I Asked God to Show Me Where to Serve

“He Answered with CareerVillage — and 517,984 Young People Who Needed Someone Like Me”

By Dino Ubalde · Clinical Psychologist, Educator, School Counselor, Wellness Coach · CareerVillage.org Volunteer since 2022

From Gratitude to Calling: How Being Saved Became a Lifetime of Serving Youth

Gratitude Born in the Valley

The deepest gratitude is rarely born in comfort. It does not arrive wrapped in wellness and achievement. The kind of gratitude that rewrites your life almost always comes from the valleys — from the hospital rooms, the sleepless nights, the moments when you do not know what comes next, and something far greater than yourself shows up and keeps you here.

I know that valley. And I am still here.

The Gift of Being Saved

When you face a serious illness, the noise of ambition falls quiet in a way nothing else can produce. The metrics of success — the titles, the recognitions, the career milestones — stop mattering the way they once did. What rises in their place is something simpler, more primal, and ultimately more truthful: a bone-deep awareness that you have been given time you did not earn, and that this time is sacred.

Being sick, being vulnerable, and then recovering by grace gave me more than my health back. It gave me clarity. And in the middle of that recovery — in the weeks when I could not yet return to full clinical practice, when my body was still healing and my schedule was still quiet — CareerVillage.org became my refuge. Every question I answered was an act of purpose on a day when I could not do much else. It kept my mind alive, my knowledge in service, and my heart anchored to something larger than my own healing. And that clarity carried one unmistakable question that would not leave me alone: Now that I have been helped so generously, what am I going to do with what I have been given?

The Prayer That Changed Everything

I remember asking God plainly and sincerely to show me where I was meant to serve. Not where I could build a more impressive profile. Not where I could accumulate another credential. Where I could genuinely and concretely help someone who needed exactly what I had spent decades building: knowledge, experience, presence, and care.

I am a Clinical Psychologist, a School Counselor, a Professional Teacher with a concentration in Special Education, a Program Chair of Psychology, a Dean of a School of Arts, Science and Education, and a Wellness and Life Coach. Twenty-five years of sitting with people in the most difficult chapters of their lives — listening, guiding, and holding space for those who could not yet hold it for themselves. These were not credentials to display on a wall. They were gifts. And gifts, I have come to believe deeply, are not truly yours until you give them away.

God Showed Me CareerVillage

In 2022, the answer arrived.

CareerVillage.org is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to democratize access to career guidance for underserved youth — young people who do not have doctors, lawyers, engineers, or seasoned professionals in their family circles to turn to for advice. Young people who are trying to figure out what comes next, often with fewer maps and fewer guides than their more privileged peers.

These were my people. And through the simplest possible act — answering a question — I was invited into their world.

One Question. Half a Million Readers.

It started with one question.

A young person, somewhere in the world, had typed a question into a search bar because they did not know who else to ask. I answered it. One question. One reader.

I did not know then that this single act would compound into something that would reshape my own understanding of what it means to serve. By the time I write these words, I have answered 230 questions on CareerVillage.org. Those answers have been read by 517,984 people. My Karma score — a measure of community impact on the platform — stands at 261. And I have received multiple recognitions from the organization that have meant more to me personally than most professional accolades accumulated over an entire career.

Because those numbers are not statistics. They are young people who typed a question because they had no one else to ask. They are students in underserved communities who needed to hear: “Yes, you can — and here is how.” They are first-generation college applicants, aspiring counselors, confused teenagers, and young adults standing at a crossroads — all of whom deserved a knowledgeable, caring, experienced voice on the other end of their question. And I was there.

Why the Youth?

Adolescence and young adulthood are not simply developmental stages to pass through. They are critical windows. The psychological literature is clear: the neural architecture for decision-making, identity formation, and emotional regulation is still being built well into the mid-twenties. Guidance received in this window goes as deep as trauma does. A single voice that says “I see you and I believe in your potential” at the right moment can alter the entire arc of a young person’s life.

When a young person cannot access proper mental health support, career counseling, or educational guidance, the cost is not only personal. It ripples forward into their families, their communities, and generations not yet born. Poverty, isolation, and the absence of mentorship do not only limit opportunity. They limit the imagination of what is possible. And that is the deepest wound of all.

This is why the youth. Because every answer I offer is not just information. It is a signal that says: someone with experience and genuine care took the time to respond to you. You are worth that time. Your future matters.

What Volunteering Gave Back to Me

Here is the part that surprised me most.

I entered this journey expecting to give. I did not anticipate how profoundly I would receive. Volunteering — specifically this kind of knowledge-based, question-answering, one-young-person-at-a-time service — has become one of the most grounding and meaning-making experiences of my entire professional life. It reminded me with undeniable clarity why I became a psychologist in the first place. Not for the title. Not for the income. For the moment when a person who felt completely lost finds direction. For the instant when someone who believed no one was listening discovers they were truly heard.

The recognitions from CareerVillage.org have affirmed something I already felt in my bones: that showing up consistently, answering the next question, and trusting the compounding effect of small faithful acts is itself a form of healing — as much for the giver as for the one who receives. And it was in that rhythm — that daily practice of showing up with knowledge and care for someone I had never met — that the seeds of WellSpring7DAYS LivingLifeWELL were planted. I began to see that what was healing me was not rest alone. It was purpose in motion. It was the experience of being useful while still recovering. It was the living proof that wellness and service are not separate — they are the same river. That conviction became the foundation of everything WellSpring7DAYS is built on: that when we are well, we pour outward. And when we pour outward, we become more well.

Gratitude, I have learned, is not a passive emotion. It is an energy. When it stays inside, it grows heavy. When it is channeled outward — toward others, toward the vulnerable, toward those still standing in the valley where you yourself once stood — it transforms. It becomes purpose. It becomes legacy. It becomes life.

An Invitation to Pay It Forward

If you are reading this as someone who has been helped — healed, guided, supported, or saved — I want to offer you this invitation.

You do not need a large platform. You do not need a stage or a title or a perfect plan. You need one question and the willingness to answer it honestly from everything you know and everything you have lived through. Find your CareerVillage. Find your organization. Ask God, or the universe, or whatever your deepest knowing is, to show you where your specific gifts — your professional training, your lived experiences, your seasons of hardship and recovery — are most needed. Then show up, answer the first question, and trust what grows from there.

What starts as one question reaching one reader has the potential — I am living proof — to reach nearly half a million.

The youth are waiting. And you have far more to offer than you yet know.

🌿

Originally published on WellSpring7DAYSLivingLifeWELL on Substack.