I never thought after I got married that I would ever go back to College. Then I had kids and due to circumstances I found myself reluctantly being a stay at home mom. I gradually fell in love with my new domestic roll and found the blessings from getting to focus a lot of time and attention on my family was well worth the sacrifice's.

 For most our marriage (9 years) we have lived in a small town of hard working people where there is not a day care in sight. With all my friends and relatives working full time jobs, having kids meant someone has to stay home and take care of them. So for the last seven years I have been unemployed and know more about Yo Gabba Gabba then I care to admit.  If I wanted to learn something new I had to self teach myself via computer. But over time a new fear had arisen... "what if something happened to my husband and he would not be able to provide for us?" With little marketable skills and being un-employed for so long my prospects looked bleak. I would barely be qualified to work at a fast food joint. This fear remained with me through the years and I just prayed that this fear would not come to life.

Well my husband lost his nice job as a supervisor for a youth treatment center he had worked at for six years and thankfully his aunt quickly hired him at her family restaurant. While this was a cut in pay with no benefits we were grateful to be making it by but the busy season was ending and we were looking down a  scary tunnel. But somehow we were blessed again and just when we needed it most he got employed at another youth treatment center. But he had to start out at the bottom... Well I think heavenly father was really looking out for us because in a short three months my husband was promoted three times, all the way back up to a supervisor position. Now as if we were not blessed enough a new job offer came up six months later for an even better job to work for the state in the Juvenile Justice department with full benefits. The only problem... We were going to have to move our family across the state.

We would have to leave our lovely home we built, my husbands home town and all his family. This was also the only home my two boys ages five and six had ever known. Could we gamble all that we loved in hopes that this job would open doors for us to continue to grow and thrive? It was a big desision to make. In the end we realized that there was just no room to grow in our current situation. So we made the leap of faith.

We have been so blessed to get wonderful neighbors that helped us move in and bring us yummy treats to welcome us to the neighborhood. And the cool thing is the next door neighbors had two boys the same ages and school year as our boys. And I aslo can't tell you how nice it is to live in a place where pizza can be delivered right to your door. Its amazing! You know what else they have here... Colleges! Infact they have THREE! And they were calling out to me...

At first I would say self defeating things to myself like "I'm to old, I wont fit in, I can't afford it, I'm not smart enough, I'm being greedy to want more, I don't have the time, I can't get up that early," And people kept telling me that it would be a great time to have another baby now that my boys were both in school, and I could see their point but I kept being drawn toward the thought of going back to school. And then somehow it was like the perfect opportunity started to created itself. My husbands shift became an evening shift so he would be home in the morning to take care of our kindergartner until he went to school at noon. And my morning classes would be over by 1pm giving me two hours of uninterrupted homework time! Then I was able to work with various state programs to help me pay for most of my tuition. It was like my heavenly father said "I have made a way, what will you do with it?"

Well I am happy to report that I am currently three weeks away from the end of my first term and am getting strait A's, loving my classes and making friends. All this from a person who in all her school days rarely got good grades, made friends or even felt comfortable in her own skin let alone a classroom full of 18 year olds. The thing is school hasn't changed much over time... I have.  I think being a wife and mom all these years has really helped me to come into my own and has educated me with real world experiences that I can use to apply my new college information too. That college may just be wasted on the young and is perfect for people who have lived and understand the value of a good education the way most just-out-of-high-school-students can't. What's really neat is to see the people in their 40's and 50's in my classes trying to better themselves and their situations no matter their age. I've come to realize that life really is what I make out of it and that the education of Julia is never really over and can be found in the most unsuspecting places like a home full of children or in a comment given by a college peer twice my age wearing the same nerdy backpack as me.