Is Singleness a Problem to Be Fixed?

The first time I read it, I was eighteen, and life as I knew it had shattered. I remember reading the introduction to the book Lies Women Believe cross-legged on top of the covers in my childhood bedroom—my Bible open beside me; my back against the wall. 

Fifteen years later, I’ve returned to Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth’s well-loved book, but this summer as I’ve reopened the familiar pages, my teenage-pink room has been replaced by a friend’s house filled with single adult women. Walking into the first week of our Lies Women Believe study, some of the women in attendance already knew my background. They knew that at eighteen, I was still years away from receiving my medical diagnosis, and that severe symptoms had done a number on both my body and heart, leaving me hurting and hopeless.

That season of my life came back into view the night my co-facilitator took the lead on the discussion of chapter 2, “Lies Women Believe About God.” We turned to the list at the end of the chapter and camped out on #6: “God should fix my problems.” She mentioned some of my history and more recent challenges, the problems I’ve wanted God to fix: chronic health issues; my brother’s cancer diagnosis and treatment. 

I looked around at the women listening to us and shared the one missing from her list, the one I knew was on the minds of the majority of the women in the room: singleness.

The Problems Are Personal 

The activity our group did next wasn’t part of the plan for the night. Each week, the team behind my Bible study group does our best to script out each moment, minute by minute, to maximize our time together. But as I looked down at page 64, I felt the mood in the room shift. Women were nodding that they too were tired of being single, so I told them to grab a pen. 

Next to Lie #6 in our books, we wrote down the main problems we’ve been hoping God would fix this summer, even the ones that seem trivial or feel silly to see in ink. We didn’t share these out loud during our main discussion time. I knew that the most tender problems we’ve been waiting on God to fix are generally not the same prayer requests we’re quick to disclose in large group settings. Instead, they’re left for pages we’d keep closed if anyone was nearby. 

When those prayer needs show up in our journals, they don’t always use the words as explicitly stated as Lie #6. We don’t always address the Lord with the words, “I am expecting You to fix this.” But we may come to Him saying:

• Lord, it hurts so much that the men around me seem to be interested in everyone else. 

• Lord, I’m stressed about work, friendships, and family dynamics, and I don’t have anyone to help me carry all that’s on my plate.

• Lord, I came home to an empty house once again, and I feel so alone.

Lord, why aren’t You doing something about this? 

Beyond the Fix-It Mentality

Many of my single friends have learned to be self-sufficient when it comes to solving all sorts of everyday problems. We joke about all the skills we never wanted to acquire: fixing apartment sinks, assembling furniture, and managing other household tasks on our own (through YouTube tutorials, of course). 

You too may have learned through the years not to pick up the phone and call for help with every little thing. Of course there are challenges in life—in your home, in your job, and in your dating life. But a few problems and a little frustration often seem reasonable until they’re not resolved. 

You likely didn’t expect to get married the second you reached your adult years. You probably didn’t expect to fall in love with the snap of your fingers. But you likely also didn’t think the discouragement and disappointment would last this long. As your singleness “problem” has been prolonged, it’s started to impact the way you view God . . . because while you may not have expected Him to fulfill your desire for a husband immediately, you did expect Him to do it by now. 

In Lies Women Believe, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says there are two key reasons why it matters that we address the lie that God must fix our problems: 

First, it reduces God to a cosmic genie who exists to please and serve us—a hired servant who comes running to wait on us every time we ring the bell. This lie sets up for disillusionment and disappointment with God. If we have any problems that haven't been fixed, then apparently God has not come through for us.

Second, this thinking suggests that the goal in life is to be free from all problems—to get rid of everything that is difficult or unpleasant. Our society is conditioned to think that we should not have to live with problems—that every problem must be “fixed.”¹

She emphasizes that in this world, we will have problems, pain, and unfulfilled longings. (Romans 8:21–22; John 16:33) She also notes that none of them happen without purpose: 

Here’s the good news—God is not removed or detached from our problems. He doesn’t just sit up in heaven and watch to see if we will manage to survive. No, the God of the Bible is “a very present help in trouble” (Ps. 46:1). That doesn’t mean He waves a magic wand and makes all our problems disappear. But it does mean He uses pressures and problems to mold and shape our lives and to make us like His Son, Jesus, who “learned obedience through what He suffered” (Heb. 5:8). And through it all, His presence provides the comfort, strength, and tailor-made grace we need to endure.²

If you’re struggling with your single status, if you thought you’d be married by now, this is the time to dig into your disappointment. Replay some of your most recent prayers. Have you started to view the Lord as a cosmic genie you’re expecting to fulfill all your wishes? Would you be willing to concede that the Lord’s sovereign perspective extends infinitely beyond your own, and that He may have a greater purpose in not giving you what you want (whether now or ever)? 

