Existing as a College Student

Currently, I am enrolled in two online classes and one lecture class. It's summer! And I'm in class. YUCK!

Enrolling in summer classes may not have been the smartest idea, but it was one that kept me away from home when the times are the worst. There are some upsides to it though...It will put me a year ahead in school! I'll graduate before I'm 21 years old! (Still haven't decided whether that is a good thing or a bad thing.) I will save a year's worth of money.

The downsides??? I have classes during the summer. I really won't get a break from classes. I'm away from my family when they could possibly need me the most...though most days, I think they do just fine without me.

My parents are in the final stages of getting a divorce. The court date is quickly approaching. I still am not sure what exactly is going to happen when that date arrives. Eventually, one of my parents will need to find another place to call home.

Home is such a hard word to define. Is it your permanent address? Your postal address? Where your family is? Where you grew up? An old quote says, "Home is where your heart is." Is that a satisfactory definition for home? Why do people say that you have to leave home to find who you truly are?

As my parents' court date knocks on the door, I wonder what home will become for me. Will home be "Mom's place" or "Dad's place"? Even if one of the parents retain the house that my family built 12 years ago that I grew up in, will it still be home? Will home become wherever I currently reside? Campus? I ask myself, "Where is my heart? Maybe that's where my home is..." I get no response.

I don't know who wrote the song, but it's words have been stuck in my head for days! "If home is where my heart is, then I'm out of place...I've never been more homesick than now."

Maybe existing as a college student gives me the right to call campus my home. Or maybe that's easier than saying that my home isn't even on this earth...maybe you really do have to be kicked out of the nest to find your home in the heavens...

Existing as a college student makes me feel like a bird...the freedom that a bird has to fly wherever it might, always realizing one's physical limitations but defying gravity all at the same time...And knowing that God will always provide a nest whenever one needs a break from flight...

~Samantha