A case for hoping for the best (not bracing for the worst)

A realization to make everything about life easier.

This is another moment when I wish I had a magic wand.

If I could bestow upon us all a tried and true method for making dating a glittering experience, I would do it faster than you can say “no more dating apps, please.” Unfortunately, I have yet to stumble across a magic wand.

The truth is that dating can be so fun and exciting, and it also can be exhausting and drain the hope out of you. I hope you know that you are never alone in trying to navigate all of those feelings. So until the day I do find that magic wand, I’ll do the next best thing I can think of and present to you (over the next three weeks) three realizations about dating that I believe will truly make your journey just a little bit easier.

Keep Your Hopes Up

I grew up with a dad and two brothers who were pretty big Star Wars fans. I myself have seen the movies and love the intricate storyline and appreciate how complex the characters are, but it would be a stretch to say I am a true Star Wars fan myself. I’m more like a supportive, casually interested observer.

There is a line, however, that is repeated in several of the Star War movies that has stuck in my head for years. This line isn’t a bit of wisdom from Yoda or a funny quip from Jar Jar Binks. It is simply this: “Shields up.” Young Anakin Skywalker says it when he blows up the control ship in The Phantom Menace and other pilots say it during fights in space. Even if I don’t grasp all the intricacies of Star Wars, I can understand the logic of putting up your ship’s shield if someone starts shooting at you.

Why do I think about such a minor line from a movie I don’t even watch that often? Because when I feel under attack by the fears of life, I imagine putting my shields up. Not a forcefield like Anakin’s, but a shield of hope. People are always telling us to “not get our hopes up” but I think that when life tries to shoot you down, the best thing you can do is make a conscious choice to put up a shield of hope—and then keep it up! And nowhere is this more true than in dating.

There have been times in my life when I’ve figuratively put down my hope shield, and really embraced the belief that I am never going to get married. Maybe you’ve been there too. Maybe, like me, you’ve sometimes felt that giving up on marriage is the right thing to do so that you can get on with your life and not feel like you’re always waiting for something.

But I’ve come to believe that God never wants us to give up on our fondest dreams.

Satan on the other hand, is quite committed to convincing us that good things will never come our way, but choosing to buy into the adversary’s lies and put down your hope shield will bring consequences none of us want.

Instead, we can claim the real, day-to-day power that comes from choosing to be hopeful—even when you feel outnumbered or outsmarted. I’ve even come to believe that the decision to choose hope is a decision to live the gospel of Jesus Christ. To explain what I mean by that, let me take you back to a pivotal moment during my mission that, oddly enough, has really come in clutch in my dating life.

I started my mission with the mindset that I was walking into a very difficult experience. I focused a lot of mental energy on preparing myself for rejection, disappointment, exhaustion, and tests to my faith. In my personal prayers leading up to when I reported to the MTC, I frequently told God that I knew how hard this was going to be and assured Him that I was willing to do it. In fact, it was almost like I felt I should assure God that I didn’t need to have any miraculous experiences or be involved in Liahona-worthy conversions.

Aw little missionary me.

I was ready to put my head down, commit to the grind, and prove myself. God could count on me to be faithful despite disappointment, so bring on the disappointment! Come @ me!

Then a few weeks into my mission I read something in Preach My Gospel that, honestly, at the time, rocked my world (really flipped my proverbial pancake, if you will).

Chapter six is dedicated to helping you develop the following nine Christlike attributes: faith, hope, charity and love, virtue, knowledge, patience, humility, diligence and obedience. At the end of the chapter, there is what the manual calls an “Attribute Activity.” (It’s essentially the closest thing to a BuzzFeed quiz missionaries get.)

To complete this activity, you read through several statements for each of the nine attributes and consider how well they describe you. For example, the first question under the “Faith” category says, “I believe in Christ and accept Him as my Savior.” You then would think about how true that statement is about yourself and write down a number that describes you best: 1 = never,  2 = sometimes, 3 = often,  4 = almost always, 5 = always. The instructions for the activity add, “Spiritual growth is a gradual process, and no one is perfect, so you should expect to rate yourself better on some items than on others.”

So how I understood it, was that during the course of your mission you would want to be able to turn your “2s” into “3s” and your “4s” into “5s” and so forth, eventually becoming more Christlike in your thoughts and actions.

Now let me tell you the statement that blew my mind. In the hope section there is a line that says, “I am confident that I will have a happy and successful mission.”

