At Least You're Married or Single
Marrieds love to tell singles going through transitions and hard times, "At least you're not tied down! At least you're free to be flexible! At least you can make your own schedule, etc." Singles love to tell marrieds going through transitions and hard times, "At least you have each other! At least you're married! At least you don't have to do it alone!" The truth is that painful circumstances in our own lives can bring offensive, short-sighted, and dismissive platitudes to real struggles in the lives of other people. Freedoms that exist within singleness come with a cost and the partnership that comes within marriage can mean a similar cost.
In singleness, the freedom of scheduling means more time spent walking through dark and difficult things with many different people. It can feel incredibly isolating to walk through hard things in other people's lives and then come home alone to a lonely home and an empty bed. That freedom you envy in your single friend's life comes with a cost.
In marriage, the partnership of a spouse means you can't go home at the end of the coffee date, you can't schedule your life in compartments of ministry time and personal time. It's all ministry time, making dinner, raising children, making money, even having sex, it's all ministry—and sometimes it's incredibly difficult ministry. That partnership you envy in your married friend's life comes with a cost.
In singleness, the freedom of flexibility means sometimes there is a very strong lack of stability. There isn't a family needing to be provided for, so it can feel like your job is expendable to your employers, it can feel like you're the only one paying all the bills, and it can feel like life is just one lease to another. The situation in your marriage might be the same, but "Until death us do part" gives one form of stability many singles desire and do not have. That flexibility you envy in your single friend's life can mean an isolating instability for them.
In marriage, the partnership of fidelity also means there is a strong temptation to hope in that stability instead of in God. There's a constant wrestle within marriage to console yourself with the belief that "at least we have one another," when in truth that is a ploy from the enemy. We have God. The same as when we were single. The gift of a spouse can become a gift we begin to worship, to find comfort in, and trust in, instead of the Giver. God alone is faithful. That partnership you envy in your married friend's life can mean a constant and strong temptation toward idolatry.
Marriage and singleness are both sanctifying, neither one is more or less. If you ask me where I was more sanctified, marriage or singleness, I would tell you the sanctification doesn't even compare because it is precisely and exactly the same.
In singleness I struggled with idolatry, selfishness, fear, pride, self-sufficiency, and so much more. In marriage I struggle with all of them still, not more, not less, the same. God, in His goodness, shows me that He is the same whether I am single or married by showing me that I am the same too. The only difference in these sanctifying agents is that for 34 years singleness was the best way to prove, distill, and refine me, and now marriage is God's best way to prove, distill, and refine me.
Friends when we are tempted to start a sentence to anyone walking through a different and hard season with the words "At least..." remember the God we serve only and ever gives the best in every season. He is not doing the least of anything in your life.
