When I was in college, about half-way done with my degree, I met a girl whose boyfriend was then serving a Mormon mission. She was young, just 18. And she was just positive that when he came home in about a year, they were going to get married. It didn’t matter that the rest of us told her she should go ahead and use this time to date other boys. She was sure about what the future would hold for her. Because she believed firmly that they would begin their family as soon they were married and she would be a stay-at-home mom, she didn’t feel any urgency about going to college or beginning a career.
I have to admit that most of us other young women thought she was crazy. We were driven to further our education as the prophet has admonished. Frankly, we thought she was being foolish to put all of her eggs in one basket with the hope that a year later, she and her boyfriend would still be in love with each other after being separated for a total of two years.
Nevertheless, in the time that she had she took cooking classes and learned how to be an excellent chef. She took sewing classes and began sewing her own clothing. She learned how to knit and how to crochet. She took an interior design class. She went to seminars on budgeting and read up on child development. All these things seemed beneath the rest of us upward-bound college scholars. After all, we were getting a real education!
Sure enough, though, about a year later her boyfriend returned from serving his two years for the Lord and proposed to her almost immediately. And just as she had planned they soon had a baby join their little family. After that, I lost track of her.
But it wasn’t too much longer until I had my own husband and my own little baby with my college degree safely tucked away. I envied this other woman and the preparations that she had made for being a mother and a wife. At the time, I thought the education she was getting was a waste. But suddenly that exact type of education would have been priceless to me! They were both valuable. I am reminded of Sister Julie B. Beck’s words, “Nurturing mothers are knowledgeable, but all the education women attain will avail them nothing if they do not have the skill to make a home that creates a climate for spiritual growth.” I did not know how to cook. Because I didn’t know how to cook, our grocery budget was larger than it needed to be because the foods I bought were mostly prepared. I really didn’t have any homemaking skills at all! I was unprepared for having a baby (not that anyone is really prepared for that) and felt like the first 7 years of being a mother I needed remedial help and tutoring to make up for all that I was missing .
I realized that there aren’t really conditions on the type of education that is preferable. In my youth, I firmly believed that if it wasn’t a college education, it wasn’t really an education at all. But now I see so much the value of all types of learning and preparations. We are each different people, with different learning styles, different priorities and different paths in life. James E. Faust has said, “I do not care what vocation you choose to follow in life so long as it is honorable.” (James E. Faust, “Message to My Grandsons,” Liahona, May 2007, 54–56) The important thing is to prayerfully seek for Heavenly Father’s guidance as we pursue our educational goals, whatever they may be. Certainly, He will lead us down the path that will be of most importance to us in this life and in the life to come because we know that “whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection.” (D&C 130:18).
