What do you want to be when you grow up? Wow, what a question! When I was a little girl at first I wanted to be Cher – my very first memory is of watching the Sonny and Cher show and her hair was gorgeous to me. Then when I got a little older the answer was Crystal Gayle – again a hair thing, I guess. Probably because my mother was a hairdresser and I was about thirteen before I discovered you could say no to questions such as, don’t you want a haircut or don’t you want a perm? But, then I got a little older and found out you can't be someone else when you grow up. I had to start thinking of what kind of a job I would have when I grew up, because that's really what the question is asking.
For those of you who know me, you know I have been to school for A LOT trying to figure out the answer to this important question! I started out going to college at Southern Illinois University (Go Dawgs!) studying mortuary science – no, that wasn't a typo. See I grew up in a small town where my best friend's dad was a mortician and they lived upstairs at the funeral home, a la My Girl. So this wasn't weird to me, I grew up around it, wanted to make a good living, and didn't want to be in school forever to be a doctor. But after a semester I started to think of the heartache side of it all, how could I ever handle the death of a child and the poor family left behind? As an 18 year old college freshman - I decided I just couldn't handle dealing with the loss of people's loved ones every day at work. I became an undecided major, then declared a business/marketing major, then left SIU all together and took a semester off of school.
Next I moved to St. Louis and went to culinary school for a year and a half, I took all the cooking classes, but didn't like the business side of it all. At this point I decided I don't know what in the world I want to be when I grow up, but I better get a trade to support myself in the meantime. I followed in my mom's footsteps and went to beauty school, I worked as hairdresser for a year and half and just couldn't seem to make a go of my clientele and business - I was staring at thirty and the very real possibility that I would still be living at home with my folks, where I had moved back in when I started beauty school. I got online and ordered an SIU catalog, time to go back to school and get a degree, so I could be what I was going to be when I grew up. I spent the next two years back in Carbondale, and then graduated with a degree in history and a teacher's certificate. I decided I wanted to move back to Tennessee - even though I was born in Illinois my heart had always been there, we moved to Tennessee when I was 13 years old, and it felt like my whole life had been a vacation and I was finally home - my soul could just breathe there. Much to the chagrin of my parents, who were now living back in Illinois, I only applied for jobs in Tennessee - after a few kinks I ended up teaching seventh grade in a middle school in Shelby County.
For most of my life I had been in school or working and pretty much self-reliant. I had been answering the question of what I wanted to be when I grew up, which was why so many things hadn't worked out or hadn't been as rewarding as I had expected them to be. But, I was about to take on the hardest and most rewarding job I would ever have: wife and mother, for which there is really no training or schooling to prepare you. This was what God wanted me to be when I grew up, and was what I would continue to be for the rest of my life. This was the only thing I had never known I wanted to be, but what I ended up loving to do more than anything I had ever done before and it was because it was what He wanted me to do with my life.
However, now that both Payton and Katherine are getting older the question of what job (outside of the home) I want to have when I grow up is one I am starting to re-visit. As I type that, I’m swallowing back the gigantic alligator tears and anxiety of someone else spending the majority of the day with Kit-Kat as she will be off to nursery in a little over a year. But as time stands still for no one I realize that it will soon be time for me to re-enter the working woman’s world. What to do is something I will have to ask God, because I know He is the only one whose plans will give me confidence, fulfillment, and love so that I can give these things back to my wonderful family. The hardest part in asking God this question is His answer may not be the one I was wanting or the one I was looking for, however the easy part is, I know it will be the one I need. It will be amazing to see what plans He has in store for me on my continued quest for what I want to be when I grow up.
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