Will I Ever Get Married?

Most of us have at one point or another wanted to know what the future would hold for us. A big exam, a job interview, a long-anticipated date, those three dots indicating that someone is typing a text message, or some other major life event may have us scrambling for signs and portents of what is to come.

The future is like a darkened mirror in which we see shadows and dim reflections of our hopes and fears. Often, when events eventually unfold, the reality bears no resemblance to what we thought it would be, but our expectations of the future can have a massive impact on the here and now.

It’s a good thing to want to get married. After all, Proverbs 18:22 says pithily, “He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord.” Presumably, the same goes for her who finds a husband.

As creatures that reflect God’s capacity for relationship, we desire connection with others and thrive when in meaningful relationships. As we are hardwired for relationships, marriage is an arena where we can be physically and emotionally intimate with another person within a lifelong commitment.

That being said, our culture does have a paradoxical tendency to treat marriage either as the pinnacle of adulting and something we all need to have to be fulfilled human beings or as a pointless archaic institution. On the one hand, more and more people are choosing to simply cohabit or eschew marriage altogether for a variety of reasons. For them, the desire to be married seems misplaced.

On the other hand, others place excessive value on being married and think that it is for everyone. The questions “Are you married?” or “When are you getting married?” from family, friends, or church members can carry harmful assumptions that marriage is for everyone and that until that checkbox is ticked, life is somehow incomplete.

You may have bought into this idea, but this couldn’t be further from the truth, and it can drain your joy if your marital status is the focal point of your life. It’s important, then, to understand the value of living in the now, and to know the dangers of postponing your joy until your marital status changes.

Living in the now when you want to get married

Say “no” to fear and anxiety

If you aren’t married and desire to be, one potential pitfall of viewing your life through that lens is living with an inordinate amount of fear and anxiety. As the years creep (or fly) by, the nagging question becomes incessant background noise. While comedy movies make light of it, watching friends getting married left and right while you’re not is emotionally distressing.

For some people, getting older also brings the specter of not having biological children with your spouse when you finally meet them and tie the knot. That can be a heavy burden to bear, and it can serve as fuel for the desire to get married sooner rather than later.

Fear and anxiety can also undermine current relationships. If those impulses drive you, you can end up putting pressure on yourself and others because of the desire to be married. Fear and anxiety can distort reality as well as warp our decision-making faculties.

You may end up committing to someone you probably have no business committing to because of fear of losing them and remaining single. Fear undermines the wisdom we all must exercise in relationships that helps us to avoid committing too quickly or compromising ourselves to get married or avoid being alone. Living in the now means refusing to give in to fear and anxiety about what you may or may not have in the future.

Trust God

For fear to lose its grip on us, it must be replaced with something else. One such replacement is trust and specifically trust in God. Trusting God doesn’t mean being passive and waiting for things to happen. It means placing yourself – the active moments, the moments of rest, and all the in-between moments – in God’s hands and living in the knowledge that, “All the days ordained for me were written in [God’s] book before one of them came to be” (Psalms 139:16).

God knows how this date you’re on will end, and so you don’t have to worry yourself with trying to engineer an outcome. You can just be yourself and enjoy the moment. God knows your fears and the tears you’ve shed in your season of singleness or in the relationship you’re in, and He’s got your back.

Trusting God also calls us to live like we know that God desires what is good for us, and He won’t withhold good things from us. The tough part is resting in His timing and distribution of blessings. If what we want doesn’t happen fast enough, our fear, anger, and disappointment can make us throw our hands up and decide to go it alone.

One question to ask yourself is, “When those mountains don’t move as I would want them to, will I continue to trust God and His plan for me?” There are some hard things to reckon with in this world, such as why some live to be old while others die young, why some get sick while others do not, why some prosper yet others fail. We may never have clear answers to these deep and confounding questions, but we must continue to live and put one foot in front of the other despite our bewilderment.

Get on with life

It’s good to want to get married. There are many blessings to married life, along with hardships (1 Corinthians 7). Our culture, especially within Christian circles, can apply enormous pressure to get married. This occurs at the same time as (and possibly in response to) many people who are deciding to postpone marriage for longer.

Among millennials especially, who are themselves the children of divorce, people are in no rush to get married and are taking their time with making lifelong commitments. Some studies have shown that being more conscientious about getting married has allowed U.S. millennials to drive an estimated 24% decline in the divorce rate since the 1980s.

Whether one is married or not, the value of your life is not determined by your marital status. Your ultimate reality should not be defined or limited by that. This is one of the points the apostle Paul tries to get across to Christians in the letter to the church in Corinth.

Get on with life here and now. Don’t put your life on hold or wait to start your life – get that degree, travel, and see the world, write that book, and start that website. Invest in yourself, be there for your family and friends, support your local communities, and serve in whatever way presents itself to you. As good a gift as marriage may be, the lack of a ring on your finger shouldn’t detract or sap the color from everything else in your life.

Conclusion

The question, “Will I ever get married?” carries with it the fear that a hoped-for future will not come to pass. Instead of fear, a life of trusting obedience opens us up to be surprised by God’s bounty of goodness in the places and relationships we find ourselves in here and now.

In truth, only the Lord knows what our life path will be. Marriage may or may not be in your future. Trust Him in the season you’re in to bring you the good you need, and that He won’t withhold a good thing from you. When those mountains don’t move as we would want them to, will we continue to trust God and His plan for us?