Faith Over Fear: Transitioning to Collegeናሙና

Adjusting To New Environments

You are not confined to your physical location. As a college freshman, the physical location that I felt confined to was my dorm. As I mentioned earlier, I suffered from homesickness, and living in a dorm room only increased those feelings. At the time, I allowed that place to have a hold over my emotions and attitude. Today, I look back on that and feel silly for it.

We should be strong and courageous. We should not be afraid or discouraged because God is with us wherever we go. To me, this illustrates the big picture of life. The one (or two, three, four) years that are spent living in the dorms are such a short part of our earthly lives and an even shorter part of our eternity. This thought never came to my mind while in the dorms. In the moment, it seemed that dorm life would never come to an end, but freshman year ended, and before I knew it, I was moved out of the dorm and into an off-campus house. That one year of dorm living seems like it was no longer than a week, looking back now.

Our current struggles and hardships may seem like eternity, but they are very minimal in the grand scheme of things. One mindset that helps me with similar issues today is asking myself if the current thing that I am stressing about will affect me at all in 5 years. If it won’t, then why am I wasting precious time overthinking and being negative? The whole dorm situation did not even affect me one day after moving out, so why did I stress about it? I did so because I hadn’t come to this simple realization quite yet. You have the opportunity to embrace this mindset now and conquer dorm life or any other complication that may occur. You will still have bad days and negative thoughts from time to time, but it is so important to remember to step back and evaluate the weight of certain “issues.”

God wants us to be happy, but He also allows us to be in uncomfortable situations. The quote about leaving your comfort zone in order to be great was originally stated in the Bible in one way or another. God wants us to grow and adapt so that we can accomplish amazing things, and the only way to grow is to go out of your way to experience new things and learn valuable lessons. I am thankful today for my dorm experience. It taught me a lot about myself and helped me grow. If you can learn to accept your current conditions and realize that your “problem” of having to live in a dorm is nothing compared to the greater issues of the world, you will have much more time and energy to explore your new environment and grow as a person.

Prayer

Dear Lord, thank You for new experiences. Help us to embrace them as a chance to grow. Our Earthly and spiritual lives have so much to offer, and we pray that we realize that truth and do not let our minds run out of control because of small inconveniences. We thank You for being with us wherever we go, and we pray that everyone can find comfort in that. Continue to guide us toward Your love. Amen.