s heavily contingent on one thing and one thing only: having a husband.
It’s tempting to treat “finding” a husband as another item on the “to do” list, in the sense that it’s something you yourself can achieve. I look around and see a number of homeschooled friends who were raised believing that marriage is the ultimate goal and have made no other plans. Marriage is wonderful and worth pursuing, yes. But I fear lest some girls are drawn into marriage merely for the sake of “crossing it off the list.” Marriage is a tough road, and naively entering into a set-apart union that reflects the Messiah and his people should not be done merely as “the next life step.”
Being raised conservatively or courting your future partner does not protect against the possibility of divorce, extramarital affairs, or domestic abuse, as numerous stories have reminded me lately. I hear these stories and realize that even we–the supposed conservative champions of the sanctity of marriage–are guilty of taking marriage too lightly and pursuing it as just another “thing.” Unconsciously, perhaps, we think of it in terms of what we can get. We can’t help but realize that a husband is the first building block on the way to: a title (Mrs.), respect, children, the ability to stay home or homeschool, etc.
But this is not what marriage is about at its core. It is foundationally about love and a picture of Messiah and His bride:
Just as the Messianic Community submits to the Messiah, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
As for husbands, love your wives, just as the Messiah loved the Messianic Community, indeed, gave himself up on its behalf,
in order to set it apart for God, making it clean through immersion in the mikveh, so to speak,
in order to present the Messianic Community to himself as a bride to be proud of, without a spot, wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and without defect.
Ephesians 5:24-27
It becomes clear that we have lost sight of this when I hear stories of affairs, or wives abandoning their husbands, or husbands abandoning their wives. All from godly homeschool conservative families.
I think it is a matter of crucial importance that parents carefully go about the process of instilling beliefs about marriage in their children. Marriage is a gift from God–not a personal achievement. Singleness is also a gift–not the curse that the Believing community treats it as today. Yes, most of us will end up married. Statistics alone will tell you this. But the reality is that there are those of us–even conservative homeschoolers–who will remain single. My hope is that our respect and love of marriage won’t keep us from embracing our unmarried state, however long it lasts. What a pity it would be if longing and pining became an excuse to lackadaisically sit around waiting for future “bliss,” or led to bitterness and resentfulness of God’s plan and timing.
Likewise the woman who is no longer married or the girl who has never been married concerns herself with the Lord’s affairs, with how to be holy both physically and spiritually; but the married woman concerns herself with the world’s affairs, with how to please her husband.
1 Corinthians 7:34
God has given us a plan for our unmarried years. “the girl who has never been married concerns herself with the Lord’s affairs” This verse is very important to me at this point in my life. Serving God in either state–married or unmarried–is always to be our firmly held purpose.
Sure, my talents would make me a good homemaker. But with those same skills, I can serve a host of other people both inside and outside of the Believing community. Yes, I love children, but what can stop me from caring for children when there are mothers in the fellowship who would greatly benefit from the gift of free childcare?
As unmarried women, we are not being hindered or kept back from our complete potential. In fact, we have a great opportunity to pursue serving YHVH-God without many entanglements or demands on our time–an opportunity not to be missed or wasted.
About The Author
Thank you Tiffany for sharing that with us! :D It was a wonderful reminder to me (I’m 24). :) God shared these things with me awhile back…about when I was 16 or so I believe, and He continues to remind me and guide me. It is such a wonderful thought to me now that I can be happy and content with whatever place in this world He has me to be in. :) I am quite happy now blessing my family and I know that He will lead me if I never do get married. I can be happy and be a blessing to those around me, instead of feeling depressed about it. ;)
When I was finding these things out in my highschool years, I started to learn that I needed to have a much closer relationship with my Lord, and spend less time thinking about “someday”. I am happy to say that I HAVE grown closer to Him, and it’s not so hard now to think about not being married. ;) Oh, yes I still desire to have a family of my own someday, but most of all I want to be in His will. If I am in His will, than I am happy and content, no matter where He has me. :) I did not learn this overnight of course…but I asked Him to help me to be content and happy, and He has shown me many of the blessings of being a single young woman serving her Father. :)
Anyway, thank you my dear for sharing your heart with us. :) That was a blessing and a wonderful encouragement to me! :)
Blessings!
