The Difference Christ Makes
In Your Unmarried Life

Chapter 11

Many of you who read this book will be, like myself, unmarried women. It has ceased to matter to me whether the rest of the world calls us spinsters, old maids, bachelor women or career women.

   It has ceased to matter to me, actually, when someone waxes inquisitive enough to ask why I'm not married! Oddly enough, no one ever asked this question until I became a Christian. I moved about in a world where many women were married to their careers and no one seemed even interested in the fact that I had never married a man. Christians, however, are rather nosey on this point, and since there is seemingly no satisfactory explanation in my case, I was somewhat at a loss as to what to say for the first few years of my Christian life. Now that I know the Lord Jesus better, I just smile and let it go. Occasionally I quote the handsome lady missionary whose answer I still find most accurate. Toward the end of her life, someone asked her to comment on her spinsterhood. She is said to have smiled charmingly

Page 140

and answered: "Well, being married is one circumstance of the Christian life and being single is another circumstance of the Christian life."

   In other words, if Christ Himself is in the center of our lives, either circumstance is workable. And either circumstance is desirable. I believe she inferred, too, that either circumstance can be undesirable!

   I happen to be single by choice, but if this is any comfort to those of you who are not, most of my problem mail comes from married women. I believe theirs is the most difficult role. But while I have never been willing to face the complications of married life myself, I do not for one minute discount the ache which may be in your heart for a husband and children of your own.

   Some of you who read this will be women whose hearts have been broken by the unfaithfulness of a man. Many of you will be widows. Others will have tasted and retasted the gall of loneliness because the one to whom you were to have been married died before the marriage took place. Others will have choked on the still greater bitterness of having him change his mind about loving you at all.

   Some of you have just never been asked.

   This may be the bitterest blow of all to any woman. I rather imagine it is.

   Still others among you may have lost the chance to marry because you have had the care of an invalid parent. This can cause deep hostility. Others, if Christ is on the scene, have made good lives for themselves and for the parents. But this is an unnatural situation and even though the bitterness may have been kept away by the Presence of Christ, the ached and the frustration may always be with you.

   I learned recently that thirty-nine per cent of the missionaries on foreign fields are men. The rest are, in the main, single women. There is no doubt but that the Lord calls some

Page 141

women to Himself. If He needs a woman's touch to fulfill a certain portion of His work, there are times when He cannot share her with a husband and a family.

   In my own work, I fail to see how there would be time for me to be a homemaker. Being a good wife and mother and homemaker is a career in itself. I do not mean to infer that mothers who work cannot be good mothers. But certainly it is not the ideal way.

   In fact, I would like to make it clear here that God does not seem to deal in ideals at all. He works with reality. If we are centered in Him, He will make creative use of whatever circumstance surrounds our lives.

   And with this in mind, I would like to share with you some of what I have learned about Christ's answer to the frustrations in the lives of unmarried women.

   For the first part of this chapter, we will speak of those who have never been married and of divorcees.

   In the remainder of the chapter, we will be speaking of widows.

   Be sure that Jesus Christ is equally concerned about all of you.

Single Women

   "I don't know why I'm pouring all this out to you, except that you are single, too, and I thought perhaps you'd understand."

   I receive many letters which begin this way. Here is one I would like to share with you.

   "I've been a Christian since I was a child. I shared the jitters of my single girl friends when the years went by and I found myself still unmarried. I had some dates. But somehow nothing ever came of any of them. My home life was miserable and I left home as quickly as I could. Then one by one

Page 142

my single girl friends were no longer single. And one horrible day I woke up to find I was alone. They were all married. I always believed that my questionable home life was the reason for it. I was from the wrong side of the tracks. Not ugly, not pretty. I'm just average. And I honestly tried to build a life for myself. I worked my way through college and have a good job. I am 43 now and still alone. I've lived alone all my life since I left home.

   "There doesn't even seem to be a place for me at church. Last Sunday one of the older women said to me, 'We just don't know what to do with you. You're too old for the young people's group and you're too young for us to put you in with the older ladies. If only you were married, we could put you in with the married group.'

