A Single Woman, a Happy Woman: What’s My Secret?

If we thought this world held any promise of turning God’s people into a happy and contented flock, His Word shatters that illusion promptly. Were that the case, I would be, according to “the traditions of men,” a woman woebegone. 

I have never married. I have no children. Gravity has taken an early toll on my frame because of cancer, and yes, I have three cats. So why am I happy and content? 

This Great Mystery

By God’s sweet dispensation of grace toward me, I have learned a secret. 

The Apostle Paul spoke of this secret in Philippians 4:11–13:

I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I find myself. I know how to make do with little, and I know how to make do with a lot. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being content—whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need. I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me.

As God’s people, we learn contentment as we go through Christ in the midst of the very trials He ordains in our lives. Passing those God-authorized tests by submitting to His rule, relinquishing our rights, trusting in His provision, and surrendering to His perfect, loving plan produces, in the end, a soul “lacking nothing” (James 1:2–4).

But if, in the midst of life’s disappointments, I become angry and bitter, justifying my sullen attitude because life didn’t turn out the way I wanted or if I retreat into my isolated kingdom of self-protection, I will have missed the portal through which Christ desires to infuse my soul with His power. I will have failed to see that going through the cross, not around it, brings pure and unalterable joy. And there, the eyes of our hearts are opened to the “riches of the glory of the inheritance of the saints” (Eph. 1:18). Christ is “the Door.” Going through Him opens the way to a feast of the soul—the sumptuous fare of a King’s table. 

A Blessed Providence

While it has certainly brought occasions of sorrow, my singleness and subsequent childlessness frees me in undistracted service to Christ and His kingdom (1 Cor. 7:32–35). Such a custom-made providence has yielded time to nurture the wounded, give the Bread of Life to the famished, encourage the fainthearted, call home the wayward, and bring the light of the gospel to those groping in darkness. In the end, my sight shifts from me and onto a glorious, risen, and triumphant Savior who dispels the gloom of loneliness with one glance. 

In this, I am unhindered with “unperturbed pace” and can say as Fanny Crosby of old, who because of a medical “mistake,” was blinded as an infant: 

It seemed intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life, and I thank him for the dispensation. If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me.¹

She “resolved to be happy and contented” and would go on to write 8,000 hymns, all to the praise and glory of God because neither the world nor its charms eclipsed the Son in her life. 

Hope Rightly Placed

When God opened my eyes to all that I possess in Him, all He has done in redeeming my life from a deserving hell, and all that He gives from His limitless supply of love and grace, one by one, those bright stars on which I had pinned my hope for happiness were extinguished by the rising of the sun.

Wept this eve for a child
That I’ve never known
But there is no striving to recall
As though his picture shown.

The ache—quicksilver through my arms
For nights that ne'er embraced
His kindred flesh, knit as mine,
Or his tell-tale face.

No darker night I pilgrim,
’Til consolation hold
That children otherworldly born
Their seed increase the Fold.

¹ Fanny Crosby, Fanny Crosby’s Life-Story , Internet Archive, 1970, https://archive.org/details/fannycrosbyslife00cros/page/n9/mode/2up.