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.

 God created marriage and He has given us a desire for marriage. This is good. The unmarried woman ought to thank God that she wants to be married. Thank Him that He has given you these desires, and ask Him to keep you and protect you in them. He wants to take up our burdens, so you can ask Him to bear the burden of your longing for marriage. He will do it. This requires faith and courage: faith that God will do what He says, and courage to walk with Him through this time. Each of us needs faith and courage if we want to please God, so rejoice in the opportunity He is giving you to grow in both these areas.

And God does not disapprove of His children wanting things. He wants us to ask Him for good things, and marriage is a good thing. We simply must remember in all of life that we are to cultivate gratitude and contentment, knowing that God rules the world, that He loves His children and delights to give us good things. When you ask God for marriage, do it with gratitude in your heart. “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).

This is a spectacular promise. We are to be careful for nothing. No thing. In fact, Peter tells us we are to cast all our cares on Him because He cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). But the verse right before is important in understanding how we cast our cares: “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time.” We bow and submit ourselves under God’s mighty hand, and He lifts us up in His perfect time. We throw all our cares on Him, and He carries them for us. He is obviously far more capable of carrying them than we are anyway. Jesus said, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28). We come to Christ in prayer with all our cares and longings. And we make our requests to Him with thanksgiving. We thank Him for His care for us, for His love for us. We lay our burdens down at His feet, and He promises rest for our souls, and peace of heart and mind. That is an easy yoke. And what a trade: we give Him our cares and He gives us His yoke. These are promises for all of us, for the married and unmarried alike.

The unmarried woman can come to Christ in prayer with all her requests with thanksgiving. Of course she cannot be thankful if she thinks it is sinful for her to keep asking for marriage over and over. But if she realizes that it is not a sinful desire after all, she can ask with joy, anticipation, and thankfulness, and find relief, peace, and rest in Christ. She doesn’t cease to desire marriage and children. But she does quit faking it because now she really is happy.  By confessing the right sins, she can start anew.

So you’d like to be married? Good. Don’t worry about it. And don’t worry about worrying about it. Do you have a great job? Good. Rejoice that God has given you good things to do. Are you in school? Good. Study hard. Are you lonely sometimes? Don’t worry about that either. Being lonely is not a sin.

Without this humble attitude of contentment, it is easy to become unhappy, and then there are a host of temptations. One of these is to look for happiness in all the wrong places. For example, if a woman has a job that she likes, it is possible for her to throw herself into it for the wrong reason, and that wrong reason is that she is trying to find meaning, identity, purpose, and happiness in her job because she thinks that will keep her from being sad over not being married. But as we’ve seen above, the only thing that keeps us all from being sad in any kind of hard circumstances is contentment in Christ. A job won’t meet our emotional and spiritual needs, no matter how great a job it is. If you pour yourself into “ministry” in the church, expecting that to “meet your needs,” then you will be sorely disappointed. These things are not designed by God to satisfy our souls. Again, only Christ can put us right. For that matter, marriage won’t satisfy us either. Any time we look to a created thing to do what only the Creator can do, we are guilty of idolatry. Marriage is a created thing. It is a means of glorifying God; it is not an end in itself.

If you are a discontented unmarried woman, you will certainly be a discontented married woman. Marriage simply amplifies all that we are; it doesn’t change our nature. It is like turning up the volume. So if you are a prone to be self-centered while you are unmarried, marriage will just increase your opportunities to demonstrate this selfishness. That is why you should determine to learn contentment before you are married; otherwise you are just postponing the lesson. And Proverbs has a few things to say about the state of a man who lives with a discontented woman: it would be better for him to live in a corner on the roof than in a big house with a brawling woman (21:9); living with a contentious woman is like putting up with a constant dripping; a man would be happier living out in the woods or in the desert than with a cantankerous woman (21:19). These are examples of women who should have learned contentment before they were married.

Paul says he has learned contentment. If the great apostle had to learn this lesson, so must we. It does not come naturally to us. Paul has learned to be content in all kinds of circumstances. He sometimes had all that he needed and more; and at other times he suffered great need. How did he manage to be content through all this? Christ enabled and strengthened him. This famous verse “I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me” appears in the context of a discussion about contentment. That is the key to being contented women: looking to Christ who strengthens us. That is the promise. We cannot look to ourselves to find contentment. That would be profoundly discouraging. We cannot look to our circumstances as the source of contentment. They change too much. But God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He never leaves us or forsakes us. He carries our burdens and leads us through all kinds of circumstances, whether it is times of plenty or times of want. It is okay for an unmarried woman to identify with the “want.” She does not have to pretend that she is ambivalent toward marriage. That would be dishonest. It is possible to rejoice in the Lord, to have peace of heart and mind, and to experience real happiness in Christ while desiring fervently to be married. These things are not antithetical.