Last week, I asked what topics you wanted me to write about. Your responses poured in—so many great suggestions and ideas to write about, and I will write about them in future newsletters. This week, I wanted to respond to the messages that broke my heart.
They were messages like this:
“I want to get married and build a warm home together with my husband. I believe that everything is in Hashem’s hands! I am trying to do my hishtadlus, keep my spirits up, and trust Hashem completely. It’s hard. I think my biggest challenge at the moment is feeling triggered and overly sensitive by everything. Sometimes that includes reading and hearing about other people’s stories.”
And this:
“What would I not appreciate? Suddenly getting emails that are geared toward those who are already married, while I ache to be there, too… even if it would mean getting emails from you less frequently, I would prefer that to getting emails that are not relevant to me.”
These messages reminded me of Sarah.
Sarah stared at her phone, reading the text again. “I’M ENGAGED!!!” followed by seventeen heart emojis and a photo of her little sister’s hand with a diamond that caught the light just right.
Eight years. Sarah had been dating for eight years. Hotel lobbies, coffee dates, networking events—every setup her mother could orchestrate. She’d been to hundreds of weddings, danced at every one, and perfected the art of what to answer to “Im yirtzeh Hashem by you” because she knew people meant well.
Her sister was twenty-two. Twenty-two and engaged after dating for only six months.
Sarah typed “Mazel tov! So happy for you!” and hit send before she could think too much about it. Then she put her phone and her head down, and cried.
She was happy for her sister. She really was. But she was also devastated. She was trying to convince herself that this was all part of some perfect plan where her sister getting engaged at twenty-two and her still being single at twenty-nine was somehow exactly how it was supposed to be.
Reading these messages and thinking about singles like Sarah, and being the nerd that I am, I did what I always do when I’m trying to understand something—I looked it up. I went to dictionary.com and searched “hope.” I’ve written about hope many times, but I never actually took the time to look up its definition. I just assumed I knew what it meant.
This is the dictionary definition of hope: the feeling that what is wanted can be had, or that events will turn out for the best.
I read it twice. Then I realized something.
Hope isn’t just “I believe good things will happen to me.” It’s actually two things: “I believe I’ll get what I want,” AND “I believe that whatever happens is for the best.”
Hope means if you want to get married, you’re not just believing you’ll find your bashert. You’re also believing that if you haven’t met them yet, that’s somehow also perfect.
Hope is about wanting something really badly while also being okay with not having it.
Sounds totally doable, right?
And by the way, this isn’t just about wanting to get married. Married people also hope for things—they hope for nachas from their children, financial stability, and shalom bayis. We’re all walking around hoping for things desperately while also trying to be okay with not having them.
Piece of cake.
The First Half Is the Easy Part
The wanting part of hope? That actually feels good. Believing your bashert is out there, imagining your future together, feeling excited about possibilities—that’s energizing. It keeps you going on dates, keeps you davening, keeps you open to meeting new people.
This is the hope everyone talks about when they tell you to “stay positive.” It’s future-focused, full of anticipation. It’s the fuel that gets you to keep trying. Without it, you’d probably just stay home in pajamas.
The Second Half Is Where It Gets Hard
The second part—believing that whatever happens is “for the best”—that’s where hope gets complicated. This isn’t about being excited for your future. This is about trusting that if your future looks completely different from what you want, that’s somehow also perfect.
It’s like hope is saying, “Great, you want to get married! Now also be thrilled that you’re not married yet because that’s also amazing!”
Thanks, hope. Very helpful.
Hope, according to its actual definition, is the simultaneous occurrence of two things. Some days, the “I’ll get what I want” part feels stronger. Other days, the “whatever happens is right” part takes over.
This is exactly what the first person who wrote to me was describing. She’s doing her hishtadlus (part one of hope—believing she’ll get what she wants) while also trusting Hashem completely (part two—believing whatever happens is for the best). And it’s making her feel “triggered and overly sensitive by everything.”
Of course it is. She’s trying to hold both parts of hope at the same time, which is like trying to be excited about something while also being totally fine if it never happens. No wonder she feels emotionally raw.
And the second person? She’s asking not to get emails about married life, “while I ache to be there, too.” She wants to get married (part one), but she’s also trying to be okay with being single right now (part two). Getting reminded of what she doesn’t have makes it harder to maintain that second part. She’s trying to manage an impossible emotional balancing act.
You don’t have to choose between wanting and accepting—the dictionary says hope includes both. And the dictionary is never wrong.
When Hope Shifts
Most days, you’re probably bouncing somewhere between hope and despair (which is the opposite of hope), sometimes within the same hour.
Believing and not believing.
Wanting and trying to be okay with not having what you want.
Trusting and questioning.
It’s like emotional ping-pong, except both paddles are in your own hands and you’re somehow supposed to win against yourself.
You may get to a point where you think, “You know what? This is never happening. I’m never getting married.” And you figure that means you’ve given up hope.
But if somewhere in the back of your mind you’re thinking, “and that’s for the best because this is what Hashem wants for me now,” then according to the dictionary, you’re still hoping. You’re just using the second half of the definition instead of the first.
So even when you think you’ve lost hope completely, you might just be… a different kind of hopeful. Welcome to the most confusing pep talk ever.
To both of you who wrote those messages, I now understand. You’re just trying to hope.
After reading all this, you may think I have the perfect words of chizuk for you.
I don’t.
I don’t have a perfectly neat ending for this post.
If hope feels hard, it’s because it IS. And maybe that’s all the chizuk you needed to hear today.
