She had been looking at the tablecloth, and it had flashed upon her that she would move the tree to the middle, and need never marry anybody, and she felt an enormous exultation. - Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
I can't say that I ever shared this sentiment with Virginia Woolf's character Lily Briscoe. Starting at a young age (10? 11?), my aspiration was to be married. My version of the ideal life placed marriage at the center. I knew I would go to college, meet the right person, and marry shortly after graduation. Who needed to think about a career? My perfect role would be as a wife. I just knew it.
I was not alone in this thinking. I'm fairly confident that a lot of Christian girls who grew up in circles similar to mine had the same vision for life. Partly this vision came from seeing such wonderful examples of godly women who were excellent wives. I can't think of many adult ladies that I knew of when I was younger who were good examples of godly singleness. Maybe they were there and I was just blind to them. In my little cultural bubble, being married seemed to be the norm.
And then, of course, the Bible reveres marriage. He who finds a good wife finds a good thing, right? I simply could not fathom life without marriage, although I never consciously articulated this belief to myself or anyone else.
Then college came and went. Grad school came and went. No husband appeared on the horizon. My thoughts were, "God, what are you doing? Why isn't there anyone for me? Why can't it be [insert name of current guy interest]? What's wrong with me?"
God graciously took much longer than I had grown up imagining it would take before bringing a husband into the picture. Near the end of grad school and in the months following, He did a heart-changing work in me, using conversations with friends, study of scripture and helpful books, and prayer. I was about ready to despair of ever meeting someone who would take an interest in me. Sometimes I hated being a woman because I felt that following the patient "waiting" role was unfair and too hard.
Then God slowly began to show me that, although my desire for marriage was good (God created it, after all), my beliefs about the role of marriage in my life were skewed. I had been, without realizing it, believing that I was less important than those who were married. I was a stage "behind" them. My life was on hold, I thought, until I started the true life experience of marriage.
Those beliefs were hurting me in many ways. I felt less precious to God than I truly was, and I couldn't see value in my life as a single college instructor. I was insecure and frustrated, even angry.
But God showed me that even though marriage comes after singleness on a timeline, it is not therefore a more progressed stage with more significance, one for which the stages before are mere waiting periods. Singleness is equally as valuable and may be a state in which God places a person for a whole lifetime. This isn't a punishment or a lesser gift than marriage. Jesus, our perfect example, was never married. His life was not incomplete or in any way lesser than a married life.
So I had to recognize my faulty thinking and start to view marriage as being on its proper level. Yes, it is an honorable thing and a gift from God, but it is no higher than singleness and was not going to make me complete. Only God, in Christ Jesus, does that.
While I did not feel, as Lily Briscoe, that it was a relief not to have to marry, I did learn a similar lesson. She found a sense of purpose and legitimacy in her painting and realized she didn't need a man to make her life meaningful. God helped me see my own worth and validity as a whole human being, legitimately complete in Him, without marriage. You can bet I still prayed for a husband, but that's a story for another time.
