my dream job

"Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God." 

~Titus 2:4-5

"A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life." 

~Proverbs 31:10-12

“She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: ‘Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.’ Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” 

~Proverbs 31:27-30

One question I've never been able to answer with one-hundred percent certainty is, "What do you want to do after you graduate college?" I'm pretty sure, at one point in my life or another, I've wanted to have pretty much every job in the world. I've wanted to be a teacher, a doctor, a physical therapist, an accountant, a lawyer, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Usually, those dreams never lasted any more than a few weeks, and then I would switch to the next job, only to decide that wasn't what I wanted to do either. Even now, after just finishing my second year of college, I still go back and forth daily on what I want to do after I graduate. Do I just get a simple entry-level environmental job and see where that takes me, or do I get a licence and work in a hospital lab, or do I go back to school and get a masters degree in nutrition? Three completely different plans, I know, and the farther along I get through college, the more anxious I feel about it. I would ask God to guide me and to reveal to me what job He wanted me to pursue, but I still never felt certain about anything, or even pushed towards one decision or the other. 

I always thought that He must want me to get a ton of education and pursue a great career since He gifted me with what seemed like a lot of intelligence since high school was easy for me and learning has always come pretty natural to me. I felt that if I didn't have a career that required a lot of knowledge, I would be wasting the brain that God gave me. And I say this with a lot of humility. I don't want to sound like I'm bragging that I'm the smartest person ever, because I'm definitely not and that has been solidified by how hard college has been for me, which brings me to my next point. I felt like God wanted me to go back to school and get another degree after I get my bachelors, but the harder and harder my classes got, I started to wonder if that was really what I was supposed to do, or if I could even handle it. If I was struggling in some of my science classes during my first two years of college, I couldn't even imagine how hard science classes in grad school would be. Then one day a couple months ago, it hit me. It's not that I'm not capable of doing really well in my classes, it's that I don't have the motivation to spend every hour during the day on schoolwork so I can get an A in every class. That realization led to another one: that the reason I don't have the motivation is because I honestly don't care that much. That may sound bad, but the reason I don't care is because school and my future job aren't the most important things in my life right now nor will they be in the future. 

I said earlier that my "dream job" has never lasted any longer than a month at a time, but one thing that has never changed is how much I want to be a wife and a mom. I've spent so many years trying to find my calling, thinking that your calling was only found in a job. I'm not sure what made me realize this, maybe the fact that my roommate and I would talk about having kids one day on a daily basis haha, but it finally hit me that being a mom can be my calling, and having that as my dream isn't any less important than another girl having a dream of becoming a CEO of a company. I've always been the kind of person who puts their value and worth in what they do, and since the world and the current feminist movement constantly preaches that in order to be of any value in this world, women must have these really great careers and make a ton of money just like men do, I found myself kind of believing that. In the past year, my relationship with God has become stronger than it ever has before and I've become so much better at not only listening to His voice, but also following that voice and giving Him control of my life instead of trying to do everything myself. In doing this, I realized that the stress I was feeling about school wasn't from God. I kept seeing and hearing people say that if you're stressed about something, it's probably because you're putting too much focus on something that God doesn't really care about. So, I finally started opening up to the idea that maybe school and my future career aren't the most important things in my life, and I should be focusing more on other things that God has put on my heart recently, like becoming a wife and a mother. I know this sounds crazy because I'm no where close to being married (I don't even have a boyfriend haha) but that doesn't mean I can't start preparing myself for that time now. We spend so much of our lives getting a good education so we will be qualified for that one job we want, so why don't we put that much effort and preparation into the two most important jobs a woman can have: a wife and a mother. 

Once I realized this, I instantly felt so much more peace about my future. I no longer stressed about school all the time, or laid awake at night worrying about what I got on my Genetics exam I took two weeks ago that she still hasn't finished grading. I felt so much relief because I had finally stopped putting so much importance on a part of my life that God didn't want me to focus so much on. To me, the stress and the struggling was a sign that God has more important things in this life for me than a career, and that I just need to give it all to Him because His ways are far better than my own. Anything that is from Him will not require so much forcing or bring so much stress and anxiety. Only the things of the world and of our flesh do that. He continued to work on my heart and helped me to finally accept the fact that people may look down on me if I don't have five degrees or make six-figures, and if my main goal in life is to "just" be a mother. I have never felt more peace or felt more excited about anything in my life than when I think about raising children one day, and that's exactly how I know that that's the direction God is calling me to, and I'm not going to let the opinions of the world affect how I feel about that. 

I know myself enough to know that it's nearly impossible for me to give my all to two things at once. I know that if I had a full-blown career while also trying to serve my family, I would be doing each job halfheartedly and not giving either the effort or hard work they deserve. I'm not saying that I'm going to be a stay at home mom all my life; I will gladly work if my family needs the money, but not if that job gets in the way of my job as a wife and mother, or if it becomes an idol that I put above God and my family. It won't be a career that I'm constantly trying to make my way up the ladder in. It will be a job that I love, but most importantly a way for me to help take care of my family if we need it. But if we're doing well with one salary and the only reason I would want to work is to get more money for selfish reasons or greed, then maybe I will be a stay at home mom at least while my kids are still young and not yet in school. Being a mom is a huge job in and of itself. You are literally trying to keep tiny humans alive and healthy on a daily basis while also trying to raise them to be respectable, God-fearing, independent adults one day, and I don't know how any other job could be any more important than that. 

I could probably go on and on about this and how sad I think it is that the world belittles women who dream about being a wife and a mother more than they dream about their future job, but I've already written way more than I expected to so I'm going to end this post here. I know this was super long, so I thank you for taking the time to read it all if you made it this far, and I urge you to read Proverbs 31 and Titus 2 to see for yourself how much importance God puts on the woman's role as wife and mother. Maybe I'll make a couple posts unpacking those chapters because I think they're really important for us as women to fully understand them and meditate on. 

With love,