Not a Problem to Fix

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: During years of singleness, Colleen Chao learned to trust the Lord with her unfulfilled longings.

Colleen Chao: I couldn’t deny the fact that God had put in me these emotional, relational, physical desires. They were good; they weren’t bad. But for some reason He was saying, “Not yet, or maybe not ever.” And going to Him became this beautiful love relationship and strength.

Nancy: We’ll hear more about the season of singleness today on the Revive Our Hearts podcast. It’s February 24, 2022, and I’m Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

February is one of those months when we hear a lot about romance and love between husbands and wives, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I have a tender place in my heart for women who long to be married and to have a family and—for whatever reason—God has not granted that desire, at least for now.

So we’re taking this week in February and devoting it to our single friends, talking about some of the unique challenges that you face. Even if you’re not currently single, you may well be there again at some point in the future, so this program is for you, too. And chances are you know others who are single that you could encourage by sharing with them a link to these episodes.

Earlier this week on Revive Our Hearts I shared my heart on the subject of singleness. These are actually some thoughts that I recorded on the days leading up to my marriage to Robert after being single for fifty-seven years. 

You can find those programs in the series, “Thoughts for My Single Sisters Before I Become a ‘Mrs.’” It’s in the podcast section of ReviveOurHearts.com, or you can find it through the Revive Our Hearts app. 

Today’s guest is a dear friend of mine and of Revive Our Hearts. Colleen Chao has learned to trust God in the midst of a whole lot of life’s circumstances that she would not have chosen for herself. Most recently, it’s been her ongoing journey through Stage IV breast cancer. 

Before that, she would also point to the lessons that she learned during the years when she was a single woman who longed to be married. Recently, our team had the chance to sit down with Colleen to talk about it. Here are Dannah Gresh and Michelle Hill, talking with Colleen Chao. Let’s listen.

Dannah Gresh: Colleen, tell me when you first came into contact with Revive Our Hearts. 

Colleen: My first interaction was with a book that Nancy wrote years ago, and then even recently I was reading through a bunch of old files and found a Revive Our Hearts magazine from—I don’t know—maybe twenty, twenty-five years ago. So I’m not sure, it was kind of like this slow quiet gift over the years, so I can’t even point to a time, but it’s been over a couple of decades.

Dannah: Would you have been in your twenties?

Colleen: Yes, early twenties, maybe late teens.

Dannah: I love hearing when teens and college age women and young women are devouring the truth of God’s Word through Revive Our Hearts.That’s really encouraging to me! So, you’re a prolific, thoughtful blogger. I’ve read your content, and it is so rich and beautifully written. It really speaks to the heart of some really important issues. 

One of the issues you’ve written about is the issue of singleness. So I want to ask you, did your life unfold (in terms of finding that man of your dreams) in the way that you had thought it would when you were, say, fifteen years old?

Colleen: Not at all! I thought I would be old if I married at twenty-two! 

Dannah: Alright, so at fifteen you thought, “I’m going to get married, have babies . . . then Jesus can come,” kind of thing. That’s how I was when I was fifteen years old . . .“Jesus, please wait until . . .”

Colleen: Totally, absolutely! (laughter)

Dannah: So at what point in your life did you realize, “Oh, the Lord’s called me to a significant season of singleness.”

Colleen: Well, this is the grace in it all: He never showed me too far down the road, which is such a grace gift. But I remember distinctly, I was on a camping trip with my family, I was twenty-one. I was lying in the tent having time with the Lord by myself, and a distinct impression came to me that it was going to be awhile.

To me, “a while” meant a year or two, because at twenty-one, that’s a while! And so that was a kindness at that point, to know that, “Okay, this isn’t, next week or next month.”

Dannah: How did you process that? 

Colleen: I was in a good place, as far as I remember, to feel that like it was purposeful and it was meaningful. I was involved in some really neat ministries at the time, so that wasn’t too intimidating. I didn’t like the word, necessarily, that I got at that point. 

Dannah: The word “wait”? 

Colleen: Yes. 

Dannah: The Lord likes that word; we don’t usually love it when we receive it from Him. 

Colleen: We don’t like it. I’m still not great at it all these years later! 

Dannah: When you say you were involved with a lot of other ministries, I think one of things we miss when we are single . . . All of us are single at some point in our life. Some of us are single as young adults, some of us are single through circumstances that we never imagined, and some of us—most of us—will spend some single years at the end of our lives. So it’s something we need to allow the Lord to teach us to do well. 

