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If you look at my bathroom mirror just right, you can see the residue of a post-it note that resided there for a few weeks not too long ago. Sort of like that "wash me" someone scrawls on your windshield you can still see when the sun shines on it just right even after you've obeyed its injunction.

I took the residue-leaving sticky down recently when out-of-state friends were coming to stay with me. It was just easier to take it down than try to explain the process that prompted me to get out a sticky note, put it in a conspicuous place, and write on it one word: hope.

Hope has been elusive for me lately. Slippery. Like trying to hold water with my bare hands. It just keeps trickling out of reach. I know it's here somewhere, I just can't pin it down.

So I jotted it down, in some sort of symbolic way of trapping it on a three-inch-square piece of paper—and as a reminder as I'd stand there each morning and evening brushing my teeth and applying and taking off makeup to be on the lookout. For hope.

You see, I've just let go of false hope. The notion that a husband is a sure bet, a guarantee, a right.

I had a conversation not too long ago that brought me both comfort and despair. I was chatting with a newly married 30something about trends in Christian circles and singledom when she said, "We need to face the fact that due to current gender ratios in the church, some single Christian women will have the choice of either marrying a non-Christian or not getting married at all. We in the church need to discuss what's the lesser of these two options, what the ramifications are, and how we can support them in their choice."

It was oddly comforting to have someone spell out a current reality—potentially affecting me—so plainly. Yes, this is the question (whether I'll be one of those faced only with these two less-than-ideal options) deep in my gut that I often try to ignore. Yes, this is the assumption about the future my generation can no longer make. Yes, this is the unfair reality I wrestle with God over on my own and my friends' behalf.

Armed with knowledge of demographics, trends, ratios, and anecdotal evidence from singles I've met across the country, my hope for my future no longer contains the assumption that I'll get married. And yes, I know God is bigger than demographics, trends, ratios, and anecdotal evidence—but when I turn to my Bible for his word on the matter, I see no promise of a spouse. For hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11) yes, but not that that future will necessarily contain a husband and kids.

Don't get me wrong, I still hope for marriage. Just not in the anticipatory way of something you know will come to pass—like the hope of a coming vacation or the hope of heaven. Those things are certain and solid. There's an end to the anticipation. The hope eventually gives birth to something new and good.

But hope for something that may or may not come to pass is tricky. How much stock do you put in it? How much do you feed this hope? After so many years, do you simply give up hoping? Because even the Bible acknowledges that "a hope deferred makes the heart sick" (Proverbs 13:12). Holding onto hope year after year after year means being aware of longing. "Responding to hope brings a deepened sense of thirst and ache," Jan Meyers writes in her wonderful book The Allure of Hope. But shutting off all hope is a really depressing way to live. And as Christians, we're offered so much more.

Sure, I know full well that ultimately hope is Jesus, the salvation he offers, and heaven. That's the big picture and it's wonderful and foundational. But what I wrestle with is what hope looks like here and now, as a relational single woman with no guarantees that my future will contain the closest of relationships. That anchor person you can circle back to in the middle of a boring party, at the end of a lousy day, at the conclusion of a lifetime of sharing the journey.

So I find myself trying to reframe hope. To live with this uncertain anticipation of something that may or may not happen for me. In letting go of some of that more certain hope, at times I've found myself a bit hope-less. Knowing what I can't put my hope in, and wondering desperately what I can put my hope in instead. As a Christian, I know there's hope here, I'm just trying to figure out what it is, what it means, what it looks like.

So I've been on a hope hunt. With a yellow sticky flag marking my expedition.

This journey has mostly taken place in conversation with trusted Christian friends. Russ said I need to live now, in the present, and not worry so much about the future. Jason warned against my more realistic outlook turning into unbelief. That often we have to believe before we receive. When I mentioned to Margaret that my thoughts about my future have been shifting, that I want to prepare myself in case marriage doesn't happen, she asked a great question: why?

I asked God to give me eyes to see hope, realizing I was striving too hard to find my own definition instead of asking God to reveal his. And I began to see glimmers of hope in a friend's long-awaited child. In the soul-moving power of worship. In each sunrise and breath and heartbeat. In staring out my living room windows at the first snowfall—the beauty of the pure white flakes transforming the landscape and the visual marker of the changing seasons. I felt a newfound appreciation for those things I am certain of—beginnings and endings, daily realities I too often take for granted.

I began to wonder if I was defining hope too much in my terms, giving in to consumer Christianity instead of humbly accepting whatever hope God chooses to graciously offer. I was challenged by Romans 5:3-4, " … we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope." And Romans 8:24-25, "But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."

What I've learned so far on what's sure to be a lifelong journey to fully understand hope and some of the mysteries of our faith is this: hope doesn't look like I thought it would, it's bigger and more vague than we cut-and-dried humans are often comfortable with, and I think I'm getting better just for the searching. I need the residue of this hope quest in my life.

The latest episode in my twisty-turvy search: my church launched a December sermon series on hope. Last week we heard how hope comes in unexpected places and ways—like a tiny Christ child bringing long-awaited hope to a people who were weary and hopeless in a dark land. And just this past Sunday our pastor, a former high school English teacher, introduced us to the real, literary definition of comedy: a story that turns out better than it began (as opposed to tragedy: a story that turns out worse). It's not always funny, but it's better. This is hope.

So I find hope in a God who meets me in my messy, faltering quest. Who offers big-picture hope in such certain, eternity-altering ways. And who, if I continue to keep my eyes more on him than on all my countless questions and uncertainties, will continue to write this divine comedy that is my life. Though I have no idea how it will end or who the cast of characters will be, I know it will be good. Better, even. And today that's enough to give me hope.

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