Goals

I grew up in a dysfunctional home. My dad was an alcoholic, and my mom worked two jobs for as long as I can remember to keep a roof over her daughter’s heads. As a younger child, I didn’t realize that our home was dysfunctional. I had nothing to compare it to, so I knew no different. It wasn’t until around upper middle school (back then, it was called Jr. High) that I started to notice that some of my friend’s homes and families were different. Once I got to high school, I definitely became highly aware of the differences between family dynamics, mainly in financial observation.

Although we lived in an older, less affluent neighborhood, the high school I attended and the majority of the students there came from very well-off families. They wore all the newest clothing styles and drove to school in newer model cars provided by their parents. This was not me or my situation. The one thing I had going for me that allowed me to infiltrate into the more “popular” crowd was that I was a very pretty girl. Thus, a lot of the popular boys wanted to be my friend.

From an early age, I set what I suppose you could consider a goal, although I wasn’t aware it was a goal at that time. I just knew what I wanted: I wanted to marry a man who didn’t drink and could provide financially for our family so I could be a stay-at-home mom. I wanted to be able to provide for my future family, all the things I didn’t have growing up.

Fast-forward to today, and I can happily say that the mission was accomplished. Of course, the past 29 years have not all been bliss, but my husband doesn’t drink, has a great work ethic, and has been a good provider for our family. I was able to be a stay-at-home mom for both of our sons, who were homeschooled for 13 years. When our youngest son reached 9th grade, he wanted to start attending the local high school just as his brother did. Knowing that this was going to leave me with a lot of free time, I decided to start working part-time. I became a substitute teacher, and I could work at my son’s high school, so I was on the same schedule as them, and I could attend all of their after-school sports.

Now, our sons are 27 and 23 years old, and although they both still live at home, they do their own things socially and at work. Although I still like doing the mom thing and making dinner for my family (when they are home), tending to their laundry, and baking the occasional treat (which they still appreciate), I realized that I needed something more for me as a 50-something-year-old woman who never attended college or had a profession. I felt it was time that I started discovering my passion and doing something with it. The problem was that my passion was still my family and home. When I sat and thought about if there was anything in this world that I could do, what would that be, it always came back to family and, more importantly, how no matter what family you were placed in from the beginning, you have the power and ability to create the family of your dreams. After a couple of years of telling myself there was no way I would be able to be a college student at my age, having a fear of failure, quitting and looking like a failure to my children, and so much prayer, I felt very prompted by the Spirit to enroll in college. I held my breath, closed my eyes, and took the leap with BYU Pathways Worldwide.

Knowing that I wanted to do something in relation to families or social work, I enrolled and chose a degree in Family and Human Services. It’s taking me a while to work my way through because I am only attending part-time (I also work part-time), but I have not entirely, and I am one semester away from receiving my AAS degree.

I will share much more about this story with you, but I think this is enough for now. As I have been pondering the past few weeks the amount of time it’s taking me to complete my degree (especially at my age), the cost involved, and what I will even do with it once I’ve received my bachelor’s degree, I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions like why am I even doing this? Are you really going to be able to do anything with this? How is this helping your family? I’ve been thinking a lot about my Why, and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about at our next visit. We need to find our why, how we find it, and what we do once we have it.