When I hear you say, “I had other ministries that I was involved in,” what did your singleness allow you to do to serve the Lord that you maybe couldn’t have done if you had been married?

Colleen: Yes, singleness was rich in that way! It was so hard, but it was so rich. I got to care for so many young women. It was incredible, the gift that God gave me in those years of pouring out the love that I thought was meant for a husband and children.

I just had all this love I couldn’t wait to give in a marriage and in motherhood, but it poured out to women younger than me in different discipleship ministries and youth groups and conferences. It was a very, very sweet and rich time—relationally rich, too. I was involved in small Bible studies, mentoring, it never stopped during singleness.

Dannah: I love that. I love that you spent your singleness on the Lord. So . . . was it a year?

Colleen: Nope, not a year! It would be thirteen or fourteen years!

Dannah: What was the hardest thing about living as a single woman?

Colleen: You know, it was hard in layers. In different seasons different things would be hard. One of the hardest things was feeling left behind. Almost all of my friends got married incredibly young and started popping out kids! And I was like, “Am I going to have a boyfriend before they have Kid # Four?!” It just felt so behind and so out of the loop.

One of my greatest desires is to be able to enter in with people and share their world, and it was so hard to know how to enter in with my friends with three kids running around. I felt so disconnected. To me, that connection and that knowing is so precious. I think that was one of the hardest things, just feeling almost disoriented, “What do I do when my circles are all married? What does this look like for me?”

Dannah: Did you figure it out?

Colleen: No!

Dannah: Because I was just going to ask you, what advice would you give a woman who’s maybe twenty-five, twenty-seven, thirty, thirty-five, and she’s feeling that. Where can she go in God’s Word to find wisdom and encouragement? What would you say to her?

Colleen: Well, I think one of the things that helped me a lot was kind of giving up this ideal of “arriving at contentment,” and instead knowing that day by day I would run into the arms of Jesus. I could not “arrive” at something that some people, I think, wanted me to “arrive” at. 

The cliches, “Once you’re content, you’ll find the guy the next day.” And there were days I was content, and then there were days I wrestled so hard and I grieved. I think that was the gift in it. I was needing to go to Christ daily, and not arriving at this new state of being, but knowing Him on the daily—sometimes hourly basis—of saying, “God, this is so hard! I don’t understand what You’re doing, but I know You’re good!” 

As I stayed in the Word, it became alive to me in a new way through singleness. And it’s interesting, I experienced His love in such a real and tangible way because of those hard days and years.

I remember a couple of married friends (and neither state is better or worse) saying, “I don’t experience Jesus like you do.” And I think it was that daily running into Him so desperately, because I could not deny the fact that God had put in me these emotional, relational, physical desires. They were good; they weren’t bad. 

But for some reason, He was saying, “Not yet, or maybe not ever.” And to go to Him became this beautiful love relationship and strength.

Dannah: I love how real you are. You know, when Paul writes about contentment, he’s doing it from a prison cell. He’s also asking for a cloak! He’s cold; he’s not comfortable. I think sometimes we believe the lie that if I’m content, it means I’m not uncomfortable.

And you’re saying, “I was able to find the contentment, but I also realized that there was a discomfort each day there.”

Michelle Hill: Colleen, you had said that there were layers to singleness. What are some of the layers that are there to singleness? 

Colleen: I think one of them is potentially the misunderstanding of singleness, and maybe the misconceptions of it, which I would have had, too, had I not walked through it. But some of the trite answers or cliches are so painful to a single woman who is longing to honor God and walk by faith.

Things like the quick fixes: “Why don’t you change churches,” or “Maybe if you did this or that,” or “What if you lost weight? “What if you wore more makeup?” These very simplistic things to try to kind of “fix a problem.”

And at times that’s what I felt like, that I was a problem to be fixed, instead of being surrounded by faith and encouragement. I mean, we’re in a broken world, we all get this wrong. I’ve said such hurtful things to people who are in seasons that I’ve never experienced.

We’re not looking to each other to be God. But I think for the single woman—for me and for many that I’ve talked with—those are so painful, those comments and those misunderstandings which come at a time when you’re already feeling a little isolated or lonely. So that was one layer.

Different layers of, what does this look like in a world that is set up for couples. I’m going to sit by myself at a table for couples. What does this look like? How do I do this? How do I go to another bridal shower or baby shower, when I would just love the great date with the potential great guy!

Those feelings are complex emotionally and mentally and relationally. There were times I would just sit out a wedding because I was too tender to go to yet another one. I think that’s hard to explain when you’re in it. So, I could go on and on, but I feel like there are just so many nuances in everyday life.

