My family had long ago stopped asking if there was a man in my life. “No. I haven’t met anyone good enough yet,” was a tired response, and they had accepted my will to let God figure out my love life. And for eight years, I chose not to date. I decided to battle discontentment—and in faith, I took God up on his claim to be enough for me.

As promised, here are eight lessons I’ve learned in eight years of singleness:

1. Know your purpose: It turns out that being a wife is not my purpose in life. God may (and I believe he does) have that in store for me, but my real purpose is to follow the Great Commission that Jesus gave his disciples in Matthew 28:18-19. God wants me to have his heart for lost people. He wants me to share the Gospel and see Christians grow in their relationships with Christ.

God’s desire is for us to have a heart for the lost while we are single and while we are married. If you want God to use your marriage to influence other people for the Gospel, you must live for the Gospel as a single person.

2. Rejoice with those who rejoice: Throughout my years of singleness, I attended countless weddings. I always made a point to be sincerely happy for the bride and groom, knowing that even if I was struggling with wanting a husband of my own, I wanted my husband—not my friend’s husband. I am always thankful that God blesses my friends. We must ward against jealousy, bitterness, covetousness.

3. It’s all about timing: God always knows what’s best. In college there were times when I really wanted to get married, and I was convinced that I was ready for it. That is a laughable thought now. So much of my discontentment over the years came from an expectation that I planted when I decided when something needed to happen.

Romans 5:6 says, “At just the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.”  If Christ new just the right moment to come into the world to save all of us from our sin, God also knows just the right time in your life to provide your spouse.

4. Live it up: One of the biggest traps we fall into is that we want to get out of singleness so badly that we are unable to enjoy the benefits of it. The reality is that your adult single years are very few relative to your entire life. I have been thankful that I can go to all of my family’s holiday events; they are not shared. I can live independently and serve people until late at night and early in the morning. I have had the opportunity to begin business ventures, and I revel in the deep relationships that have been formed with other women through these years.

5. Develop who you are in Christ: One of the most valuable things I did throughout the last eight years was spend time in God’s Word, growing in my relationship with Christ. You have an opportunity to know Christ, and the best way to do that is to read the Bible and be obedient to it. Spend time reading passages about your salvation. Knowing the ins and outs of what it means to be a New Creation is so important to know so that your identity is completely in Christ and his work on the cross. When you have a firm foundation in your identity, your confidence will come from Christ, not yourself, and not a member of the opposite sex.

6. Guard your heart: It doesn't take much for my mind to wander. If left idle, I begin to daydream. I can’t watch romantic comedies very much anymore. The problem is that I have a very skewed view of what relationships are, what they are about, and how to go about them when I watch them.

7. Learn to love: I always considered myself a nice person until I tried to really love people. I’m not talking about love in a smile-and-say-hi-to-your-neighbor kind of way. I’m talking about the Philippians 2 kind of love that Christ showed on the cross—the love that puts every person before yourself because you see their needs as more important than your own. This love cost Jesus his life, and in some ways it has cost me mine. A lot of my dreams and desires for the last few years of my life have died.

But the benefits have far outweighed the cost. Not only do I have relationships with a wide variety of people that I have nothing in common with, but I have also learned to love and put people first when I really don’t want to. That is what my marriage will one day be all about.

8. Get godly, get content: But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it (2 Timothy 6:6-7). Having an eternal perspective on our lives gives is a lot of insight into how to live. We don’t get to take anything with us when we die—including a husband. But, we do get to spend forever with Christ in perfect unity.

I believe there is great gain in this contentment is that we will always be living in not-so-ideal circumstances because we are still living in an imperfect world. Growing in contentment as a single allows us to be content when we are a parent of a crying child, dealing with disease, or having a good attitude at an unpleasant job. In this contentment, we will be able to be joyful and have the perspective necessary to see people know Christ because we will know that he is all we need.