Life is a journey, and it is important to share what you learn along the way. As for me, I cannot fully sum up the amazing lessons that I have learned over the past four years of my college career, but for the sake of this article, I will certainly try to do so with a subject that is so near and dear to my heart.

This is an area that God has so redeemed my heart in, and because of that, my heart is to encourage you to wait on the Lord, to seek His face with all of your heart in every area of your life, because He has so much more for you than you can possibly imagine.

When I entered my freshman year of college, I had no idea what emotional, mental, and spiritual restoration God would bring me, and I would not have guessed in a million years how He would choose to do that. We serve the Author of Salvation; the Prince of Peace; the God of restoration. And that restoration is available to us when we CHOOSE to LET GO of our fears and let God intercede in the deepest, most broken corners of our hearts.

For me, this was incredibly difficult because, throughout a course of time and emotional turmoil, the Lord was the last person I felt I could trust with my heart. I hate admitting it now, because I have found how precious and safe the presence of the Lord is, but before I came to this place of understanding I use to feel like God took my emotions as a joke, and because of heartbreak and emotional hardships I dealt with over time, I massively struggled with trusting God with all of my heart.

I had this thought that God could have the surface level part of my heart; the part that praised Him and talked about how good He is, but not the parts I feared were unfix-able, broken, and no good.

So, like many others, I locked away that part of my heart and soul, refusing to acknowledge its existence. Until my first semester of freshman year of college when God not only introduced me to my now sweetheart, but someone who would lead me to understand the character of the Lord, and what His love really looks like.

Now to be clear, it is Jesus, not an earthly relationship that completes you. You should never seek restoration and healing in another human being because although we can encourage one another, it is not fair to put the responsibility of completion on another person, we simply cannot fill the human heart like Jesus can.

But you see, the right relationships will not seek to complete you; it will seek to compliment you and encourage you to be closer to completion in Christ Jesus. You should never put the expectation on another human being to heal you, to complete you or to make you happy, however, I am a firm believer that God will use his people to be vessels of His love and His light in a world that can be incredibly dim.

He will use the hearts of the willing, and the mouthpieces of the obedient to spread encouragement, and to speak the life and truth of Jesus into the hearts of those who have forgotten. For me, He used this wonderful man to REMIND me of WHO I was in CHRIST, not who I was in my brokenness. In this precious relationship, I have been encouraged to press into the Lord more and to work toward being the best version of who Christ has called me to be.

Ladies, the right man will point you TO God, not away from Him. There is a fear that comes when something is outside of the will of God. If it is not of God, peace will not be imparted with it. You will be in constant fear of "is this the right one" or "I have to choose either God or this relationship" it will always be an either/or, rather than something that flows together hand in hand.

Here is the deal; feeling like you have to choose between the Lord, your identity, and the relationship is a sure sign that relationship is not from Jesus, because when you are within the will of the Prince of Peace, EVERYTHING He calls you to will have peace and contentment imparted with it. Regardless of your surrounding circumstances, the Lord will give you a deep peace that surpasses all understanding, and the RIGHT one will never pull you away from the Father.

They will challenge you to rise to a higher standard without criticizing who you are now. They will encourage you in your anointing and giftings. They will not be intimidated by your gifts, passions, and dreams, but rather they will partner with you in faith, and press you to believe in the promise God has for your life when you are struggling with keeping your head above the waters of doubt. They will believe with you, trust you, and challenge you to serve selflessly in Christ by their own example.

Cameron never demanded my emotions, but rather He waited patiently until I was ready to open up my heart. Through this, we have chosen to honor God in our relationship by keeping Him on the throne of our hearts individually, honoring Him throughout the season of dating, and letting the Lord guide us in His timing for the future chapters.

This is an incredibly dear subject to my heart because, in a world that demands that you follow the counterfeit of love, God desires to give you His personal best if you choose to be obedient regardless of what has happened prior, and wait on His perfect timing. In a world that tells us to rush, God tells us to wait patiently, because in each season there is a beauty to be discovered.

Whether you are single, dating, or married, there are precious lessons in each chapter that can be developed with grace when you choose to seek Gods face. Rather than compare your story and heart condition to the appearance of someone else's, wait patiently, make God the desire of your heart and everything else will follow in His timing, which is so much better than our own.