What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

I'm thinking tonight about the history of my career path, if you can call it that.

When I was nearing college graduation and everyone was asking me "what I wanted to do," I usually told them "I want to be myself." They probably thought I was being a smart aleck, or just evasive, but that was the honest truth. I looked in newspaper want ads and realized that 95% of jobs offered struck absolutely no chord of interest in me. I was an English major, so most people asked me if I wanted to teach. I actually had this big wrestling with myself, the end result being me "asking God's permission" to never be a teacher. I hated the one education class I took. My father before me became a teacher under the pressure of choosing a respectable career (I know he would have far preferred to play trumpet in a band), and I'm fairly sure he hated it as well. Then like one week after I got so bold as to assert that I really, honestly, didn't want to (if it's ok with you, God) become a teacher, a visiting evangelist at my Fellowship pronounced a prophecy over me that I was called to some kind of academic teaching. Beware of prophets prophesying against the very grain of your heart!

My education trained me for my early jobs very well, in that I had lots of mindless grunt work to do, and I did it without complaint, and very efficiently. (I highly recommend David Albert's excellent commentary explaining how modern education prepares students for emerging jobs of the modern era -- the top three of recent years being Wal-Mart checker, McDonald's employee and Burger King employee).

While in Japan, I felt the need to get serious and move beyond making copies, answering phones and the little bit of writing and editing that had made up my work of the past five years. I decided that essentially I wanted to be a catechist, being a new Catholic at this point. My "highest" aspiration, as some might measure aspirations, was to become a seminary professor.

But deep down, all this time, I was screaming that I wanted to get married and have children. But I was never really able to act on that desire in a logical way. I didn't have a clue how to proceed. My life was a process of jumping from thing to thing as a way to survive, keep myself fed and housed, while I waited for my future to fall on me out of the sky.

So when I washed up on shore once again at Franciscan University of Steubenville, I began to ask God to direct me to those people He desired to be part of my life. Within weeks of arriving in town, I met my future husband (we started dating a year later, and got married about a year after that), and my next employer, Scott Hahn, for whom I did the most satisfying paid work to date.

I fast forward to today. Watching my son settle in to sleep tonight, I thought of my aspiration to become a seminary professor. I longed to pour my heart into the formation of men who would serve God and the Church. And here is my little boy, my vulnerable little tinder box/joy bomb of a boy. The task of his formation is with both of us, and my husband, 24/7, for the next many years. Last night my daughter asked me to tell her the story about Mary. At least once a week before she goes to sleep I tell her all about the old couple who longed for a baby girl, and how God had a special vocation for her, which she said yes to with all of her heart.... And then there is my dear hubby, who would stop at nothing to provide security and stability for us. Is there a way that I could possibly be happier than in this reality which God has willed for me? This reality which fulfills my desires, leaving me nothing but Heaven to long for?

And now, finally, I may even learn to fully be myself, as well.

Deo Gratias