Throughout my life, I have relied on relationships with other people, to the point where I was idolizing them. I’ve always feared being alone, and so I put myself in bad relationships or focused too much on relationships. Whether it be with boys, friends, or my parents, I relied too heavily on them.

This worked for a while. Growing up, I didn’t understand what it meant to have a relationship with Christ—this was a foreign concept. So, I focused on earthly relationships. Halfway through high school, I met one of the greatest religious influences in my life, an amazing girl who I could tell deeply loved Jesus. She ended up bringing me to bible study, and I started visiting the concept of becoming a Christian.

When I moved away to college, a few things happened. I met a boy and a bunch of new friends. I also was apart from my parents for the first time in my life. I started sinking into those relationships, putting all my hope into them. In this, I also started drifting away from God.

One by one, a great majority of those relationships failed me. The lives of my good, but completely human and imperfect, parents took a toll on me and I started to drift apart from them. The boy left me for someone else. I lost two close friends, who abruptly stopped putting effort into our friendships.

God taught me a lot with the end of those relationships (or in the struggles with those relationships, in the case of my parents). The idolization of all of those earthly relationships left me longing for a relationship that wouldn’t fail. The funny thing about earthly relationships is how imperfect and unstable they are, as everything in our world is. I was relying on something other than God, who showed me in my time of loneliness and loss that He has been there for the entirety of my life, and He wouldn’t leave.

For a long time, I chose other people over a God who loves me and is constantly by my side. I feared being alone. Matthew 6:33 says, “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” I was born to praise Him and look to Him above all else. And since I’ve given my life to Him, while I haven’t been perfect, and bad things have still happened, I know that my Lord has my heart and He will provide for me.”