Davina McCall and Hit, Miss or Maybe

From Sheridan Voysey, Writer and broadcaster:

It’s Faith in the World Week on Radio 2, and this year’s theme is Being Single. With more of us either choosing to remain single or finding ourselves single without wanting to be, we’re exploring what faith can say to the experience.

I remember talking with a colleague once when the conversation turned to singleness. John quieted his voice and said, “Well, that’s me—forty years old and still unmarried.” There was a note of shame in his words.

I once stayed in a lovely old hotel where guests shared breakfast around large tables. I got seated next to a girl in her thirties named Anne, who told me her stay was a birthday gift. I asked if anyone special was celebrating with her. She lowered her eyes and said, “No, I’m here alone.”

While many are content being single,others, like John and Anne, find it a source of sadness and even shame. I don’t think some of the messages we send as a society help.

Those ‘Make Him Fall in Love With You’ magazine articles and ‘Get Married Quick’ TV shows can paint singleness as a condition to be cured. And then there’s the Jerry Maguire myth. You might remember the scene: Tom Cruise gazes at Renee Zellweger and says, “You complete me.” Echoing the Greek tale that each of us is a half who must find our ‘other half’ to be whole, it subtly tells John and Anne that without a partner they’re incomplete.

The fact is I talk to many married couples who still feel incomplete… because they haven’t been able to have children. And couples with one child who feel incomplete because they haven’t had a second. I believe there is a space within us that hungers to be filled, but no one can fill it but God.

My view of singleness changed forever when I realised the pressures Jesus faced in his time. In his culture, marriage and children was expected of all. One cleric even said that a man without a wife wasn’t a proper man. And yet Jesus never married or had children. For a Christian like me this is profound: when God visits the earth he comes as a single man, gracing the status with honour and respect.

So raise your voice loud, John.

Anne, lift your head.

Your singleness isn’t a condition to be a cured, but a status of divine dignity.