Christian Guilt

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

I grew up a 52-Sunday kid.

This isn't really a thing, I realize, but it's how I viewed my childhood after receiving pins and certificates praising me for my perfect attendance at Sunday School each week.

While I am thankful for my Christian upbringing, and it has been an emotionally positive experience for me overall, I've also questioned if it's part of the reason I'm constantly aware of my single status.

From my early days, I was taught that God had created a partner for me. It was my job to be a good, Christian girl, keep the faith and trust that all would work out. I learned that to have any relations outside of marriage was sin, and sin was bad. So, it seemed only logical that I needed to find my husband to avoid this terrible behavior and live a guilt-free life overflowing with blessings for my obedience.

It all seemed rather simple at the time. In my small town it seemed everyone was married, so it was only a matter of time before I’d be as well.

I vividly remember praying for my husband in my teenage years. At 16, I thought I was clever when, after having no boyfriends, I began to pray for God to prepare my heart for my future husband.

See Lord? I'm not desperate at all. Just patiently waiting. Whenever you're ready to reveal him to me, I'll just be over here with my heart in full preparation mode.

When that approach garnered no proposals, I adjusted my mindset again. In a Bible Study I learned to pray boldly for what you want. That also made sense to me. So, I began to pray with all my might for my husband. I never forgot to say "Amen!" after learning this powerful four-letter word meant "let it be so!"

Please Lord. Let it be so. Let it be my turn.

My parents, who had met and married when my mom was a teenager, had told me time and time again how happy they were being married. For Christmas and birthdays each year they rarely gave hints for desired gifts, instead saying they were lucky to have each other and their family.

In my mind, this reinforced my theory that marriage equaled happiness. My parents, like many, wanted their children to grow up and be happily married, like they were. It was what they knew – their “truth” and I adapted it as my own, determined to find the person who would unlock my forever happiness.

And as much as marriage equaled happiness, perfection equaled the absence of pain. With sin came consequences, and marriage seemed pivotal to being one step closer to “perfect” and “pain-free.”

If I could get married, I was convinced I could end so much of the longing in my life. The pain and the suffering. The "wrong" behavior I'd started in college that the pastors had informed me was sin outside of marriage. I imaged a world of intimacy without guilt attached. Loving inside the lines of what was appropriate when I’d been going off the page for so long.

As time passed, and I remained single, at times I simply stopped praying. As if giving God the silent treatment might result in getting my way.

I grew up sharing a pew with my entire family of six and my grandmother. Nieces and nephews eventually joined, and I always felt like part of a community at church.

As time wore on, I found myself showing up alone more often than not as friends I attended with got married or moved away, and as I myself relocated twice. It was a lonely experience in contrast to my childhood. Sitting by myself, I saw only couples as I scanned those around me through a lens of insecurity, and my attendance became more and more infrequent.

Despite my growth and success I’d experienced standing on my own two feet, I often felt like a failure. It was hard to erase the messages that had been etched in me since I was a child.

“Despite my growth and success I’d experienced standing on my own two feet, I often felt like a failure. It was hard to erase the messages that had been etched in me since I was a child.”

But as I crept out of my twenties and into my thirties, my eyes started opening a bit more to what was truly happening outside my own reality. My peers who had bounded down the aisle and experienced motherhood alongside their husbands were not void of pain and longing. Perhaps it was different than mine, but their lives weren’t without want or unmet expectations.

It has taken me decades to overcome what I began to believe as a knobby-kneed teenager and throughout high school. What I absorbed sitting on that pew week after week and witnessed in my community and own family has been challenged time and over again as my life never mirrored what the man behind the pulpit told me it should.

It took time to realize that like single life, marriage came with its own disappointments and let downs. Engagement rings and wedding vows promising forever can't shield those who exchange them from experiencing hurt along the way. And happily-ever-after isn’t the end of suffering but the beginning of a life that still is difficult to navigate at times.

There’s often no rhyme or reason for pain in this world. Only the promise that it is inevitable.

And a lasting lesson learned from my Christian upbringing is one deeply relevant when life gets hard.

I don’t know why it’s been my path to be single while so many have coupled up. But I do know this. I have experienced more and lived more boldly walking alone than any ideal life I’d imagined as a child.

And for now, that’s enough. And more than that, I am enough.

And regardless of your relationship status, or your religious background or upbringing, I promise the same is true for you.