Overcome the Contentment Myth and Pour Out Your Heart to God
Have you heard the dangerous contentment superstition? Have you believed it or tried to follow it?
Psalm 62:8—"Trust in him at all times, you people;
pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.”
As I moved into my later twenties, two parallel universes became reality for me and others. Many friends had married and were creating families. I would spend time with friends in the married universe, the one I wanted to be in; and I would spend time in the single universe, the one where most of us were also having meaningful lives but trying to figure out how to get into the other universe. Since infancy, we’d been raised to understand that marriage would be a natural progression of life and we wanted to find someone to share life with. And yet, it seemed to evade us. Each year brought new frustration. Spending time with friends in the married universe could be taunting: Do you see how happy this universe is? The people in this universe have found someone to love just like they expected. They’re having kids! Isn’t that what you expected, too? Why can’t you find someone?
As available Christian men disappeared into the married vortex and as both male and female friends married and had less availability, the challenge of having to reestablish new friends that were single and available became a decades long regularity. I could be one year into a new friendship, establishing true trust and camaraderie, and the friend would begin dating and marry and, at least for a while, disappear. And if they came back, their time was limited, and they were no longer available for weekend travel—except maybe for a group campout weekend. Male friends were only available in a more distant kind of way as they rightly sought to honor their relationships with their wives. They would certainly never again be available for a long tête-à-tête conversation that provided male companionship and insight into life. I even experienced this with my brothers and with my father when he remarried after my mother’s death. And I would venture that some of my husband’s relatives experienced some version of this with him after he and I married, and he became less available. Others have shared this same frustration with me—one person even described the loss of close friends to the other universe as experiencing serial divorce.
Friendships didn’t always end or change in these ways; some married friends were still available and easy to relate to and some singles also continued to remain single. But friendships were always capable of changing at any time in the way described, and so they felt more precarious than when I was in college or a younger twenty-something. With each friendship “break up,” the question of Why can’t I find someone to just stay with for the rest of my life? becomes a drumbeat and can sit in the back of one’s mind.
This aching question led me to many conversations with friends in both universes about the why question. And since those who were married had successfully transitioned into the desired universe, their stories naturally held more sway. And a theme among many married friends was this: once they were content being single, God brought them a spouse. Many encouraged me to become content being single for the purpose of God bringing me a husband. This idea had become a theme in more than one circle of the Christian church in the time and place I was living out my early Christian life. “When it came to marriage, the best way forward was to be content without marriage.” I’m not sure if the thought is still out there as strongly as it was when I was a young adult in the 80s, but I do describe in a later chapter how a Christian therapist in 2008 described how it was alive and well among her colleagues. So, I wonder if some today grapple with it. It’s an idea that can even be presented as biblical truth. If only a Christian Snopes website had existed for me to check out this strange message. Like a typical Snopes-identified fallacy, it had a lot of forms. They went something like these:
Before I met my spouse, I went through a time of really becoming content as a single.
When you become content being single, that is when God will bring you a spouse.
God won’t bring you a spouse until you are content being single.
Over time I came to see this concept as something that wasn’t supported by Scripture, and I have even realized that it fits the definition of a superstition—a widely held but unjustified belief in supernatural causation leading to certain consequences of an action or event, or a practice based on such a belief. For me, the practice was to pray to be content going through life alone to cause God to bring me a life of not going through life alone.
I call this a superstition for a few reasons. First, it’s not actually written in God’s word anywhere. Nowhere does the Bible state that to find a spouse, you need to first become content without one. The truth is that God commands us to bring our requests and desires before him. For example, in Philippians 4:6 we read, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” And how about this beautiful admonition is Psalm 62:8: “Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” Also, Jesus posed, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
Second, it can induce fear of not getting it right. How does one know that one is content? Praying for a spouse would certainly not demonstrate contentment with being alone. What about thinking about marriage some day or going to a wedding and daydreaming about one’s own wedding design some day? Did I slip up? Am I content enough? How does God measure it? Whoops! I just stared at a wedding dress in a shop window! I’m in trouble now.
