The Best

I, like so many people, often find myself following my own agenda and forget that I need to honestly pray and put things in God's hands. While I do not know if I truly got off the path God intended for me to follow or not, I do know that He gave us freewill and within that I truly believe that regardless of how far of course we may go, God finds a way to make the path we are on right for us....even if it is a little bumpy along the way.

When I look back on the school book my mom kept, it clearly states for each school year what I wanted to be when I grew up. In kindergarten one of those things was a teacher. Through the years I was also going to be a model, a banker, a lawyer, a child psychiatrist, and a pediatrician. The last two, I held onto throughout middle school and almost all of high school; especially the one about being a pediatrician. As a matter of fact 3/4 of the way through college, I even started checking in to what it would take for me to get in to MUSC. But those who know me, know that I am an passionate educator.

But I am more than that.

Not too long ago, Tori asked if I was ever going to be a doctor. I thought carefully about my words and explained that if I can just get a big paper called a dissertation done, then I would be a doctor, but not the kind that she thinks. I would be a doctor of education, someone who takes care of you by helping you grow in knowledge, by helping you learn. She then insisted that was no kind of doctor. In other words, mom you're crazy.

Well, I guess this idea of me being the doctor she wants me to be has stayed with her, because a few days ago I heard this; "Mom, you're the best doctor."

"What do you mean T-Belle?" I inquired.

"You're the best doctor because you help us by putting on our lotions and giving us medicine."

I thought that was the end of that until tonight. Tori started in on a conversation of what she sees me being the best at: the best cooker, the best doctor, the best mommy she knows, etc.

This does my heart proud, because she can see that someone can be more than just one thing, that one label does not describe who our whole person is. While we say a lot of "bless her hearts" and "God love her" about my T-Belle, she truly has one of those reflective and contemplating minds and will just blow you away with the depth of some of her thinking from time to time. You see, this little 5 year old girl has taken another conversation about growing up and without prompting or directing from anyone applied it to something larger.

Along with many conversations we have, Tori has mentioned that she wants to be a mom, a cheerleader, and a teacher when she grows up. I think it was teacher....she changes that last one from time to time, but consistently wants to be a mom and a cheerleader. When I told her she can be all those things, she responding with an astonished, "WHAT?! You mean I don't have to be just one." You see I wanted her to know that she really will be so much more than one label and in my mind I know that she is thinking a cheerleader who puts on a uniform to cheer in front of the crowds. But as her mom, I know that no matter what she chooses in life, she will be a cheerleader of a different sort. One who cheers on her siblings, her friends, and one day her own children.

So the fact that she came up with all of the "you're the best _________" statements to describe me, shows me that she can see how someone can be so many different things all at once.

So while I didn't become the medical doctor I once thought I would become, in the eyes of an amazing 5 year old, I am a doctor.

Now, whether I was just stubbornly insisting I was going to be a pediatrician and God stepped in by my first jobs being in daycares while I was in high school, planting that seed to want to be with children as their teacher, or whether God really did plan that I would become a pediatrician I will never know. Regardless of what my path was supposed to be and whether God intervened years ago so I would become an educator, or whether I messed with His plans and he had to work out a new path for me, I know that I would change anything for the world.

For more about the doctor I didn't become, stay tuned for my next post and look up Romans 8:28.