Not Wasted

I’m sitting here on my couch writing this entry on the eve of the first day of my last year of seminary (Lord willing). As I’m writing this, my husband of a week and a-half is sitting on the floor taking a break from his reading for one of his classes tomorrow morning. Life looks very different now from when I started at Westminster. I came into seminary not at all looking for a husband — which is not to say that I didn’t hope to find one, merely that I didn’t come in with that as a goal! My goal in pursuing my M.A. was to prepare for a Ph.D. program with the eventual goal of teaching at the college level someday.

Not so any more.

These days, my plans in life are a little more subdued. I’m looking forward to finishing my thesis and graduating, then spending some time figuring out how to be a wife without the comfortable and very familiar academic setting before (dv) becoming a mother. Maybe someday, if the circumstances and the timing is right, I can continue on with my academic studies and get a Ph.D. Maybe I can even write something someday. But for now, my priorities lie in being a wife.

I know there are people out there who think that this renders my efforts in getting my M.A. quite wasted. Time and money and effort and sleep(!) spent in pursuit of a degree that has a real chance of never being used in a professional capacity, is, to them, a waste of resources. Others would say that my degree does nothing to prepare me for being a wife and mother, and, therefore, the money and time spent in getting it is a waste.

And yet, I would argue that in no way is it a wasted effort.

(I’m not just saying that because I’m graduating married, either!)

By the end of all of this I will have gotten to spend three years at a wonderful little seminary. I’ll have had a good chunk of the systematic courses taught by the ever organised and brilliant Dr. VanDrunen (including the most excellent Christian Life and Holy Spirit courses). I’ll have learned all about Aimee Semple McPherson and the quirks of American evangelicalism from the ever cheerful Dr. Godfrey, our excellent president. I’ll have learned about the seeds of Protestantism in the Ancient and Medieval church from the incomparable Dr. Clark. I’ll have been thoroughly mystified by modern philosophy only to discover that I actually did manage to learn quite a lot from Dr. Horton. Dr. Baugh and Professor Kim will have managed to impart in me an appreciation for Greek (even though the grammar and morphology are weird compared to Latin), and Dr. Estelle and Professor Van Ee will have given me a lasting love of Hebrew and Aramaic.

And all of this can be used well beyond any professional uses for an M.A. My husband and I have every intention that our children end up like their mother – largely useless at modern languages but able to know what’s going on with the dead ones. (Though I do have ambitions that they’ll end up a bit more like their father — good with the live and the dead ones!) Dr. VanDrunen’s Christian Life class is priceless for its teachings not only in how to think about ethics, but in how to appreciate nuances in ethics — and that’s not even including the ever-excellent bits on two kingdoms that he included. Dr. Clark’s Medieval & Reformation Church class will always be one of our favourite classes — both for what was learned about the medieval church and for what was learned about the modern church.

Who in their right of mind would call all of that a waste?

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