Third, imagine what life in the church would be if people were taught this principle for other areas of life—that we need to be content without a job before pursuing and preparing for a job; to be content with no friends before developing friendships; to be content with no education before enrolling in college; to be content with no children before developing a family; to be content with no ministry before developing an outreach. Or if we apply the contentment superstition to basic human needs, would we teach people to be content thirsty before taking a drink; to be content cold before putting on a sweater or to be content with a famished hunger before taking the time to eat? I speak as if a fool to demonstrate that it doesn’t make any more sense that God would require that a single adult first be content without human companionship before He would provide a partner. In fact, the Book of Genesis tells of God observing that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone and shows his creativity and determination to make a suitable partner for him.
To be sure, contentment is a good thing for all people in all circumstances, and the pursuit of it cannot hurt. But to imply that the gift of marriage only comes after one is content being single is to attach a requirement to single adults that only adds frustration to the drumbeat. It stops someone from praying honestly and tempts a single adult to play a game of manipulation with God.
And yet, there I was in my twenties falling hook, line and sinker for the idea that I had to prove to God that I was content being alone…so He would bring me someone to share life with. As I could, I set my heart to be content alone, to pray for contentment as a single adult. It is a strange phenomenon to pray for what is not in your heart. It is bizarre to pray about something important to you by not pouring out your heart but by praying what you think God wants to hear. It is horrible to fall into the grip of a superstition like this one because when you can’t pour out your heart, you risk the seeds and root and growth of bitterness.
Even though Scripture tells us to pour out our hearts to God, to bring him our requests—and even though the Bible makes it clear that marriage is God’s answer to loneliness and the sex drive, should a single person be burdened to try to prove to God they can be single and content so that He would send them a partner? That’s crazy, isn’t it?
After years of trying to prove to my maker that I was somewhere that He wasn’t asking me to be, I grew honest in my prayers about marriage and singleness. I stopped trying to pray something that just wasn’t in my heart. I remember where I was the first time I honestly cried out to God in my frustration and poured out my heart about my hope for marriage. And wow, He was ready to meet me where I was truly at.
It was 1989, and I was turning into the parking lot of the school where I taught. I had headed back after dinner for some evening prep for the next day. I was feeling lonely and wondering whether I would forever live my life without a family. Why hadn’t I met that special someone?
I was about 28 years old and was still young enough to experience a vibrant Christian single community of friends. But single life had grown a bit unsettling after several years of close friends finding the love of their lives, becoming engaged, marrying and separating from their single life to attach to their new and forever best friend. Other friends moved away to follow a dream job. It was an experience of serial loss as described earlier.
Many of us in our late twenties, surprised we hadn’t yet met and married the love of our lives, were hoping to tie a matrimonial knot by the age of 30. There is a well-worn saying that age is just a number, but I’ve known a lot of people who had a difficult time approaching age 30 with a null love life, and I was in the throes of it. And besides, in those years I wanted to raise a dozen kids—time was running out! But up until this time, I had never asked God about His thoughts on me and children. In fact, I hadn’t asked him to talk to me about marriage either. I was busy trying to prove I was content being all alone.
I recall contemplating in that moment how God had answered questions of mine in the past. It was time to get real with God. In tears and frustration, I told God how lonely I was and asked Him to tell me straight out if he had marriage in store for me and if not, could he please just tell me if I was going be single all my life. What prompted this onslaught of tears and honestly pouring out my heart? I genuinely believe it was the Holy Spirit and that he stirred up this sentiment at that time and in that space because He wanted to speak to my pain, and He had chosen that evening. For inside the school I was heading into, waiting for me, was a divine appointment named Carla.
Carla was a close friend and was inside the school entryway, looking for a meeting that turned out to be in an entirely different building. Carla saw my distraught face and came with me to my classroom to talk out whatever was bothering me and to pray. I poured out my heart—all the pain, the questions, the loud ticking of my biological clock! And then we took it to God. As we brought this burden to Jesus, she felt God lay three messages on her heart for me: 1) Know I was a beautiful person; don’t let the waiting period discourage me or cause doubts about who I was; 2) God did have a good man and marriage for me in the future; and 3) the waiting had to do with spiritual issues that had to be resolved (never learned specifically what this meant but when you learn more about my husband, it might make sense).
