A Little Background

Thought I'd share a little about how I landed in Seminary; more than just God called me to go, so I went.

Growing up I wanted to be an astronaut and then a veterinarian. The only problem with those careers was that they required the ability to think with a scientific mind. That part of my brain was left out. I do not understand physics or mechanics or chemistry. I could probably pass a course in those subjects, but not wihtout lots and lots of tears.

Don't believe me, just ask Ed. He's VERY intelligent in those areas and he's tried explaining simple concepts to me dealing with aerodynamics and I ended up in tears. That stuff just makes NO sense to me.

Sometime during middle school or early high school, I figured that out. I also had discovered two other passions; music (I played the trombone) and writing. By the end of my stint in high school I had determined I would obtain a college degree in music education and then I would end up in the mountains of NC working a sa songwriter.

I was going to start out as a high school band teacher. The problem was that I had neither the discipline or the talent to make a living as any sort of musician. So, I switched my major to English education. I wanted to teach high school language arts. I love reading and diagraming sentences. Yes, I know the latter officially qualifies me as a geek, but I'm okay with that.

About the middle of my second year of college I had a scary thought. I would be only 20 years old when I graduated from college. If I taught high school, my students would be just a few years younger than I was. So, I changed majors again. This time I changed my major to Mass Communications with an Emphasis in Print Journalism. That's the degree I graduated with.

Yes, I know my writing on here is rarely grammatically correct, but this is a blog -- not anything that anyone actually reads for grammatical correctness.

My goal then was to become a copy editor. There is just something exciting about taking a written piece of work and tweaking it until it is absolutely perfect. I knew that I would also be required to have knowledge of page layout and design so I took a course or two in that.

As graduation approached I found myself absolutely terrified that I would have no job and no way to pay off all $4500 of my student loans. I ended up taking the first job I was offered.

You know Val-Pak, the blue envelopes you get in the mail with all the coupons? I worked for them designing ads on second shift. I learned a great deal while there, but it was in FL and I just had to leave there.

I ended up in NC working for a company that publishes in-flight magazines for several airlines. I was the promotions coordinator. I learned all about the printing process and more about the graphic design programs I had been using. My boss was absolutely wonderful. The company was a strong company. I was paid well and I had good benefits. I was on my way to an art director position for one of the smaller publications. All in all, it wsa a wonderful experience.

It wasn't "it" though. Who cares if ads get printed in magazines? Really, how does that impact eternity? It may somehow, for some people, but in my estimation, it didn't and I simply could not live working a job that meant nothing in eternity.

I started looking at my options. During my senior year of college I had taken the LSAT and I had done well. I was going to study communications law, but couldn't afford to even apply to law school. I started looking at law again. This time though, I thought about child advocacy law. That's certainly a worthwhile profession and it's something I would have loved to do. The only school in the area with a program in that specific area was Duke.

Now, I am certainly no Duke fan, but if they weren't so pricey, I might have considered attending there. So now I had to look at some other career. I decided to look into social work. I have always had a heart for the poor; specifically for educating them so that they could improve their situations.

In social work though, you have to deal with a lot of pretty horrible stuff and I would venture to guess that as a government employee, I probably would not have been able to share the Gospel. So, scratched that idea.

Next idea lead me right back where I started; education. Problem: teaching in public schools would tie my hands too much. I know there are some wonderful, Godly teachers out there, but I'm not one to keep my mouth shut when I see things being done that are wrong. I probably would have been fired within a month.

I kept praying and praying and praying. Through a series of "coincidences" *wink, wink* and prayer and soul-searching I felt the call of God on my heart. Ministry was to be my career.

That call landed me at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary studying for a master's degree in counseling.

I'll expand on my thoughts on counseling and things I learned in a later post.