This year has been a bit of a special year for me. When I compare and contrast it to last year, I honestly believe I’ve come a far way. And the one thing I truly wanted out of both, is a life partner. Especially as a Christian, for me, finding that special person isn’t a matter of just going out and searching for them. It’s a matter of making sure that one is evenly yoked, has grown in the Lord, prays, and most important of all, waits. It’s honestly not as easy as it seems. The human heart is prone to looking for love, but when we look for love in all the wrong places, we only set ourselves up for heartbreak. First and foremost, Jesus is the source and paragon of love itself, and any relationship we seek to have with a man or woman always need to be centered on Him.

And that’s where I went wrong the first time. In fact, everything above is where I went wrong, because I didn’t bother to think about it the first time. It was only a year ago in high school, but it feels as if it was eons past. High school is the time where dating is probably on your mind, especially seniors. After all, we’re heading off to college soon, and some of us, more than others, can’t help but wonder who that special person is that we’ll eventually marry, maybe start a family with. I don’t even call it a relationship, because that’s the last thing it really was, but the first time I ever truly tried looking for love (at least all in my own power), I failed. I tried controlling things and initially didn’t want to accept that I was wanted something that truly wasn’t worth it. Had I heeded the same words of advice that I opened this article with, it would have saved me a lot of trouble. Deep down my heart still needed work, but I still believed that God wouldn’t fail me in the only current desire I have. Fast forwarding to this year, I felt as if things were just now picking up. I was still praying that the Lord finally bring that one person along my path, and I believed He would still answer me in one place: my dreams.

I believe dreams are more than just the ramblings that go on in our mind at night, I believe their key access points for God to speak to us, no matter how “weird” the dream may be. For the most part dreams are metaphorical, other times they’re literal. And there was one dream I had this summer that, looking back at it, was God speaking to me. I was on a beach just simply walking around, when I ran into my friend Ishara, who, at this point, I hadn’t seen in two years. We simply said hey to each other and hugged; I then noticed she was fully pregnant. Upon waking up from this dream, the only thing I understood out of it was that I missed Ishara. When we first met in high school, our friendship was rather short; she was there for a few months and left. But those few months weren’t in vain. When she first walked in my math class, as soon as she sat down, I stared at the new girl across the room. When Ishara walked over to my side of the room and sat behind me, we simply talked and introduced ourselves. I remember times when my friends who sat with me, would often joke and tease me about being so nice to Ishara, but I guess that only underscored things. About two weeks or so before Ishara left, I forgot what it was I said, but I basically remember telling Ishara how I felt. She was -and still is- a beautiful person after all; I said what was on my mind and went back to my seat. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was the only person who, throughout the entire time, made Ishara genuinely feel welcome and appreciated. What if I was the only friend at our high school who did so? That’s the beauty of humans being naturally emotional creatures: we’ll forget what somebody told, we may forget some of the things they’ve done, but we’ll never forget how that person made us feel. Their emotional impact will be longer lasting and more heartfelt than any casual conversation.

But I didn’t just listen to the dream I had that day (even if I didn’t know it fully at the time), I also took confirmation from what we see in nature: the rainbow. Rainbows are signs of God’s covenants and promises. This summer I saw two rainbows total (one being a double rainbow). Fast forward to just two weeks ago; I had another dream with Ishara. We were on a train together, sitting close to each other and basically cuddled up like a husband and wife. I laid my left hand on her side and looked out the window; it was bright and sunny, and a love song came on in the background. Last Thursday was when the door opened. I had just gotten to campus and was walking down from the upstairs hallway. As I casually looked down, I thought I saw Ishara’s face and hair. I continued walking down the stairs and, as she looked up and in my direction, wondered if the person she was staring back at was somebody she knew. I walked up to her, we hugged and talked, then went on to class. As I sit here writing this, I realize how this was an uncanny parallel of the dream I had about us running into each other at the beach. I was so filled with joy that I couldn’t keep a straight face for ten minutes. But that’s not the final piece of confirmation from God that I looked for. At this point I stopped trusting my own thoughts; earlier this year I twice thought I was close to finally having found a life partner, but I’ve now become weary of trusting my own thinking. This time I asked the Lord for direct, infallible proof that Ishara really has been promised to me. I got the proof I asked for, this morning when the only significant part of my dream that stuck out was a diamond ring.