Answer

What Does God Want Me Doing While I'm Single?

You are single, you did not plan to be, and Church can feel organised around a life you do not have yet. Sitting in a lesson about eternal families while your own is hypothetical is genuinely hard, and pretending otherwise does not help.

Living. Not waiting, in the sense of putting things on hold until the real life starts. Marriage is central to God’s plan and it is not the point at which your discipleship begins. Your covenants are already in force, the Savior is already available, and the growth the plan exists for is already happening.

Eternal Truths

No faithful disciple is predestined to receive less than all the Father has. Elder D. Todd Christofferson said exactly that while acknowledging that marriage and family are not presently available to everyone, and promised that the Atonement will in the end compensate all deprivation and loss for those who turn to Christ (“Why Marriage, Why Family”). That is a promise about the whole horizon, not a consolation about this year.

Your covenants are already yours. Baptism, the sacrament, and temple covenants where you have them are not provisional pending a wedding. A single member is not a member-in-waiting. The Lord’s promise that where two or three are gathered He is there was not addressed to couples (Matthew 18:20).

Strengthening families is asked of everyone, not only of parents. The Family: A Proclamation to the World calls on responsible citizens everywhere to promote measures that strengthen the family. You have siblings, nieces and nephews, friends, a ward, and often parents who need you. Some of the people doing family work best are single.

What Can Make This Confusing?

Two errors sit on either side of this. One treats the season as a waiting room, so nothing gets built and years pass. The other over-corrects into a life so full and self-sufficient that there is genuinely no room left for anyone. Both are understandable and both cost something. And none of this requires you to pretend that singleness is what you wanted. The desire for marriage is right, and God is not asking you to talk yourself out of it.

Questions to Think About

• What am I not building because I am assuming it starts later?
• Is my life full in a way that leaves room for someone, or full in a way that does not?
• Where is family work already available to me right now?

What You Can Do

Choose one thing this month that you would do anyway if you knew marriage were coming in five years, and start it: the qualification, the calling, the trip, the friendship that needs your attention. Then pick one family member who could use a regular hour of you. The essay behind this answer says more about the shape of a single life.

Jesus Christ knows what it is to live a faithful life that did not look like the pattern, and He is building something in you now that will not be wasted.