Especially, I think, within the church. Because we value marriage, we love marriage, we celebrate it, we love children. These are good beautiful gifts from God that the world may not value. But because we value them, when we don’t follow that typical pattern of life, it is very strange, and you feel like a square peg in a round hole.

So, trying to figure out how to do that in a way that still promotes unity, that doesn’t lead to a resentful heart or a distance of spirit. That was a learning curve for me, all the way to the end, how to do that well and to kind of navigate some misunderstandings. 

Even being asked to leave a small group because they were all couples and they wanted to be able to talk about sex. It was a small church, and I didn’t know where else to go in that church.

Michelle: It’s hard!

Colleen: I didn’t blame anyone in that group. It made sense to me. They were trying to protect me from feeling awkward, but finding that belonging and that community so you’re not ostracized or lonely beyond what intrinsically is lonely about singleness.

Dannah: You just referenced something that I think is really important. You bravely have talked about a topic that is pretty sensitive, and that is that a single woman does have physical desires. She wants to be touched; she wants to be held. 

A lot of times my heart is deeply burdened for those Christian women who are like, “Well, I need a sexual outlet! I mean, I can’t live without a sexual outlet!” That’s the lie that the world tells us.

It’s not a new lie. If you go back to 1 Corinthians chapters 6–7, Paul says, “Hey, the world is saying, ‘Food for the stomach, the stomach for food’ (see 1 Cor. 6:13). He was quoting a popular saying from the Greek culture that basically would say, “Sex is like food. You need it; you can’t live without it. It’s just your body.”

But you’ve written about that in a really brave way. How did you deal with those desires and take them to the Lord and channel them so that they weren’t destructive and they didn’t lead you to something sinful?

Colleen: Yes, well I think all of life, in every season and in every state, we’re denying ourselves something, because the eternal perfect feast has not come yet. So in that sense, it was singleness for me. One of the hardest parts of self-denial was definitely the physical. 

Some women have a different experience, but for me, that was very, very, very challenging! I think it was definitely a learning curve, over time, of how to deal with that, of how to manage those passions.

You can go to extremes in saying, “These are bad!” And that’s one way we can deal with these feelings, in shaming them, and saying they’re bad. But God was giving me such a neat perspective and freedom to say, “These are beautiful!”

“So if, Colleen, I’m having you wait to express these beautiful desires, there’s a great purpose behind this! There’s a fantastic story being written that’s even better than your physical desires being met right now.” And that perspective helped me.

Dannah: Did you have accountability?

Colleen: I didn’t. There was no one else I knew “in my shoes” at that point. So what I did over time, I began to just be more open and transparent with people in different seasons. I felt like there wasn’t maybe a like-minded person who knew what this was like, at that point.

But as I opened up, it was interesting to hear married women express struggles and this was a common thing . . . and I was shocked!

Dannah: “The grass is always greener . . .”

Colleen: Totally! I was shocked at the silence around an issue that everyone (with whom I was starting to open up and kind of risk the conversation with) was identifying with. That was an amazing new thing to me, because it was largely addressed for men.

Dannah: I feel like anytime our appetites are leading us to something that is not God’s best for us, that is self-control practice. It’s self-control rehearsal. If we start with “the little things,” it’s just a matter of time until we move on to give ourselves more space for the bigger thing and then the bigger thing. Before we know it, we’re doing unthinkable things.

Colleen: Yes.

Dannah: Whether that’s food, whether it’s the desire for touch, whether it’s sexual desire, whether it’s the way we use our phones and entertainment so lazily and carelessly, these are opportunities for us to rely on the Holy Spirit and say, “I need Your self-control right now.” I need the self-control of the Holy Spirit in me right now.

Colleen: Yes. I think, too, I have to add, I did not always do this well. I put myself in situations with a few different guys . . . It wasn’t super compromised, but it changed my struggle into something harder. So I think that’s exactly it. It’s that anything at any time for anyone can become a snare. That’s when I became more aware of a need to share and to be transparent, because I saw how quickly I could go down the wrong path.

All of us have gone down the wrong path one way or another. No one’s impervious, no one’s gotten this perfectly. So God is so gracious, that we can go running back to Him and say, “Oh, I see this pattern that I’ve had in my head, in my heart, that’s made me a little bit more embittered toward You, God, because of what I’ve been chasing after that’s not Your desire.” For all of us, I think it’s important to go back to Him for grace and for new power, new mercies each day.

