So first, perhaps, I should describe this dream and then tell you what I have learned that is so dear from it:

It takes place in the camp of the armies of Israel (I've been in the Old Testament in my Bible studying, all right?)- so basically all I see for miles are tents and tents. In my dream, I am a new bride

 and, for real, I cannot describe how amazing it felt in this dream to just literally be so in love with my husband, so united, and so one. I have never had such a realistic feeling dream in my life. This wasn't some "God revealing me my husband" or that I'll ever in have one kind of dream because I didn't even know who the person who was my "husband" was in my dream. But everything was just so insanely pure (I mean- this wasn't some wierd honeymoon dream or anything) and perfect and...right. Then, all of a sudden I cannot find my hus

band anywhere. It seems some enemy army had taken him or he'd been lost somewhere in battle. And I was looking all throughout the camp in searching the tents for him and asking the guards. I was so cripplingly brokenhearted in my dream as I sought my love. I can still feel the heaving of my chest and desperate cries from my tent and how sorrowful I was that my love was missing. Then when I found my husband there was such insane j

oy in my heart and I can

 still see and feel the fingers interlocking with his. And then...

I woke up.

And when I woke up this morning I wasn't sad. The story of my life is waking up from good dreams and being depressed they weren't real. But, I mean, there's a part of me that is sad that there really isn't that special physical someone right now who really would be by my side, but when I woke up this morning, I was just so thankful for that dream.

Because I realized what it meant to Long for my Love. 

I'd read those verses from Songs of Solomon so often this Fall and they'd meant so much to me, but now I love them even more. 

I have never been in a relationship. So I've really never had anything to compare that part of my relationship with God to. I mean, wow, Husbands and Wives are allowed into an amazing aspect of a relationship with God that I had never been able to see for. Marriage is just such a beautiful picture- that relationship is such a beautiful picture- or our r

elationship to God as the Bride.

I had never understood how to "long" for God in that way, what it meant to be "a longing bride to be" and what it meant to "wait for" Him in that way. 

What a new way to see Jesus, what a way the Lord awoke my

 love again for Him.

And also, that dream was such an encouragement to me. The World has scarred my view of marriage, of dating, or relationships- it fowled the pureness, the rightness, to beauty that God had intended- and the way He intended me to view it. But lately the Lord has been placing just examples of encouraging godly relationships in my path for me to see it how He intended. I guess cynicism somehow had 

crept into my picture as I have watched my share of friends fall into soiled relationships and I will confess it's been a discouragement. I'm not naive- marriage isn't rose beds and holding hands all the time, but it's also not what the World constantly shoves in my face that it is. And God gave me that desire back- because I just haven't had it in so long. I know it is good to be content in my singleness because God total

ly one hundred percent has me there for this season, but I don't want to harden my heart to relationships/marriage, or to view it as something discouraging and wrong. Marriage is something God created and it is a good desire- and I do hope and pray that one day God will allow me to have that person who completes me, and also that I will be able to more understand who God is and what it means to love and be loved by Him through that beautiful picture He allows us to participate in.