Wait, wait, wait. If I am striving to become a more Christlike person, then I should be confident that my mission will be happy and successful? I am allowed, even encouraged, to hope for that?

How freeing!

Instead of resigning myself to whatever perceived hardships were coming my way, I could study and practice being hopeful until I could write a “5” next to that statement. This changes everything. Instead of only praying for the strength to endure, I also began praying to see real change in the people my companion and I were teaching. I began praying for baptisms. I began praying to feel happy and to recognize progress in my own spiritual growth.

And you know what? As I adopted that hopeful attitude, I did have a happy and successful mission. Not easy. Not always full of smiles and open doors. But I learned a deeper sense of happiness and a new, richer definition of success. And along the way, my eyes and heart were peeled for the road to success that I hoped was there, and I think that mindset helped me to not give up when life was hard and to recognize opportunities to share the gospel that may not have been obvious. I hoped that God was providing a way which then compelled me to look for the way.

I stopped bracing myself for the worst, and started hoping for the best.

When I got home from Virginia, I slowly realized that the same principle of choosing hope makes all the difference in dating.

As I’ve mentioned before, there was a period of my life right after college when I felt deeply resentful toward dating. My younger sister had gotten married just months after coming home from her mission, while I was over here going through what felt like a deeply unfair number of breakups and disheartening first dates.

I tried to be excited for my sister as she planned her wedding, but I was angry during the entire process. I couldn’t see what she had done to deserve this that I hadn’t done. In the sealing room at her wedding, I kept my head down and bit my lip the whole time to keep from crying too much.

In my frustration, my language started changing: I replaced all of my whens with ifs. “When I get married,” became, “If I get married.” “When I have kids,” became, “If I have kids.”

And if well-meaning people spoke to me with when statements, I immediately felt annoyed and misunderstood. Didn’t people realize how difficult dating is? How much I wanted to find the right person? Using when felt like dangling a carrot right in front of my nose, mocking me with the prize I was never going to get. Life was easier if I accepted the idea that I wasn’t going to get what I wanted and then moved on to things that felt more in my control.

I even stopped praying for guidance about dating because it felt like beating a dead horse. And besides, I often reasoned to myself, it’s not like any of us are guaranteed marriage in this life so why talk about it as if it were an inevitability? I found a sense of pride in affirming to myself and others that I might not ever get married and we should all accept that fact. (But behind my prideful, confident front were a lot of tears.) I also stopped seeking out dates and kept more to myself and my already comfortable group of friends.

In the year after my sister’s wedding when all the hupa-ba-loo settled down, my resentment also started to subside a bit, and I could see that I’d stepped back into the same mindset I’d had starting my mission: I was bracing myself for the worst instead of hoping for the best. I had once again determined to put my head down, keep my covenants, and make the most of life, not bothering to talk to God about some of the things my heart longed for most.

But through gentle spiritual experiences in the scriptures, and conversations with other women, I began to realize that my hopeless mindset about dating was not the best way to respond. Putting those dreams of marriage and family on the very back of the shelf to collect dust was hampering my connection to God; with every prayer, marriage was like the elephant in the room that I refused to acknowledge but was annoyed at. I also just wasn’t a very pleasant person to be around since I shot down people’s attempts to speak hopefully and just carried a bitterness that no one around me was asking for.

Gratefully, God was willing to work with my attitude and teach me the precious lesson of what it means to trust and to hope.

By my sister’s first wedding anniversary, dating was still sometimes a source of stress, but my anger gradually dissipated and hope began slowly falling on me like glitter. I realized that God didn’t just want me to hope for a happy and successful mission, He wanted me–and all of us—to hope for a happy and successful life.

And if we go through a period of hopelessness like I did, He wants us to “dust off our highest hopes” (as Taylor Swift says) and see with fresh eyes. It is Satan that tells us to give up and resign ourselves to some predetermined difficult fate.

Let me tell you about a few of the conversations and experiences I had in the year after my sister’s wedding that helped that hopeful glitter return to my life.

My friend Morgan, who is a few years older than me and who I look up to as a spiritual rock, was in her late-20s and single when her younger sister had a baby. Morgan at the time was enjoying a successful career that brought her a lot of joy. She also had always dreamed of marriage and a family of her own and thought that would have happened for her before now. She told me once about an interesting experience she had while wrestling with some tough emotions of confusion and heartache brought up by her niece’s birth. Here’s what she said:

“I felt that I had had this prompting that I was never going to get married, and I just needed to accept that. I had convinced myself that it was from God. I hadn't told anyone, but that weekend I was just so, so sad.

