Career vs. Cupcakes

There comes a time in life when you have to make some tough decisions.  Decisions that will change your life forever.  Decisions that will either make you or break you.  Decisions that will affect your family.  Decisions that will make those around you laugh behind your back.  Decisions that will impact those closest to you.  Decisions that will ultimately lead you closer to God and decisions that will be a testimony to the most precious gifts that God has given to you.

A few years ago, I was able to quit my job and work part time to stay at home with my youngest.  During this time, I thought God called me to go back to school to become a nurse.  So I started pursuing that calling without prayer, without the consent of my husband, and without really thinking through how it would impact my family.  It was a dream of mine to finish school and do something “great” with my life.  But at the expense of what? A lot of my friends had done it and it sounded so great; the money, the short work week, and the flexible schedule.  Who could want anything more? Right?!  After two years of taking one class at a time, I finally was accepted into the nursing program at UT Tyler.  I was so excited and proud of myself.  My parents were gleaming!  Only four semesters and the world would be mine!  I could buy my kids anything they wanted, go on all sorts of trips and have a title behind my name!!!

STOP!  Put on the brakes! Two weeks into school and I knew I had made a HUGE mistake.  I spent every waking hour with my head in a book or at school.  Once a week, I left before my kids woke up, only to come home to study more.  The days ran together.  I was missing out on precious family time, feeding my kids garbage and passing out before I even had time to talk to my husband.  Half way through the semester, we were told that our work load would double next semester and my clinicals would require me to be gone around 5:15 in the morning and get home around 7:00 at night.  WOW!  What had I gotten myself into?!  This is not what I pictured for my family.  Where had I gotten lost?  Where had I gone wrong?  And what was I doing?! The Lord brought me to my knees one night as I was tucking my youngest into bed.  He started crying because he did not want me to be gone when he woke up in the morning…

I knew then and there that this career was not for me or our family.  I never once consulted God about nursing school and I wanted to be in control of my destiny.  Well, it was tearing my family apart and I was losing the battle.  God told me that night what I was supposed to be doing.  He had allowed me to stay at home all along so that I could take care of my family, not so I could go to school.  I wasted so many precious hours and days with my family for pursuit of something that God never intended for me.  He has already given me the greatest job of all and that is being a wife to a wonderful husband and mother of the most precious boys I know!

Since making the decision to not go back to nursing school, God has richly blessed my life.  I have never been happier and more peaceful than I am right now.  I even got to make homemade cupcakes for the first time, icing and all :)  My husband is happy, my home is in order, my kids are eating real food again, I get to play with my kids everyday, I get to tuck them in every night and read the Bible to them and wake them up every morning, I have read a book, I am able to read my Bible every morning and best of all I am doing what God has called me to do all along.  Soooo, people may be disappointed in me, people may call me a quitter, laugh behind my back, find a new friend or even say things about me; but it doesn’t bother me anymore.  I have chosen my husband and kids over a career and that is worth more to me than any piece of paper ever will be.  God has a unique design for each and every family.  And in our family we are making cupcakes :)

The world is yelling at us to do one thing, while the Lord is whispering, “Follow Me”.  Don’t let the distractions of this world keep you from your true calling…

An excellent wife, who can find?  For her worth is far above jewels…She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness.  Proverbs 31:10, 27