~Miss Rachel P.~
P.S – This must be something the Lord wants discussed these days, as I had planned on and felt lead to do a similar topic for the Meditations of His Love group in a couple of weeks. ;) Great minds think alike? :) HeHe!
http://meditationsofhislove.blogspot.com/
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Well said, Tiffany! I have always been uncomfortable with marriage being held up as the fix to all life’s ails, a perfect state of domestic bliss. I think the conservative homeschool community at large could use a good dose of reality on the topic.
Blessings in Messiah,
Kate
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I work at a christian conference center call-in part-time, and so many of the “elders” that I work with continue to give me worldly advice. I’m afraid my reaction to these comments is to get aggravated and upset, and I forget what God has called me to. I can continually use this encouragement as I’ve found in the above article.
I am 25 and feel like I am waiting for my ministry to begin, when in fact, I should be doing a whole lot more ministering now than I have been doing! Thank you for the reminder. I always need to remember to put my future in God’s hands and grow closer and closer to Him. Like Rachel said, if I am close to my Lord, I will be where He wants me to be and I will be fulfilled.
Thank you!
Sunny
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Thanks for this post! It is very, very true that you can’t view marriage as your “end goal” in life :) Daddy always likes to tell us that there are worse things in life than not being married. One of which is being married to the wrong person :)
Here recently I have been wondering what His purpose for my life was. Not that I thought staying at home was “nothing” but I just felt like I should be doing more here at home for and with my family. God has been opening my eyes and showing me that my purpose is to love God and to love others (of course! it seems so simple, but it’s true :) and if I love God, He loves people and doesn’t want any of them to perish, and part of loving Him is telling others about Him! You might wonder what on earth this has to do with getting married, but when your focus is on this, there are times that you don’t even care if you ever do get married! :D I’m not saying that *poof* you have no desire to get married whatsoever, because it comes and goes, but when your focus is on Jesus, He really truly fills you up to overflowing!
Anyways, sorry for the long comment :D Your post just reminded me of what God has been teaching me in this area :)
Thanks again for this post!
Jessica
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I started writing out a comment to this post, but it turned into much more. Brevity isn’t really something I’m good at. I always have to give a preface, otherwise I don’t think people will understand why I’m saying something. The really bad thing is that I always go off on rabbit trails during the preface. I made a blog and posted what I wrote there, but I will leave a very short sum of it on here.
Recently, I have really wanted to find a husband. I don’t really see it happening, but I don’t like my current situation. In short, I just want to experience life under a different covering. I know he would be a head that I’m supposed to submit to, but I would just feel more content submitting to the person that I was created for as their helper.
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Thank you miss Tiffany!
I have also fell in the trap of sitting around, waiting for ‘Mr Right’ I thought my life has no meaning, because I am not married yet. Afterall, that’s what the world expects nowadays – get married, have children, be a successful careerwoman…
Thank you so much for reminding me through scripture that my life do have purpose and that is to keep myself busy with the Lord’s affairs. I am ashamed to say that I have not been doing much of that lately. However I plan to change that immediately!
GOD’s richest blessing
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Great article! I married at 32, when the rest of my friends had mostly married by 25, so I felt ancient. I did not know about God’s plans for women then, though I was a Believer. I did have a career in pediatrics and it was a time of deep growth in the Lord, partially because of my own blunders, which in turn placed me in a position of needing Him. I read a book during that time called The Cinderella Syndrome. I don’t remember much about it now except that the main point is that when we are always looking for our lives to better when “someday my prince will come” – whether about marriage or anything else – we often miss what He has planned for us now. I was privileged to know several women who have now gone on to glory, who never married, simply because that was not God’s plan for their lives. They were amazing and mentored me and really were instrumental in preparing me for when I did marry. And of course as the story goes, as soon as I quit looking and thinking about marriage, God put the most wonderful Godly man in my life and we have been married for 11 years and have a family. But looking back, I wish I had learnt earlier how to be content in my single time and not wasted that precious time He gave me. Because I married late (for my generation), I really have a heart for single women and I’m glad to see someone posting articles like this! Thank you.
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