Joyfully Content ~Part Two

"Men are not reservoirs of romance put on earth just to fulfill all of our little needs and desires" ~Anna Sofia Botkin, What Our Father Taught us About Boys

Once upon a time, I met an amazing young man. He was passionate about the things of God, and articulate about those passions -he was driven and unapologetic about living out his convictions, but he was compassionate and patient when he was teaching them to others. He knew how to stay focused, yet humorous during a debate, but also knew which things were really worth fighting for. He was empathetic and he was an incredible listener. He was laugh out loud hilarious -he knew how to laugh at himself and the foibles of the world around him, with an unobtrusive, self-depreciating humor that was disarmingly charming. He was genuinely humble. And he was so good-looking. And -best of all -he loved me. So much that he asked me to marry him. "Come with me," this young man said, "to Israel, so we can minister to the Jewish refugees who have been displaced by World War II."

Oh, yes -did I mention that this young man was born in 1921? And the "I" I'm referring to is the heroine of the novel I wrote in first person several years ago, Harper Joseph. He's a little old for me because Harper was born in 1930. And he's a little too perfect because, although I might tell you that he was born the son of a pastor in New York City in the roaring twenties, in reality, he was born in my imagination at the beginning of the twenty-first century. My man is so perfect because... I made him up.

You think you've got it bad fantasizing about your favorite literary heroes? Falling in love with a figment of your own imagination is somehow more pathetic, don't you think? In my defense, though, you've got to admit, he does sound wonderful, doesn't he?

We all do it -perhaps we don't write down the words we want to hear in our perfect proposals, but we've thought about them. And maybe we didn't jot down the height, eye color, hair color, and heritage of the gentleman who we hoped would come calling, but we wondered, idly sometimes, sometimes not-so-idly, who he could be. Perhaps your prototype isn't as fleshed out as the gentleman I referred to in the first paragraph (my excuse is that he was the main character of a story I first wrote back in 2002, and I'm sticking to it) but most of us would be lying if we didn't say that all of the fairy tales we've read and seen hadn't gone to our heads at one point or another.

The second major cause of discontentment is, I believe, a false view of husbands. When difficulty strikes -when boredom threatens -when daydreams run rampant, some of us have a tendency to sing, "Someday my prince will come!" sometimes unconsciously building a pedestal for the man who will someday come and sweep us off of our feet. May the Lord help some of us if he never gets here, because we've wound all of our hopes into his perceived perfection.

For so many of us young women, our ideal man might look like [insert wildly attractive movie star's name here] on the outside, but, on the inside, his identity comes from making us happy. He is fine-tuned to meet all of our desires -he caters to our every romantic whim. He never disappoints us. He never aggravates us. He never falls short of our expectations, even though they hover somewhere in the stratosphere.

When discontentment creeps up on us, instead of turnings towards the Lord for comfort, we turn towards the superhuman Prince Charming we've constructed in our minds, and he whispers sweet nothings in our ears (sometimes even with an Irish accent...), and we're comforted by the idea that someday, our missing rib -our helper suitable -will walk into our lives and come alongside and complete us.

This can make us discontent in marriage by that same token: we're going to wake up one morning (not right away, perhaps, but eventually) and realize that we were made to be the suitable helpers of flawed men, and not the other way around (Genesis 2:19-25). Beyond that, we're flawed women who react to flawed men, sometimes, in very flawed ways -some days, there will be trouble in paradise. And beyond that, we're not goddesses to be worshipped, but helpmeets who are going to be in the trenches -if we go into a marriage looking to have our needs met, we're eventually going to realize that marriage -like every other area of our lives -isn't all about us. In fact, in many ways, marriage is less about us than singleness is.

We should not develop the habit of placing all of our hopes in fallible human beings, because they are sure to disappoint us. Christ should always be the center of our joy (Deuteronomy 6:5), in singleness or in marriage. And, whether or not the Lord has marriage in our futures, that's a lesson we need to learn right now, because it's a lesson that will keep us focused on the Lord whether single or married. I love the quote at the beginning of this article: Men are not (NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT!) reservoirs of romance put on earth just to fulfill all of our little needs and desires (emphasis and parenthetical notation mine...) As single women, we need to learn to place our needs and desires at the foot of the cross, not on the alter of the perfect husband-to-be.

I am not a marriage counselor (given my years of experience as a wife and mother, I think that's probably a healthy position for me to forgo), but, as a single woman, I want to encourage you unmarried ladies to grasp this right now. Not only does it give us a more realistic perception of what husbands, but it also helps us to relate better to the young men in our lives. We tend to stop sizing them up when we realize that our tendency is to make them innocent bystanders to our romantic whims and fancies, and we realize a revolutionary concept: they're only human. This understanding gives us a more realistic perception of what married life would be like, ("What?! He won't sweep me into his arms and recite Yeats every day after work?"), but it also helps us to engage in meaningful, pure relationships with the Christian young men we encounter, rather than eyeing them with romantic ulterior motives ("Oh, my soul! He said hello! He loves me. I wonder what size tux he wears...") For more advice on that score, I recommend the session I referenced at the beginning of this article. Suffice it to say, a more realistic perception of men has stopped me from listening out for the chorus of Spandau Ballet's True every time I meet a new guy (don't worry if you didn't get that one: it only makes sense if you were a teenager in the eighties, or, like me, wish that you had been).

Should I marry, I fully expect to be as gooey and romantic at times as I wouldn't want to be caught dead being in my single state. Beneath the goop, though (ah, that glorious goop), I hope there lies a true understanding that the all-encompassing goal of that union between two sinners is God's glory, and that it's only by his grace that the two who will become one can work towards a unified goal that will honor him (Ephesians 5:22ff). If nothing else, Prince Charming will not make my sin nature disappear --even if he could be perfect, I could never be. We will still undergo sanctification on the other side of the glorious wedding day we catch ourselves fantasizing about, and I'm told that my husband will aid it in ways that I never imagined as a carefree single gal. To lighten the mood, though, I must add that I'm told that marriage will hold joys that I never could fathom as a single gal as well.

I am not waiting for a husband to come into my life and give it worth, nor can I give any man's life true worth: I am seeking my worth in Christ, in the state I'm already blessed to occupy. Whether I have -or ever have -a husband or not, the Lord should be the center of my joy, and the focus of my pursuits. That will make me a better wife someday should the Lord call me to wifehood, yes -but, beyond that, it will make me a better ambassador of Christ here on earth regardless of my state. And, as I want to live ever moment I'm given in passionate pursuit of the Lord's will, I think that puts me on the right track.

Click here for the introduction to the Joyfully Content series, here for Part One, and check back on Monday for Part Three: How a false view of singleness can cause us to become discontent.

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