God's Path for our Children

When I was in college my goal was to finish my degree and get a great career as a veterinarian or research biologist. I didn't do either. I fell in love and got married and developed a career in the restaurant business. Then life happened and I needed to stay home and take care of my grandparents. We moved to their farm and took care of them and the farm for as long as we were needed. Then our first child came along and instead of going back to work full time in the restaurant industry I stayed home for several years and worked several different small jobs that allowed be to earn the income that we needed in addition to my husband's income. When my daughter was about 4 we were told that she needed to be in daycare and that I needed to go back to work. So since this was what I was supposed to do because it is what everyone did, I went back to work and put my child in daycare which later became school. I wound up working 70 hour work weeks and I made good money. The tradeoff though, was that I rarely saw my child and was usually too exhausted and tired to spend much time with her when I did see her. I never got the chance to get her ready for school and take her to school as I had to be at work at 5 am. My husband did that. But this is what we were supposed to do. Society had programmed us into believing that career comes first and then family. Somewhere along the way I began to learn that something in my life was simply not right. I missed my child and my husband. I began to suffer anxiety attacks and depression. I went to counseling and took loads of antidepressants just simply to function. Somewhere deep down in my soul, I still knew something wasn't right. My counselor hit the nail on the head when she told me that the answer to my problems was simply to do in life what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do....hmmm, not what I was taught was the acceptable route to take but what I wanted to do. I wanted to see my daughter grow up and I wanted to spend time with my husband that involved something more than just listening to him snore at 2 am. I still thought that I needed a career, so I left the restaurant business and opened an art gallery. I had a host of talented artists in house and sold quite a few of my own pieces of artwork. I began selling more of my own, but I didn't earn any money because of overhead. After a year of losing a lot of money, I realized that I still was not doing what I really wanted to do. So I closed the gallery and my husband had a studio built for me at home. I came home and my daughter came home from school. A short time later we were blessed with another child. I work at home according to my own schedule which revolves around my children. I came home and I am finally after all these years doing what I want to do. We are working on our little farm and I do my art and some freelance writing to earn a little extra to help pay the bills. But the most important thing that I have now is a happiness that I have been seeking in all the wrong places. I found it at home. So why have I written this long diatribe? I got to thinking this morning about my old roommate my freshman year in college. Ann knew exactly what she wanted. She was in college to study education, not because she wanted to teach in the schools but because she wanted to get married and homeschool her children. I thought she was a lunatic at the time. Oh, if I had simply listened to the wisdom in her words I might have saved myself a very long and strenuous journey!Another thing that has brought her to mind lately have been the comments of my daughter. Most of the time when you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up they at least have some career in mind. They of course will change this a million times over the course of the years, but they will say something like "I want to be a teacher, or a nurse, or a doctor, or....a research biologist". Well, my daughter has told me on several occasions in the past couple of years that she wants to be a mom. That old dragon that I fought for so many years has raised its ugly head and I have heard myself over and over saying that is fine, but you must go to college and choose a career. Hmmmm...this is what has really gotten me thinking. Why am I doing this? Why am I saying these things? Who am I to determine the path that God himself has chosen for this child? Then I think about Ann and how she knew what she wanted and wasn't afraid to be different from the rest of us in that dorm. Then I think about the struggles I have had over the years trying to fit in with mainstream ideals. I am happier now than I have been my entire life and it only took me 20 years to find the "career" that would lead me to happiness. If my daughter wants to be a mom and a homemaker then I will teach her to the best of my ability and leave the rest to God. The one thing that I have learned is that only she can choose her path in life. I can teach her all that I know, and that is where my job ends. God must lead her where she is needed and where she is to go. So that old dragon is banished from my vocabulary and I will not tell her again that she must choose a career and enter into the work force. That is such a socialist concept anyway. I will simply educate her and help her to strengthen her mind so that her knowledge expands. The rest I leave to God as I must. I think sometimes this is hard for parents to do because we want the best for our children and want them to be more successful than we were. It is just that our concept of success is twisted by a neo-Babylonian way of thinking. Success is relative, success is happiness and a feeling of accomplishment. So I pray that my daughter will find success along whatever path God chooses for her. If that is a career fine and if that is being a homemaker and a mom, that is fine too. I think I am finally ridding myself of the last of mainstream thinking that has had a hold of me. That dragon has been slain. May God bless you all.