A Calling

We got back from Hyllningsfest in Lindsborg last night. I mentioned to my eldest on the way to school this morning that by the next Hyllningsfest (in two years), we will be talking about colleges for her. "I have no idea where I want to go to college!" she lamented. "I don't even know what I want to do with my life!" In my prayers driving out of the high school parking lot, I prayed that God would give her a clear calling for her future.

But then I thought, what if she isn't supposed to know her calling yet when she gets out of high school? What if she doesn't know until she meets the man she's supposed to marry -- what if her calling is to be a mother and a "helpmeet"? What if the thing God made her for and wants her to devote her energy and passion to is raising her children and supporting her husband in his calling?

I have known women like that. Women who never really had a job, but raised amazing children and were their husbands' "right-hand men" in the work God called them to do. They had just as much skill and talent and passion about what they were doing as any career woman on the fast-track. They had just as much influence on their world, maybe more. They were very happy. But I wonder how many people over the years had looked at them as sadly unambitious and thought they were wasting their lives.

I want my daughters to go to college. And I've become more convinced, too, that they need to start right after high school and get, at least, the basic courses out of the way while they're still fresh in their minds and while they're still used to a study routine. It would be much harder to come back to that stuff a few years later when they've decided on a career path finally. But I do hope I, and the other important people in their lives, will give them grace and encouragement if they come to realize that their future isn't going to require a college degree, or even a paying job.

As I've said before, that's one of my beefs with the women's rights movement -- the way it has demonized the "traditional" woman. I thought the idea was to open up more options for women, not to exchange one set for another.