What do you want to be?

Samuel (age 5) is helping me make chocolate chip bars one afternoon and he asks me, "So Mom, what do you want to be when you grow up?" My response was, "I am all grown up!". He said, "No, I mean when it is time to get a job and stuff." I answered, "I have a job taking care of you and your brother and sisters. My job is also teaching you school." His big brother yells from the other room, "She just doesn't get paid for her job." Samuel got down from his stool and started to go upstairs. I asked him where he was going and he said, "I have to get something."

Pretty soon he comes back down and lays something on the counter next to me. He had brought me 30 cents. I asked him what that was for and he said, "For teaching me school Mom." I, of course, then yelled to Caleb and asked him how much he was going to pay me!

The Lord has called me to be a homeschool mom. It is the most rewarding and difficult job that I have ever had. But this is not what I wanted to be "when I grew up." I knew as early as high school that I wanted to be an accountant.

It was while I was finishing a masters program (Masters of Professional Accounting, no doubt!) and working for an accounting firm that I met Don and shortly afterwards got married. This still did not alter me from my course of being a partner in a CPA firm someday or maybe a CFO for a corporation.

Even when I found out I was pregnant with Caleb, there was no thought of even staying home with my children. I was looking at daycare options for when I went back to work after maternity leave. It took six months of being back to work for me to decide that this was not what "I wanted to be" anymore.

Because the Lord's timing is perfect, I was able to quit my job and be at home just before Caleb's first birthday. Don took over as the main source of income with his first job as a Physician Assistant. I knew that this was the Lord's plan for me but I have to say that there have been moments when I have wondered . . .

why in the world did I need a CPA to stay at home with my children?

why do I have a "Masters of Professional Accounting" when any sort of teaching degree would have been way more helpful?

would I have made it as a partner or a CFO?

In the last 12 years, I have learned that any path, other than the Lord's, is not worth pursuing. I have also learned that everything we do today is preparation for what the Lord has for us tomorrow. Today I am using the education that I received to help a ministry organization in Guatemala do their finances and bookkeeping. Who would have guessed?? Only the Lord knew what He was preparing me for all those years ago. And because He has called me to be a homeschool mom, we have the option of taking our family to Guatemala for an extended period of time. His ways are not our ways nor are His plans our plans, but when it all comes together, it is amazing!

So "what do you want to be?" Are you looking at your plans or His plans? Is He preparing you today for something that He has for you tomorrow? I am believing that He is, are you?