Going to a Christian university comes with many charms: chapel three times a week, a place to struggle freely with your questions about Jesus, science classes that still find a way to put God at the center, the list goes on. It also comes with one serious downfall: ring-by-spring culture, which is an idea that involves girls across campus trying to get engaged by the spring semester of their senior year, and while this is a culture that exists far outside of Christian school walls, it is prevalent here and at other Christian universities. I grew up in the church, a place where no youth pastor was left unmarried, and where they had all found their "true love" in high school or their freshman year of college. Combine this with the intense amount of coupling-off at college? It's enough to make any girl feel terribly alone when she's single.

So, when I got asked out on a date by a very sweet boy whom I am friends with and enjoy spending time with, my brain flipped a switch. I immediately assumed it would be the best date ever, and we would have this great, amazing, long-lasting relationship. But it was just a date; a very, very ordinary date that ended in us deciding to be just friends. I was disappointed to say the least, but I found the next morning that my disappointment was not over this particular boy (although, yes, that was part of it). My disappointment was over the fact that I would be coming back to campus without the promise of a second date and without a hand to hold as he walked me back to my dorm. His hands are not mine to hold, but my college has convinced me that one date constitutes the right to hold his hand whenever I please. And that, my friends, is just not true.

I have also been told many a time that the word "friends" means that you don't hang out alone with the boy, you barely look at the boy, and the boy does not deeply care about you. Also not true. If that was the case, all the care I have placed in my heart for people would go to waste, one-sided friendships full of angst and pain.

There are plenty of great things Christian colleges have going for them. This idea of getting married while you are still in college is not one of them. For some people, this works. It works really, really well. For the general populace, it's a lie we gals and guys have been sold and have bought into that is tearing our hearts to pieces. It is convincing us that if this thing doesn't work out, we have to immediately start looking again for "the one." News flash? People go on dates every day that do not work out.

In the same vein, people go on dates with their friends and realize they make better friends. You can go on a date, you can even date the person, and end up being the best of friends at the end of the date. That's okay, too.

At the end of the day, I'm reminded of a really great verse in Ecclesiastes chapter 3. You know the passage, the one that says a time for this and a time for that and blah, blah, blah? Yeah, well, it's not all blah, blah, blah. In the God's Word translation, it reads, "Everything has its own time, and there is a specific time for every activity under heaven...a time to hug and
a time to stop hugging, a time to start looking and a time to stop looking." That might just be my favorite translation of this verse. There is a time to hug, but right now it is a time to stop hugging, take some time, take some space, and continue to heal from our own separate hurts. There is a time to start looking, but right now is a time to stop looking, to rest in Jesus, to trust that he will heal those hurts we have both experienced along the way to meeting each other. There will be a time to hug and a time to start looking—likely with other people. It is a time to wait on God's perfect timing for our lives, which is the one good thing Christian College has taught me to do.