And have you considered that you may be calling something a “problem” that He doesn’t define that way at all?

Not a Problem to Be Fixed

As my Bible study group has walked through Lies Women Believe, my prayer has been that the Lord would not let us end the study the same. As we’ve addressed different topics, I’ve been asking Him to reorient our thoughts, actions, and beliefs to the truth of His Word. To “be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving [ourselves]” (James 1:22) in all areas of our lives requires humility and a willingness to accept that perhaps the Lord of all the universe knows more than we do about the way we think about and live our lives.

In 1 Corinthians 7, the apostle Paul referred to single life not as a problem to be solved but as a gift to accept and even enjoy. Elisabeth Elliot, who wrote the foreword to Lies Women Believe, talks about how she first responded to this idea in her book Let Me Be a Woman:

Well, I thought wryly, St. Paul did have some bizarre ideas, and was certainly not to be taken too seriously in his views on marriage. What did he know about marriage? He was single because he liked being single and I was suspicious of a man like that. . . .

But having now spent more than forty-one years single, I have learned that it is indeed a gift. Not one I would choose. Not one many women would choose. But we do not choose gifts, remember? We are given them by a divine Giver who knows the end from the beginning, and wants above all else to give us the gift of Himself. It is within the sphere of the circumstances He chooses for us—single, married, widowed—that we receive Him. It is there and nowhere else that He makes Himself known to us. It is there we are allowed to serve Him.³

It is there we come to see the truth of other core beliefs about God: that He is good, that He is able to change our circumstances—and that He ismore than sufficient when He, in His perfect wisdom, allows them to remain longer than we’d like.

Our Portion Forever

This month, while the women of my church group go through Lies Women Believe, the guys in our class have been discussing Lies Men Believe a few miles away. One of their facilitators, my ministry co-leader, has been instrumental in reminding me of the high stakes when our view of our problems is too shortsighted. He’s often told our class about friends of his who came to church with the goal of getting married. Their desire wasn’t wrong in and of itself, but it had become their primary motivation for plugging in. Before long, those friends got married and soon after, moved to the suburbs where they slowly disappeared from church community. They didn’t need it—their problem had been solved. They got what they wanted, their relationship status changed, and they didn’t need the Lord anymore.

The story has haunted me for months because I know how quickly my own heart turns to the Lord simply expecting a solution to my problems or for Him to provide for certain longings. I’m often only one prayer away from demanding the divine Giver give me what I want, rather than humbling myself before Him and choosing to believe that God not only wants what is best . . . but that He Himself is what’s best. 

When I think about the women who have been part of our summer Bible study, I’ve tried to imagine where they’ll be fifteen years from now when they look back on their first time through the book. Many will likely be married with children and dealing with far different troubles than the ones they’re facing today. Others may still be single. All will have countless opportunities to entrust new problems to the Lord and find comfort in His goodness and sovereignty, especially where He doesn’t immediately fix their circumstances. 

As Nancy says in Lies Women Believe, 

When our focus is fixed on our circumstances, our problems, other people, or ourselves, God will seem to be small in comparison, distant, or not there at all. But when we lift up our eyes, though they may be filled with tears, and behold Him, “the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.” 

That’s the Truth that sets us free.⁴

At the end of week 1 of our study, we wrapped up the night together in prayer. As they bowed their heads, I prayed a paraphrase of Psalm 73:23–26 for each of my single sisters in the room. I don’t know how the Lord will respond to each of their circumstances, but I do know He’ll be more than enough for every one. He’ll be more than enough for you.

Whom has she in heaven but You?
And there is nothing on earth that she desires besides You. 
Her flesh and her heart may fail,
but God, be the strength of her heart and her portion forever.

¹ Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Lies Women Believe: And the Truth That Sets Them Free (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2018), 60.

² Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Lies Women Believe, 61.

³ Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be A Woman: Notes to My Daughter on the Meaning of Womanhood (Wheaton, Ill: Tyndale House Publishers, 1976), 34.

⁴ Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Lies Women Believe, 62.