It was flabbergasting to realize that God has these things to say, that He had maneuvered Carla to be in the wrong but right building at the right time to attend to a friend’s pain; and that He had stirred up my honest thoughts and questions so much that they spilled out of me into His lap right before I ran into Carla. Reader, for the first time, I stopped trying to play a game of manipulation with God; for the first time, I poured out my heart—and He was right there waiting with a loving response. Think about it! How does He do these things?!
Well, this encounter didn’t get me into the arms of my loved one by age 30, and as time went on, I sometimes found myself doubting and unable to confidently trust that He had someone for me. But over the years, as He led me in a lifelong pattern of bringing Him my most intimate desires and pouring out my heart, and as He consistently gave me this same promise, I found my heart growing to believe Him, despite the long, long wait. And these are some of the most precious memories of my life—the times when He spoke right to the core of my pain. I left this “divine appointment” with Carla encouraged but also needing to let God continue to speak to me about this promise that He did indeed have a man planned for me.
So, please, if you are single and lonely and hope to find a spouse, do yourself a favor. Don’t hold back your dreams and desires from the One who made you. Pour your heart out to Him—and listen.
For those who find it difficult to believe God would speak to your heart or that he would speak to you through prayer (whether alone or with another person), consider that there are many, many passages in the Bible regarding God speaking to people. The Bible teaches throughout that God communicates with us. Below are three verses—from the Old Testament, the Gospels and the New Testament. See a list of many more verses on this topic at a website called, “ConnectUS” (https://connectusfund.org/40-uplifting-bible-scriptures-on-hearing-gods-voice).
Isaiah 30:21: And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.
John 14:26: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”
1 John 5:14: And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
Someone might be asking, “But does God talk to people about marriage and children or just “religious stuff”? The book of Genesis chronicles the story of how Abraham prayed to God for a son in chapters 15-21 and later for a wife for that son, Isaac, in chapter 24. And a woman named Hannah poured out her heart for a child as described in the book of 1 Samuel, chapter 20.
If you think, “Well, that was a long time ago,” consider that the Bible itself was written over so many thousands of years that the testimony of the way God spoke to some of the Old Testament people—such as the prophet Daniel—was very much ancient history to the people He spoke to in the New Testament, such as Paul, one of the key writers of New Testament and one to whom God revealed his will consistently (hear Paul tell his story of how Jesus first spoke to him in the book of Acts, chapter 26).
So yes! He can and does still speak to his creatures throughout time. And why wouldn’t He? He is the God who does not change. As you ask and wait and seek His Word, do be aware that it is wise to test what seems to be God’s word by comparing it with and assuring it lines up with the Word of God. Ask a pastor for help if you need it in doing this.
Finally, when it comes to finding a spouse, Proverbs 18:22 says, “He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.” There is room for both personal effort and divine intervention.
Finally, I would be remiss not to encourage readers to cultivate relationships and joy at every stage of life and to encourage this as a pattern worth living. If a single person waits for joy to come through marriage—if they attach to another with the expectation that the other will be their sole source of joy—that could lead to disappointment and even be harmful to the relationship. And hey, who wants to be someone’s savior? One pastor friend, Tom, says it this way: “It's better to bring joy into a marriage to give to the other person than to come into it expecting to get all of your joy from the other person.”
So, while it’s true that a vibrant, active, full-of-life single person coming home to an empty house day after day can feel very lonely, let that person meanwhile do all they can to develop joy and knowledge and skills and love and experiences and a history worth bringing to a future love.
Looking back, I didn’t know as I prayed with Carla that evening that within a few months, I would meet my husband. And boy of boy, did I ever like him as a person! But I couldn’t possibly have seen him as a potential husband at the time…there was a great barrier between us!