“I got my dad to give me a priesthood blessing, and in the blessing he promised that I would get married and have kids. And he said, ‘In a no-so-distant day of dirty diapers and sleepless nights, you will long for the life you have now.’ My dad didn't know that I had convinced myself I wasn't going to get married and needed to lose hope, but God did. The opposite of hope is despair and that comes from Satan so I think we have to live in expectation.”

I love Morgan’s experience for two reasons: First of all, it lets me know that I was not alone in honestly feeling like it would be better to give up. And second, I love how this shows us that God knows when our hope might be waning and He can send us reminders to keep believing. Morgan did get married several years after that priesthood blessing, something that I don’t know would have happened if she’d given up on the dating scene.

Another conversation I had with Morgan teaches us something powerful. Shortly before she got married, Morgan told me about a bridal shower some of the women in her life had thrown for her. Most of these women were in their 40s and 50s and only one of them wasn’t married. But Morgan told me this single woman was the life of the party. She gave funny marriage advice and didn’t let her different life circumstances hold her back from jumping into conversation and connecting with other women, even at a bridal shower.

Morgan also told me that this woman always uses “when” language when she speaks of getting married herself one day. Morgan says this hopeful outlook draws people to this woman; her attitude has a way of making life feel bright and light. And I have to assume that choosing hope makes the woman herself feel more bright and light. I’m sure she has difficult nights and pangs of longing, but choosing hope has brought her connection with other women and an abundance that I think despair would have robbed her of.

Let me give you another example. While on my mission in Virginia, my favorite area was a young single adult ward in downtown Richmond. I came to love many of the members in the ward, and two of my favorites were a best friend duo named Ashley and Shea.

The two women had grown up together and were in their late twenties when I was in their ward. Ashley and Shea were everything I wanted to be when I grew up. They were beautiful and kind and did so much to make their YSA ward a fun place to be. Both of them were always willing to come to lessons with us or feed us dinner. They made me feel happy and safe.

When I returned home, I kept up with their lives via Facebook. A few years later, both of them were married in the temple, something I knew they wanted and had been waiting faithfully for, even sacrificed for. (And I later learned that Shea was the one to introduce Ashley to her husband—what a pal.)

About a year after her wedding, Ashley posted something on Facebook that rang true to me. She said, “I felt in stake conference today that I need to trust that Heavenly Father does want to answer my prayers and bless me with miracles. In the past I’ve thought that He wouldn’t bless me with a husband or children or various other blessings because He wants me to have a hard life. Life will always have hard times, but I’m learning that He loves to bless me. I haven’t always received everything I hoped for, or things came later than I wanted, but what He’s given is better than I ever dreamed or prayed for.”

Around the same time, Shea posted a photo of her husband and two kids and said, “I still remember the days I prayed for the things I have now.”

These were women I had heard say they would only marry a worthy priesthood holder, even though they were living in a part of the US where there were fewer members of the Church their age around. I thought about and prayed for Shea and Ashley occasionally in the years after my mission and was so happy and inspired when they found their husbands and were married. But I didn’t only benefit from observing their lives from afar.

Ashley and Shea occasionally interacted with me on social media and offered support in little, but meaningful ways. For example, while I was working as an intern for the Liahona, I wrote an article about how I managed jealous feelings while my younger sister was getting married. I felt inspired to write the piece, but also felt quite vulnerable sharing how difficult that had been for me and how I didn’t always respond well.

The Liahona ended up choosing that article as one they shared on their Facebook page, and asked me to write a caption for the post and provide a picture if I would like to. I agreed and spent some time writing a caption and sent a photo of me with my three sisters.

My heart was beating so fast on the day the post was going to go live. So many people in my life had no idea I was sad and angry during Amy’s wedding, and I was nervous to have the article be shared on a page with hundreds of thousands of followers, many of whom I knew were my close family and friends.

This is the photo I shared with the post, which you can find here if you want.

A few hours after the post went live, Ashley sent me a message that said, “I love your article/post about jealousy. I’m so sorry for the pain you’ve felt and probably still feel. Being single is such a hard trial. I’m so so sorry for you to see relationships not working out. I’ll pray for you chica! If you ever want to talk, I’m here for you! Just let me know.”

