There’s a quiet whisper in the back of my mind, and I can hear it when I stop listening to my own tangled thoughts long enough. It says “Trust in me.” The voice tells me to be still. It tells me that the way will be clear if I only surrender my striving, my wishing, my wanting.

But I have a lot of wants, a lot of wishes. I wish to be happy. I wish to be loved and adored by a handsome, daring knight, someone who will walk with me and worship God with me, who will tell me I’m beautiful and push me to be better and who will want nothing more than to gaze into my soul. I wish to learn a million arts and skills and secrets. I wish to pour my heart out in words and color and fiber and music and pixels and lines. I wish to see the world, and I wish for my life to have meaning, to make a difference.

I also wish to laze about and watch Netflix and pet my cat and play video games and eat junk food. I’m not always good at keeping up forward momentum. I do a lot of thinking and living inside my own head.

At night, my dreams are rarely peaceful. Rarely nightmares, either – just strange, twisted compilations of the stray threads my mind tries to tie together. I try to learn from them, and for a while I even kept a detailed dream journal. These days more often than not, the dreams simply fade with the morning, and leave me with a vague sense that there was something interesting to think about, if only I could remember what it was.

But there’s one dream that I keep having that I do remember in the mornings. The face and name and circumstances are always different, but the feeling is always the same. I am with a man who loves me completely and unconditionally. I feel safe, and secure – no anxiety, no fear, no doubt. We don’t talk – we don’t do much of anything. I might lean my head on his shoulder, or hold his hand, but the feeling – that feeling of absolute certainty of who I am and what I am, that doesn’t change. Those are the mornings when I wake up feeling heartbreak and joy rolled up into one.

I used to think these dreams were a sign that somewhere out there, perfect love exists for me on earth.

Now, I think these dreams are the closest view in this life of I’ll get to what it means to be a child of God. There is no place on this earth where I can live completely without fear or doubt. There is no human being on earth who can love me perfectly. But there is Someone who always has, always does, and always will. Sometimes I barely acknowledge Him, even though He’s always there. I try to do things on my own, I grasp on to the things I want because dammit, they’re my right. Right?

When am I ever going to learn that He is my birthright, that He is the only one worth chasing after? My dreams and desires should pale in comparison to being close to the source of all good things.

Two months ago I decided to step out into the unknown, to serve Him on a path I believe He has invited me to walk down. But I keep getting distracted! I’m so bad at listening. I don’t think having wishes and desires is wrong, but I want to be absolutely convicted that He will give me the best things, instead of just asking for His guidance when my own ideas seem to be failing me.