Dannah: Yes. We all need that.

Michelle: How is a single to grieve well?

Colleen: That’s a great question!

Michelle: You’re grieving the loss of maybe a young marriage, a young family, and you don’t know what the future holds. You don’t know what God might have for you. How do you grieve that and be open to what God might have?

Colleen: Wow, that is such a good question, because it’s such an intrinsic part of that process. I think it’s a grieving of many deaths, right? It’s layered deaths that you’re grieving, and you grieve one and then another one comes. It’s a way of grieving or a process of grieving.

I think the ability to pour out our hearts—what’s the Scripture that says, “Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord”? (Lam. 2:19) To be able to pour it out and pour it out again. He can take that raw, unedited version of our emotions, where nobody else can. We need other people, we need to share with other people, we need to stay transparent and real and confess sin and all that. But the first person who needs the unedited version is Jesus. That grieving for me came in the form . . . This may be different for different single women. Again, I didn’t wait as long as some of my friends. I have thirty-eight, thirty-nine, and forty-year-old friends right now who are waiting, and they’ve far surpassed my thirty-four years. 

But I think all of us, to be able to be really ugly and messy with God and know that He can take it. He can move us from where we are to a more . . . He can return us to joy. He can move us from that place of that raw prayer to a prayer that’s from His heart. I could see that over time. I would pray, “God, why are You doing this to me? This is like torture!” Within that process of praying and talking with Him so vulnerably and with such rawness, He would get me to the place where I was saying, “God, let me invest this next day well. Let me text someone who needs encouragement. Let me go back to youth group and love on these girls.”

It’s incredible how His Spirit does that, right? I can start from that place where I was angry sometimes, I was a mess, a weeping, crazy mess. Then His Spirit is so beautiful and powerful that He moves us to a place where we’re starting to pray His heart, even though circumstances haven’t changed and even though our emotions are still there.

Michelle: What I’m hearing you say is that it’s okay to feel some of these unsettledness, frustrations, maybe even anger?

Colleen: Yes.

Michelle: But to keep taking it to God, to continually surrender daily. You might have a couple of days where you’re crying, and then a couple of days where you’re not, and the tears might come back. But we need to be before the Father.

Colleen: Yes, absolutely. That is the beauty of it. That’s why the Psalms are my favorite book of the Bible. I’ve lived in the Psalms more than any other book because of that rawness. David is so real; he doesn’t pull punches with God. God takes it, and by the end of many of those psalms, David is praising God, right? He doesn’t start out that way, though. I just love that. So yes, God can take it, and I feel like if we stuff it, it just does damage, but to be able to process that grief and go through the grieving stages with God.

It’s also bonding with God. It draws us nearer to Him and it forms this attachment with Him and this trust with Him that would not be apart from grieving with Him.

Nancy: Whether we’re single or married—really, in every situation and season of our lives—learning to express our emotions and desires to the Lord is an important part of our walk with Him.

We’ve been listening to Colleen Chao, who in God’s providence remained single until she was in her mid-thirties. She’s been talking with Revive Our Hearts team members Dannah Gresh and Michelle Hill.

I want to let you know about a little booklet that I wrote some time ago, in the days before I was married. It’s called Singled Out for Him. The subtitle of this booklet is Embracing the Gift, the Blessings, and the Challenges of Singleness.

Just as Colleen mentioned today, singleness is not something to be dread or resented, but in the will of God, it’s a gift to be received with gratitude. You see, the key to experiencing joy and fullness as a single person or as a married person is to discover and embrace the plan and the calling of God, whatever that looks like in this moment. That’s what Colleen’s been talking about today.

In Singled Out for Him, I share ten practical commitments that I’ve found to be a pathway to true blessing during my long season of singleness. Whether you’re a twenty-something single or maybe, as I was, a fifty-something single, I think you’ll find this to be an encouragement for yourself and perhaps for another friend who’s in that season.

This week we’ll send you a copy of that booklet, Singled Out for Him, as our way of saying “thank you” for your donation of any size to support the work of Revive Our Hearts. To donate, just visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or give us a call at 1-800-569-5959. Be sure to ask for my booklet on singleness when you get in touch, whether it’s for yourself or something you’d like to share with a single friend.

Now, have you ever thought of suffering as a workout that helps you build endurance? Tomorrow, Colleen will be back to explain that idea. I hope you’ll join us again for Revive Our Hearts.

No matter what your season of life, Revive Our Hearts invites you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.