Isn’t that exactly what we should be doing for each other as women? Ashley validated my feelings and expressed sympathy, but also offered her support through prayer and an open invitation to talk. Her message made me feel supported in a way that soothed my heart and made me genuinely smile amid the panic of thousands of people reading my article. I share this experience with Ashley to say that we don’t have to maintain hope all on our own—let’s do it together. How? We can be vulnerable in the right situations and, on the flip side, be willing to step into each other’s splash zones and offer help. 

While some of my heart-softening experience came from interaction with other women, others felt more like a direct little heart to heart with Heavenly Father; small but impactful moments that let me know that there was a happy “now” and an exciting future awaiting me if I kept up my shield of hope. These were moments just between Him and me but, I don’t think He’d mind if I let you in on some of our conversations.

The first one is very simple. This quote from Elder Neal A. Maxwell: “Do not let yesterday hold tomorrow hostage!” (And yes, he really did end it with an exclamation mark.)

I don’t even remember how I came across this quote since the talk was given long before I was even born, but it has helped me out many times. I wrote that sentence across the bottom of my copy of Preach My Gospel on the page about hope. At that time, it was a reminder that just because that day no one had listened to us, didn’t mean the next day was doomed too. One person giving me the phone number of the local Little Caesars instead of their own, doesn’t mean the next one will. (And yes, that really did happen and, yes, I asked the Little Caesars employee if they were interested in hearing a message about Jesus. But no, they weren’t.)

Later in life, Elder Maxwell’s quote came to mean that just because one date was incredibly cringy, doesn’t mean that the next one would be. One ended relationship does not already doom the next one. If you find yourself spiraling into thinking nothing will ever work out, fight back! Don’t be held hostage by those thoughts. The reality is that tomorrow and the day after that are going to bring new people, new experiences, and new opportunities.

My next example is also fairly simple (impressions from God are rarely complex after all). At the end of President Nelson’s October 2021 general conference talk he said something that again confirmed to me that it is OK, better even, to choose hope. Here’s what he said:

“If I could speak to each man or woman who longs for marriage but has not yet found his or her eternal companion, I would urge you not to wait until marriage to be endowed in the house of the Lord. Begin now to learn and experience what it means to be armed with priesthood power.”

All of that quote is gold, but I added italics to the word yet to pull your attention there. President Nelson is using when language. He is speaking in terms of hope. All my life I’ve been singing “follow the prophet,” and I plan to do that in this case.

Earlier in that same talk President Nelson also said:

“If it were possible for me to speak one-on-one with every young adult, I would plead with you to seek a companion with whom you can be sealed in the temple. You may wonder what difference this will make in your life. I promise it will make all the difference! As you marry in the temple and return repeatedly, you will be strengthened and guided in your decisions.”

I find it significant that if President Nelson was going to sit down with each of us, he would plead with us to seek our eternal companion by being sealed to them in the temple. That doesn’t sound like he wants us to give up the dream or put it on the back burner. We have permission to hope and live in expectation of it.

And whether our efforts result in marriage now, in 10 years, or in the next life, there will always be blessings and joy for striving for holy things, which brings me to my next point.

In President Nelson’s April 2021 general conference talk, “Christ Is Risen; Faith in Him Will Move Mountains,” he tells a story that I believe teaches us something about the blessings of striving for holy desires and not giving up hope. Here’s what he said,

“Two years ago, Sister Nelson and I visited Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, and Tahiti. Each of those island nations had experienced heavy rains for days. Members had fasted and prayed that their outdoor meetings would be protected from the rain.

“In Samoa, Fiji, and Tahiti, just as the meetings began, the rain stopped. But in Tonga, the rain did not stop. Yet 13,000 faithful Saints came hours early to get a seat, waited patiently through a steady downpour, and then sat through a very wet two-hour meeting.

“We saw vibrant faith at work among each of those islanders—faith sufficient to stop the rain and faith to persevere when the rain did not stop.

“The mountains in our lives do not always move how or when we would like. But our faith will always propel us forward. Faith always increases our access to godly power.”