   "Her words were like acid on my heart. And I have collapsed under it for the first time. The way I feel now I'm never going back to church again. I've tried to live a Christian life. I've always been the first to volunteer to visit the jails and hospitals. I've tried to cooperate and not be an odd ball. But an unmarried woman just is an odd ball! And I hate it. I resent it with all my heart. Now that I've written this much I realize I probably shouldn't have done it. You couldn't really understand the spot I'm in. You're in the Lord's work and busy all the time. I guess what I want to know from you is do you really think it is a sin to commit suicide?"

   This letter was one of the most difficult I've ever had to answer. But I wrote something like this: "Suicide is probably no more of a sin than any other selfish act. But I am no judge of this. And I don't intend to comment further on it, except to say that you did not shock me when you mentioned it. Not one bit. Even though I happen to feel no complaints about my single life, I do understand the ache in your heart at not fitting anywhere in the life of your church. But I beg you

Page 143

for Jesus' sake, to stop long enough to look beyond the social framework of a man-organized church to Christ Himself.

   "No one walked a more lonely road than He walked when He was on earth. And those of us who are single can, of all people, really know that He identified with us! He was single, too. It has seemed to me as though He lived His life in many ways so as to be able to identify with the most wretched among us. Surely this is one way. And while I know you feel like an odd ball among the married couples who seem to be able to talk about nothing but their children, you are not an odd ball with Jesus. He knows. And while they are chattering away about their families, realize that they are not forced into the blessed position into which life has forced you! You are in many ways fortunate. But you must look beyond the people around you before you will get what I mean. Anyone who is a fringe personality is blessedly forced to depend solely upon Christ. And this is, in the truest sense, a marvelous thing!

   "God's great apostle, Paul, was apparently unmarried. And when I read his writings, I know I am reading not only God's inspired truth, I am reading the outpourings from the heart of a man who has experienced what he is writing about! It is often hard for single people to take advice from a happily married person. But Paul has a human as well as a divine right to say, 'I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife. There is a difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband. And this I speak for your own profit; not that

Page 144

I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction' (I Corinthians 7:32-35).

   "I don't for one minute think that Paul was instructing anyone to avoid marriage if it is in God's will. He carefully mentioned that he said these things not to cast a snare upon anyone. I believe this passage is included in God's Word so that should we find ourselves in this position, we can know that great, creative good can come from it."

   I ended my letter by telling her I did not think she was facing spiritual facts. No matter what life offers or deprives we must make a love-offering to Jesus Christ of our bitterness at life. It is really bitterness at God if we are honest. I urged her to accept her lot and then deliberately put on an attitude of expectancy. When Jesus Christ is in charge, we have every right to expect Him to do something creative with our tragedies. I suggested that she offer her services as a Sunday school teacher with younger people. The insensitive, thoughtless sister who reminded her of the predicament in which her spinsterhood had placed them all, was dead wrong in reminding her. But she, with her singular need for Christ, is in a position to receive from Him far more than this woman who feels no need. And the single woman can "turn it to a testimony" by getting them off the hook with some humor on her part. Teaching younger people would also help fill her empty life.

   This particular advice concerning the Sunday school class may not apply to your problem. But if in your heart, you are building an explosive resentment against life because you are not married, you, too, must realize that God had a purpose for including in His Word the message Paul wrote in I Corinthians seven.

   Up and down the little side street on which I live shuffle lone women. Near derelicts. It is a strange street because up and down its sidewalks pass wealthy women in mink coats

Page 145

and women in tattered coats who stop at every garbage can in the alley beside my house, hunting food and any castoff items they may sell in order to buy a drink. One old woman's name is Edith. I have spoken to her many times during the years in which I have lived here. She hates God. She is usually quite drunk and her cracked old whisky voice literally shrieks at the sky when I mention Him to her. "God? I have Him! If He's even there, He shouldn't be! He must be a devil to leave an old woman like me alone in the world, grubbin' a livin' out of garbage cans!"

   I can only go on loving Edith and praying for her and helping her all I can. Until she sees that God came down here and became one of us in Jesus Christ, when will continue to rail at heaven and curse Him for her own pitiable existence.

   If you are alone in the world and don't know Christ, you can know Him. And only in knowing Him personally will you find a way to end your loneliness. Bitter, self-pitying people are always alone. Other people can't cope with them.

   On my radio program "Visit With Genie," I interviewed at least five women who live alone under varying circumstances. Women whose lives are under the control of Jesus Christ. All with deep problems to face, but all living creative, generally uncomplaining lives. One woman, Margaret Williams, gave me a striking closing for the program on which I interviewed her. She is a social worker, alone in the world. I invited her to appear on my series just a few weeks after her mother, her last living relative, had died. Margaret is unmarried, in her forties, and lives alone in a rented apartment. But so definitely is Christ in control of her personality that her closing line on the interview was this: "The only real complaint I have, Genie, is that I just don't have enough time alone to read the books I want to read!"

   Perhaps you have refused to give up your right to have been married. Perhaps you are saying, "It isn't right that I

Page 146

should be single and all my sisters married with homes of their own." If this is the thought-line in your heart, you are clinging to your rights. You are not accepting life as it is.

   And, I repeat, people who cling to the right to themselves are usually lonely.

   Many women write to me complaining that they would make it, too, as Christians, if they had someone to live with as I have. I can only say this: God seems to be aware that I need someone to help me if I am to continue to work in the many different fields in which I now work. Should the time come when He could make better use of me alone, I would simply have to be willing to have alone.

   God doesn't permit us to operate on our understanding of His ways. Many Christ-centered women live alone and will always be alone. Like my friend, Margaret Williams. But she has accepted it and is living life to its fullest, regardless. So, don't get any ideas that God will reward you with a roommate, just for giving up your rights. He is free to send someone to you then, and probably He will. But the heart of the matter is that we accept our lives as they are now and leave the future to Him.

   What of you if you are a divorcee? Perhaps you have children to support. I interviewed a woman in this predicament on my radio series, too. A close friend of mine whose husband deserted her when her little girl was three. The daughter is a lovely, balanced teenager now. And although life has been anything but easy for my friend, and although she was not a Christian when her husband deserted her, she has taken hold of the great potential of the Christian life and is discovering every day that no one is really alone, if she belongs to Jesus Christ. At the time of her conversion this woman was intensely bitter. Now, she is among the best company I know. I don't see her often, but I know when I do, I'll learn something more of the true humor and wisdom of heaven!

Page 147

   Perhaps the deepest scar of all is left on a woman's heart when a man deserts her for someone else. But because of what Jesus Christ is like, this too, can be healed, and He makes all scars radiant. He seems to use them to deepen our characters and enhance our personalities. This woman, whose life would have been so tragic and whose personality so distorted if she had attempted to carry her load without Christ, is one of the most natural and delightful people I know. Even when her beloved daughter, for whom she had worked so hard, was seriously ill not long ago, the center of her life held. And it held because she was being held by Christ Himself.

   At a big hospital in Michigan City, Indiana, lives another friend of mine. A dear little lady in her late sixties, who pushes the carts of food up and down the corridors of the hospital for a living. Hattie is all alone in the world. She was once an alcoholic.

   So far as I know, her only mail is an occasional note from me. She lives alone in a little room at the hospital. She is shy and doesn't make friends easily. But she has one Friend who takes excellent care of her. I'm planning to visit her as soon as I finish this book. For Hattie's sake? No, for mine. She always has a little ribbon in her curly white hair and she always has a lift for me. Life dealt her a dreadful blow thirty-five years ago when the man she loved left her. She was on her way to Lake Michigan to kill herself. By divine providence, she got off the streetcar at the wrong corner. And on that corner was a mission, where Christ was waiting for her. They have been friends ever since. Her secret is that she has stayed grateful.

   Another woman, respected in her community, was deserted by her husband. Hers was the great humiliation. They were both prominent in the town. Everyone knew about it. After twenty-five years of married life, he left her for another woman. The days dragged along, and this woman was

Page 148

dragged with them. She knew Christ. But slow, slow is the human heart to respond to His healing touch. This is no fault of ours. It is the way we are. Her heartache never really ended. Her lovely home remained empty. But through the five remaining years in which she lived, she taught me a great many things. He did not promise perpetual happiness. But He did promise that He would be with us through everything. Until He mercifully took her home, He stayed right with her in the empty house. He supplied her frail little body and her troubled heart with His own strength and love, so that she had enough of both to give to youngsters who needed her, to old persons who needed her, to her church where her life glowed in a way it had never glowed before. Through this woman's gentle acceptance of the blow life handed her, "phoniness" dropped away like dead leaves from the lives of many of the women in her church. Her last five, sometimes agony-filled, years were turned to a shining testimony for the value of a Christ-controlled personality.

   In every life there is aloneness. This is normal. I am sure those of you who read this book in your own homes, surrounded by your own children, perhaps waiting for your husband to come home for dinner, also experience times of feeling absolutely alone. The secret is that we can come to the place of realizing that we are created this way. God has reserved a place for Himself only, down in the very center of our beings. And our trouble springs from the fact that we try to fill this place with other things and other people. It is reserved for Christ himself. Nothing else really fits. And we must not fall into the confusion of mistaking normal aloneness, which is intended to draw us to God, with loneliness!

   Active, Christ-centered Christians are seldom lonely. Women who live alone and who are well adjusted are simply those who have recognized this secret place as His and have allowed Him to enter and take possession. The maladjusted

Page 149

among us experience this aloneness, leap to the wrong conclusion, and begin to scream that we are lonely!

   Loneliness is different from aloneness.

   It is well for us to check our lives on this point now and then. It may prevent great trouble later on. I find myself aware of the aloneness at the center of my being sometimes more acutely when I am on a platform or in a crowd. But I no longer feel isolated from people because of it. I feel driven to Christ, who is always there in that aloneness, ready to give me what I need at the moment. For several years after I became a Christian, I felt quite alone among God's people. With many I seemed to have little in common socially. And about this time I read Anne Lindbergh's great little book Gift from the Sea. Everyone should read her chapter on Aloneness. She doesn't mention Christ, but He mentioned Himself to me as I read the beautiful book one day on a train coming home from a series of meetings during which I had been much aware of my aloneness. I saw that this aloneness is normal. And that it is not loneliness until I mistake it as such! From that moment, I have welcomed the times of being aware of the secret place at the center of my being which no human being can fill. And which I have no right to try to force a mere human being to fill.

   This is our big mistake. Mothers try to force their children into this place. Wives their husbands. Friends other friends. It is reserved for God. That is why most of the world is lonely. They do not know that there is One who longs to fill their aloneness with Himself.

Widows

   Here are excerpts from several letters which I received from a woman recently widowed.

   "I am writing from my end of the breakfast table. Somehow

Page 150

I never realized before what a long table this is! But the atmosphere is made fragrant with love from all those who have shared love with me here. Most of the time now I am alone, but I am learning that I never have to feel lonely any more. I have gone through many stages since Daddy left to be with the Lord a few weeks ago, but when I need Christ, He is always here. All I need to do is look at Him! We can be anything we want to be in the Lord. Or we can be burdens to our loved ones. When my heart sinks with missing Daddy (as it does so often) I look up fast and say out loud, 'Lord, You are such a wonderful Saviour! You have given me so much. Thank You, oh thank You that my dear one isn't suffering anymore. Thank You that I know he is happy with You and waiting, with You, for me.' Invariably (even when I'm not expecting it) He gives me new courage beyond explanation. It is as though I ask for just one thing and He gives me a dozen! Not only companionship, but love, and courage and hope and such a great desire to show Him to other women who have collapsed because a dear one has gone. We make Him such a weak Lord when we allow our minds to settle on ourselves. The tears still flow, but quickly I have formed the habit of saying, 'Do something creative with me, Lord. These tears will never bless anyone else's life.'

   "Is there a word for joy and strength while going through grief? I don't know, but I do know that I am given comfort and a strange inner joy, while the tears flow. It is all very slow. But I am climbing the steps to readjustment with Him. He knows we can't take in all He has for us at once. We must be told a little at a time.

   "I was lying in bed one evening, with my books and radio on Daddy's empty bed beside me. Thinking of how my dear one had suffered through those long weeks. God spoke again. 'Your anxiety can be turned into constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on My bosom.'

Page 151

   That was a real turning point for me. Simple? Yes. But He knew that was what I needed. I had been tormenting myself and wasting good hours paying attention to the way my heart still ached over his suffering before he left me. Remembering the endless blood transfusions, his poor little thin needle scarred hands (hands which were once so strong and handsome and capable). Still longing to be able to do something to help him just once more. Ministers and Christian friends had tried to tell me how to keep my chin up. And the bosom of the Lord like a lovely rose — this was different. I said, 'All right, Lord. I will do that right now.' And I did.

   "I miss him so much every hour of the day. Terribly at communion in church last Sunday. My heart is so broken. Yesterday, I had a particularly hard time when I heard a horn like his toot twice (as he always tooted at the top of the driveway). For just a moment, the habit of the years caught me and I thought, 'Oh, he's coming home.' Then I remembered that he would never toot at me again and then he would never come home again. But so definitely, when I turned to the Lord for help, He said, 'Why don't you sing to Me? Things can't be dark when you are singing.' I said, 'All right, Lord, I'll sing.' I remembered I hadn't sung since Daddy left, except in church. So now I have a new habit. I sing my prayers sometimes, making up the tunes as I go. I had forgotten, in all my grief, about the release in singing! He said He would stake right there, as Daddy would have said. Even when I just have to walk the floor to keep from collapsing, I find that His love comes pouring through. All I need to do ever, is to keep my window open to Him. Minute by minute I keep aware that He has said, 'Lo, I am with you always.'

   "I have heard you say and I have read over and over in your book Share My Pleasant Stones, that He is a Redeemer

Page 152

of all things, if we will but come to Him with them. I know your heart is heavy with grief, too, because you and Daddy were so close. You are so like him. But, although we were separated quickly by your travel schedule after the funeral, I know He will guide my little one as she travels bringing His love to people so hungry for that love."

   Perhaps some of you have discovered as you have read these quotations, that they are parts of letters from my own mother, written to me since the recent death of my beloved dad.

   If pages permitted, I would like to share many more of these letters with you. But I have shared these few, so that you who are faced with adjusting to a new way of life alone, without the one who was always with you in it, can know that I understand. I haven't experienced widowhood. But I am living through these days in close identification with my own mother, who is experiencing it. Her letters have been an amazing source of strength to me in my own grief over the home-going of my father.

   She has not burdened me with her times of agony. But she has shared some of her victory in them with me by letter. They would have heaped unbearable weight upon my already grief-loaded heart, had she failed even once to end the sharing with the glorious lesson Christ had taught her from it. When my father left us, Mother lost not only her best friend, her lover and her playmate, she lost her work, too. My father was a dentist and she was his assistant. They were together twenty-four hours a day. So her adjustment is a minute by minute thing. And because both my brother and I travel almost constantly, she has been alone with Christ in it.

   Along with learning to live without him, she must learn how to throw off the times of re-living the long months of his suffering with him. This has been difficult for us all. But Dad gave us a great deal to live up to here. Should Mother,

Page 153

or my brother Joe, or I be called upon to suffer someday as Dad suffered, we have a great example before us. He lived Jesus Christ right up to the last minute of his earthly life, when he died with horrible secondary complications from acute leukemia, his bed soaked with his own blood and the blood of the wonderful Christian friends who kept the transfusion bottles filled and ready.

   Life is not beautiful all the time. But through the ugliness and pain and agony and loneliness, there is available to every human being the fragrance of the very Presence of Christ.

