By no means am I an expert on relationships. I’ve only been Aftan’s faithful boyfriend for nine months now, and if there’s one thing that has held us together over such a great distance for this long, it’s the fact that our relationship is centered on God.

When I say that, I mean that God indeed brought us together, and we acknowledge that by dedicating our relationship to Him by keeping Jesus as the main focus and not one another. Kinda tough to believe if you’re not a Christian, but if you are a believer you know exactly what I mean.

Only thing is, lately Aftan and I hadn’t done such a great job of keeping Jesus as the center of it all. We had become worried about conflicting schedules over the next few weeks with Aftan having her RA training from 8 AM - 9 PM, among other things. We started to let the small stuff bug us. Our relationship didn’t start to go sour at all, but there was a bit of an unnecessary tension between us for a bit.

Which really didn’t need to happen at all. We had lost sight of what brought us together in the first place and because of that, there was somewhat of a strain on our relationship.

I guess the old saying is true: if you neglect God for long enough, He’s going to find a way to get your attention, and He’s going to do it through what you hold most dear. In Aftan and my case, it was our relationship. He’s been testing us and we readily admitted to each other last night that we failed the test, apologized, prayed and committed to doing what it takes to ensure we never place God on the back burner.

Good thing the Lord gives everyone a second chance, third chance, fourth chance, etc. Like I said, we hadn’t committed any sort of cardinal sin, but we did neglect the Lord in our relationship for about a good month or so and it started to show. But trust me when I say we won’t go down that road again.

It sounds somewhat crazy, but we’re even going to start doing Bible studies over the phone with each other. God placed Aftan in my life to be a spiritual help to me (and vice versa), and we need to continue cultivating not only a strong emotional and physical relationship, but an even stronger spiritual relationship. If we don’t have the Lord, we have nothing.

So why do I post this publicly? Two reasons. One, as sort of a piece of advice to other young Christian couples, that they not go down the same path. Two, we all need to be publicly accountable to our brothers and sisters in Christ and this is the perfect way to do that.

If anyone has any thoughts or Scripture references they would like to add, please feel free to do so. Input is very welcomed, especially from people who have been in the same situation before. God bless.