Held in the Right Place
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The student set a worn notebook on the desk, pages swollen from being written in and cried on.
Student: I found all my old entries last night. Months of them. Some written at two in the morning, some written at my desk at work while I tried not to let anyone see me crying. Every single one asks the same thing. Where am I supposed to be?
Professor: And what did you notice, reading them all at once?
Student: That I was already there. The whole time. The place I kept begging God to move me out of was the place He was building my life in.
Professor: Hmm. Do you remember what Jacob said when he woke up at Bethel?
Student: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I wasn’t even aware of it.”
Professor: Why do you suppose he wasn’t aware?
Student: He was running. He was tired. He was sleeping on a rock in the middle of nowhere.
Professor: And was the ladder any less there because he was tired?
Student: No. He just couldn’t see it until God showed him.
Professor: Then perhaps your notebook isn’t a record of being lost. What else could it be?
Student: (quietly) A record of being found slowly.
Professor: Read me Jeremiah 15, verse 2. The first part only.
Student: The people ask, “But where can we go?”
Professor: That’s your question, isn’t it? Word for word.
Student: It is. But the answer God gives them is so hard. Captivity, famine, war.
Professor: Because they were asking where to run, not who to run to. Now go down to verse 16. Who is speaking?
Student: Jeremiah. “When I discovered your words, I devoured them. They are my joy and my heart’s delight.”
Professor: And two verses later?
Student: He says he’s in pain that won’t heal. He asks if God is like an unreliable stream.
Professor: So the man who devours God’s words is also the man in tears. Does Scripture seem embarrassed by that?
Student: No. It just lets both be true.
Professor: And what does God say to him in verse 19?
Student: “If you return to me, I will restore you so you can continue to serve me. If you speak good words rather than worthless ones, you will be my spokesman.”
Professor: Notice He doesn’t say “go somewhere new.” What does He say?
Student: Return. Come back to Me. Right where you are.
Professor: And all those nights of writing to Him. Were you running away, or returning?
Student: (pause) Returning. Every single time. I just didn’t know that’s what I was doing.
Professor: There’s something else I want you to sit with. The things you begged Him for back then. Did He give them to you?
Student: No. And I’m so grateful now. I was so far off. Wrong shelf, wrong library, wrong city entirely.
Professor: Was His no cruel?
Student: It felt cruel. It felt humiliating, honestly. But it was mercy. If I’d gotten what I asked for, I would have missed what He was actually doing.
Professor: Psalm 56. Verse 8. Read it as if it were written about your notebook.
Student: “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.”
Professor: So you were writing a book to Him...
Student: ...and He was writing one about me.
Professor: Then what will you call those years now?
Student: Not wasted. Not wilderness, even. They were the place He hid me until I could see.
Professor: And who are you, in that place?
Student: Someone who never left His sight. Someone He was restoring the whole time I thought I was stuck.
The professor slid the notebook back across the desk.
Professor: Then keep writing. You’re His spokesman now, and you’ve already learned the first lesson. You don’t have to know where you are. You only have to know whose you are.
The conversation continues on TikTok, where new entries post throughout the week.