   And He is a Redeemer. Nothing needs to be wasted in His Presence.

   My mother is well aware that she is the one who will choose whether or not her grief is to be wasted. She knows that Christ can make glorious, creative use of it, if she allows Him to pour out her life now to others who need her.

   No one will ever take Dad's place for her and she has accepted this. One night I shared with her what the Lord had given me in conversation with another widow several years ago. It had come to me to ask this other widow if she were trying to allow Jesus Christ to take the place of her husband. She thought a minute and said, "Yes, I guess I am. And it isn't working." Jesus Christ longs to heal us realistically. He is not a substitute. He is Himself.

   My mother, in still another letter, has expressed this more clearly than I can express it: "Yesterday, as your brother Joe and I stood in the cemetery on the hill where dear one's body lies, God was in the wind and although tears flowed, this thought came to me: The things that happen do not happen by chance. They happen entirely in the decree of God. He is working out His purposes. And He has enough love to fill your empty heart and mine. But I have learned that we only realize this when we blot out of our thoughts

Page 154

everyone 'save Jesus only.' He is trying to be Himself with me as I allow Him to do it. He understands my missing Daddy so much. He doesn't shame me or belittle me. He just calls to me to look at Him only! And when I do, such comfort floods my whole being that I can only thank Him. Much depends upon our discipline of mind."

   Other letters come from other widows. Some are as courageous in the strength of God as my own mother. One woman, because she couldn't afford to buy so many copies of my daily devotional book, Share My Pleasant Stones, began typing off certain passages and mailing them to hospitals and institutions where human beings were suffering physically and emotionally in spiritual darkness. Countless persons were brought into a close relationship with Christ. And the widow's own life was filled to overflowing as a result of her lovely "new work." Until she began it, she had spent her days in weeping over photographs of her husband.

   Recently another letter came. But this one was from a widow who had pulled down her blinds, and turned to sleeping pills and alcohol to deaden her grief. A neighbor had given her a copy of my life story, The Burden Is Light. Her letter was a last plea to know for sure that God did exist!

   Surely we can't blame this woman for turning to sleeping tablets and alcohol. She doesn't know Christ.

   I am sure the human tendency is to pull down the blinds and try to find an escape from the constant pain of realization that the loved one is never coming back in this life. This is the natural thing to do. But we have access to the supernatural. Night after night, my mother lies sleeplessly on her bed repeating, "Lord, I know your strength is made perfect in my weakness." And it is. Eventually she sleeps. And gradually she is sleeping a little better. A few minutes longer each night.

   Usually only those who have experienced widowhood can

Page 155

or will take time to understand the slowness with which time heals. But time is one of God's greatest instruments of healing. And it is important for you who are living through this time of adjustment now, to realize that each day brings more relief than you imagine it is bringing. The Lord has commissioned us to "go into all the world." This includes widows. He means for you to go, too. If Christ lives in your mortal body, my prayer is that He will not allow you to be satisfied with pulling down your blinds. He needs you and unless you allow Him to make creative use of your grief, then your husband and Christ will have died in vain!

   With the widow as the single woman, God sends companionship and friends, according to how much we have given up the rights to ourselves. If my mother felt sorry for herself because my brother travels so much and has a family of his own to take his time and attention, or if she resented or even secretly resisted my work which keeps me away from her, God's hands (might as they are) would be tied in His efforts to fill her life as He longs to fill it.

   We can't expect other people, even our closest and dearest friends and relatives, to make our adjustments for us. We must make our own, through Christ.

   But I am the first to agree that when life forces us to live alone, real adjustment is a near impossibility if it is inspired by mere good intentions.

   More words about the necessity of a Christ-controlled personality in a woman's unmarried life seem extraneous. So there will be no more, except this breathed prayer that you, no matter what your circumstances, if you are alone, will right now give over the controls of your entire life into the hands of Jesus Christ.

   He is the only adequate definition of love which I know.

   He will turn your tears to living water. Remember, it was

Page 156

Jesus Himself who said, "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."

Chapter Twelve  ||  Table of Contents