Did you notice the two examples of faith that President Nelson saw in those people in Tonga? 1. Faith to stop the rain, and 2. faith to endure it. At the beginning of my mission and in that year I was bitter towards dating, I was focused only on the faith to endure: I didn’t even ask for the “rain” in my life to stop. I was determined to sit in my metaphorical poncho and be cold and uncomfortable for the foreseeable future. And sometimes that faith to endure may be exactly what Heavenly Father needs from us. To sit tight and stick it out; that could be exactly what our spirits need to progress.

But I don’t think that’s the case every time. Sometimes I think we need to have the faith to stop the rain. The faith to boldly ask God for what we really want, for the miracles we crave.

On my mission that meant praying for true and lasting converts, and back home it meant praying for true and lasting love.

Now, I’m not saying that just because we pray and act in with the rain-stopping faith means that the clouds are going to part every time or that the boy is going to show up at our doorstep with roses. But I do believe that asking for those greater blessings will create a more authentic, deeper relationship with God—and that will make all the difference in our lives.

When we share with Him our deepest desires through prayer, He can comfort and speak peace to our souls when things don’t seem to be working out. We will also be more receptive to the guidance He wants to give that will help us reach our dreams. In short, nothing bad and everything good is going to come from approaching God to ask for what we really want.

I could go on with many other spiritual impressions I’ve had; this is an ongoing conversation between God and I. But I want to end this section on an important point: Depending on where you are emotionally, reading all this talk about hope and happy endings can either be music to your ears or like nails scratching down a chalkboard—and I know that.

I know that sometimes the last thing you want to hear is a pep talk about all the other fish in the sea. If that is you right now, maybe don’t dwell on this section about hope for too long. Allow yourself some time to be upset, and then when time has settled your emotions a bit, come back and consider these principles again and see how you feel.

Explore hope again; approach God again in prayer again. Slowly raise those shields against life’s attacks and allow yourself to begin dusting off your highest hopes, no matter how thick the grime may have gotten. Don’t sit and daydream all day long and work yourself into an impatient fit, but don’t shove the dreams so far back that they get covered and dust and don’t feel real anymore. Take down those hopes and dreams and look at them. Remind yourself what you’re working toward, and then put that hope back up on the shelf gleaming.

Hopes up, ladies. Now and for forever.

If you find yourself having a hard time feeling hopeful about dating and marriage, I’ve compiled a short list of ways I found bring hope back into my own life:

• Don’t spend too much on social media. We hear this all the time, but it is so true. Social media is a hub for happy endings, and not usually a breakdown on all the difficulties that precede the smiles. Make a habit of regular social media fasts, and feel free to temporarily unfollow people if what they post may be difficult for you to see.

• Don’t listen to sad break up songs. I know, I know—All Too Well is beautiful, and the ten-minute version still isn’t long enough. But the words we hear affect us deeply, often in a way we don’t even recognize. Too many sad lyrics will make it all too easy to believe that life and love always come to a sad end. Fill your life with hopeful messages and be amazed at how much easier it is to be hopeful yourself.

• Proceed with caution into chick flicks. I love a good rom com after a long week of work, but sometimes seeing a dramatized love story just makes my own life look even more bleak and boring. We all know TV romances aren’t realistic, but watching them too much can blur the lines between reality and fiction. Switch things up—I’ve found a good nature documentary to be a great reminder of how big and beautiful the world is and how much I like being a part of it.

• Watch your train of thought. I am no therapist, but I do know that what we think about affects what we believe. If you find yourself inching toward the rabbit hole of despair, find something enjoyable to do and change the directions of your thoughts.

• Engage in work that thrills you. Set goals. Find a dream to chase. Your life is so important as it is right now. People in your ward and community need your love and time.

• Don’t live as if your life hasn’t begun yet. I once read an Instagram post where a woman talked about how she’d waited for years to buy this nice blender she wanted because that felt like something you’d purchase once you were established in a “real” home. But then she realized that her living space was a real home, even without a husband or kids. So she bought the blender; a symbolic move in her mind of choosing to live the life she wants right now. Buy your blenders, ladies, in whatever form they take. Don’t wait.

Bonus Blossoms

Hi! This is where I share a few random things I love, hopefully to add a little extra pink to swirl around your day.

1. I thought this article about a women’s hallucinations during cancer treatments, and all that experience taught her about Christ, was really beautiful: “A Lost Sheep.”

2. Even if you are not quite ready for Christmas music, this rendition of “Silver Bells” sung by Claire and Dave Crosby is soooo beautiful. I’ve listened to it only a hundred times: