A:
Dear sufferer,
An institute class I was in a couple of months ago discussed this issue. We had a substitute teacher, who happened to be a single sister in her late 20's, and we were covering some of the Old Testament stories about marriage, such as Isaac journeying to find Rebecca. The teacher talked about how Isaac had the faith to marry, and was willing to go out of his way to look for her. She also talked about the faith it must have taken Rebecca to accept the proposal and journey far from her family to marry Isaac.
She cited a talk from the 1987 July Ensign called "The Faith to Marry." As I read it, I thought a lot of the social attitudes about marriage and male/female roles were definitely outdated, but the general advice of how to gain faith was good. The article goes more into the different points, but it outlines 10 things that can build your faith:
- Come to the Lord
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Study the scriptures with constant prayer, praying to feel the Lord’s acceptance
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Be pure
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Cultivate a spirit of appreciation
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Do not compare yourself with other people
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Serve others for righteous reasons
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Cultivate friendships with individuals you can listen to and share with
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Date regularly, but date those who have similar interests
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Be prepared to choose, using a proper balance between agency and inspiration
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Forgive everyone, especially those who may be partly responsible for your fear of marriage
I'll leave you to study and apply these ideas more in depth, but I just want to talk a bit about what it means to have "faith" for something to happen. A lot of people have a hard time with the idea of developing the faith to marry because they've usually already been trying to be faithful and positive about it, and being told that they need to have more faith sounds like being told they're "doing faith wrong" or "don't have enough faith." They feel this way because the expected outcome of their faith - marriage - hasn't happened when they would like or expect it to. This is a pretty normal and understandable reaction.
I'm going to compare having the faith to marry with having the faith to be healed. Early on in my mission, I started to experience a lot of back pain from my (mild) case of scoliosis. It doesn't usually bother me much, but my back gets sore when I'm stressed from all the muscles being tight when they're already trying to compensate for this weird dip in my spine. My area and companion were causing a lot of stress, and my back was more sore than it's been before or since. I got a blessing from my district leader, which talked about the faith to be healed. It also made it sound like my back wasn't necessarily going to feel better right away.
I spent a lot of time talking about what it meant to have the faith to be healed. Did I have faith that the Lord could heal me? Eventually, I decided I did; that if the Lord decided that healing me would be the best thing for my progression, He could make my back feel completely better instantaneously. He could even straighten my spine without me understanding how it happened, if that were necessary. Why, then, when I believed He could do it and He had promised to heal me if I had the faith, would the blessing be delayed? Eventually, I realized that having the faith to be healed meant having faith that at any given moment, the Lord was capable of healing me. Every second He didn't, it was for a specific purpose, and my duty was to go forward every day as if I would be healed in the blink of an eye, and to be positive and trust that every day I wasn't healed was for a reason. This was very freeing, because I no longer had to worry about whether or not my back hurt. It still hurt just as much, but I was able to put it entirely into the Lord's hands, trust His timing, and completely focus my time, energy, and happiness on other things. My back no longer affected my ability to accomplish things, because my happiness and my activities were no longer dependent on how it felt. I trusted God and didn't focus on it. Because of this, while I know that I had stopped experiencing back pain by the time I left the area, I can't even pinpoint exactly when it happened. I didn't even notice, because it had no longer become a focus in my life, despite the fact that I was simultanously exercising faith to be healed the whole time.
I think this is a lot like the faith to marry. Ultimately, the Lord wants you to get married, and He has a plan to help you do so. The thing is, you can't know everything about this plan or the exact timing of it. On any given day, you could meet the person the Lord is preparing for you. Or it could be five years from now. You just don't know. What you can know and have faith in, however, is that the Lord doesn't want to delay this blessing from you any longer than is absolutely necessary for your preparation and progression. You can do your best to date, commit the rest to the Lord, and be free to be happy and accomplish a lot of great things in your life, trusting that it will happen when it's supposed to.
-Zedability