In the beginning of our journey, we have dreams we want to achieve, things we want to accomplish, and places we want to see. I believe college and university is a beginning for many unto this journey. A time when we’ve made decisions about our future and have a better perspective of what we hope our life would one day look like. We begin to build our path into this journey, making choices and taking steps into that direction. Although, some of our bigger dreams feel “far-fetched” and we begin to feel stuck in the same place, not being able to move no matter what we do, no matter how much work is put into this dream. We remain in the same place, and it seems as if that dream, that place, that school, that career is unattainable, and everything in the universe is trying to keep you right where you are.

I faced situations like this. I felt as if I couldn’t grow, I couldn’t move, unable to make my dreams of being somewhere new a reality. Feeling stuck in the same place, the same routine. I could not understand why I couldn’t move, why I remained in the same place, with the same people, in the same situations, being the same person. I often prayed about this, asking God to give me an escape, and answer so that I can pursue my dreams outside of where I was in a different school, a different town. I longed to meet new people, breathe new air. But I realized after much time that it simply was not my time to leave. The bible says, “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, 7 rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.” (Colossians 2:6-7, New King James Version), so I began to understand. God helped me to see that as much as I thought I was ready I wasn’t, as much as I wanted to believe a new life awaited me, it wasn’t because I still had work to do right where I was. I was not done being where I was.

Once I began to understand this, I saw all the work I still needed to do around me. How was I supposed to leave my home, my church, school, my town. Every place I was in needed work, or needed to work in me. I understood then that my growing was still not done, and until that day came God would open the doors for me to go wherever I needed to go in the future. As of that moment, I needed to stay. I needed to build relationships, and relationships needed to build me. I needed to become stronger and learn from my surroundings. I had to work on my faith right where I was letting God work in me and work through me in my surroundings. I still needed to bloom, I needed to grow. All that time I spent dreaming of starting a different life in a different school and different town would not allow me to see the right there and then, and what God wanted me to do.

“Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.”(Hebrews 13:20-21, NKJV)

We often don’t realize what we can do during our stay in different places. We could be so fixated by the idea that we don’t belong somewhere or by our simple desire of being elsewhere. God wants us to realize that anywhere we are, at anytime, He wants us to do the most we can for Him and His kingdom. Things come at the right time, no sooner or later. God wants us to bloom fully where we were planted. To do the best we can to grow to our fullest potential, using us in that place. After I realized what God wanted me to do, everything changed for me. I grasped opportunities I would not have before. I reached out to people who needed to be listened to. School became a place where I grew in so many ways, I met many people and learned so much from them as classmates but also as friends. I stopped seeing where I was as a temporary place, a place I wanted to leave soon, and began to see it as a home. Everything changed, and I saw the work God had for me, and what He was doing in me.

The reality is that we need to stop seeing any place we are as a temporary place, and instead let it become a home. Open up to people and possibilities. Yes, your college or university are a temporary place to be, your town, your job, they are places in which you will only be for a certain time. Look at it this way, your temporary place will hand you lessons and friendships of a lifetime, and what is home really but the people you love, and where your heart feels content. Stop constantly thinking of the places you’d wish to be, and enjoy where you are at the moment, grow, bloom, and let God be God in your life. College is more than the place where you earn a degree, but it is place that builds you as a person, an adult, a professional and a believer. Grow and bloom because before you know it, the seeds you sow will cause you to move, growing in a new place, a place you dreamed of, where God will place you.

New King James Version (NKJV)

Growing & Blooming Where You Are