Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

This is TCS’s third question:

What is your proudest moment?

This answer didn’t take me long at all. Although I have a lot of good memories and feelings about a lot of things in my life, including most of all how deeply spiritual each of my three children is, which I want to think is at least in part my achievement as their mother, those all involve a number of other people. And they involve a lot of moments.

My own singular, my proudest, moment was the moment I crossed the stage on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg in cap and gown and received my college diploma. I’m much more proud of that even than earning my Juris Doctorate at Loyola School of Law New Orleans six years later.

The reason is that when I went to law school, I had lots of support, beginning most with Tom, from scholarships, law clerking for an attorney, my family – in every way.

When I went to college in my 30s, I not only had no support, but faced many personal, even hostile, obstacles, but I did it, anyway. And did it well, with God’s help.

I haven’t talked in this blog about certain parts of my life to any extent and I don’t intend to start doing so now.

Some things are better left to the past with our vision focused on the present and future instead. All I’m going to say here is that when I said I wanted (really needed) to go to school I was first told "over my dead body" and then, "as long as it doesn’t take any time away from this family and doesn’t cost me any money."

But, with God’s help, I did it.

I did it in 2 1/2 years, commuting 65 miles a day one way (which translated to about 1 1/2 hours each way each day of school), with no financial support at home, no personal or emotional support at home, two older children to care for (David was at the U. S. Naval Academy in Annapolis by then) and fighting deep depression.

My first semester, alone, was spent in a depressive fog trudging to nine hours of classes on campus, studying for and passing 18 hours of CLEP (College-Level Examination Program) tests in one grueling, late November sitting (I’d passed 6 hours of CLEP tests in college English four years before), and challenging (testing out of) 6 hours of Journalism courses at USM.

At the end of my first semester, I went from being a first semester freshman to a second semester sophomore. I went from about 18 hours to 51 hours of college credit through not only a tremendous amount of study, but God’s providential guidance. And I mean that in the most concrete, real way.

After the last of my tests, the last day of that semester, which was a very dreary, gray, cold day, when I had no money or any way to come back to school, I went to see the Voc Rehab man near campus (with Vocational Rehabilitation Services for Mississippi). He said he was sorry he had bad news for me with my application for financial assistance from long being diabetic and also having a stress induced collapsed/herniated disc in my neck.

Then he continued.

"All I can get for you is $900 a semester," he finished. Friends – that is exactly what tuition was per semester at USM at that time. $900. It was exactly what I needed to continue.

I’ll never forget that moment that afternoon in his office because just as he was saying those words, I was looking out the window at the blustery, dreary day and a bright ray of sun shone through.

And I knew it was God who had brought me to this place, to this moment in my journey with all the physical limitations and mental and emotional obstacles in my path, and He had just moved the biggest obstacle of all facing me at that very moment.

I went on to finish my course work with a straight A (4.0) average in December two years later and went to work for a while in Picayune.

I wasn’t even going to go to graduation the next May until my younger best friend I’d met through carpooling to school, Karin, convinced me I should because she knew how difficult my ordeal had been and yet what I had accomplished. No one in my family was able to come or to be there, except for the one person described above who berated and belittled me the entire way there until I was in tears.

But when I walked into the coliseum, put on my cap and gown, stood with my graduating classmates, I suddenly realized it was real. I had really done it in my late 30s, against all odds. I had achieved a goal I’d long since given up on. And God and I had done it together through a tortuous tangle of barriers.

I was thrilled. Pomp & Circumstance No. 1 by Elgar still makes me terribly nostalgic and I weep each time I hear it.

Later that afternoon when I walked across the stage over at Southern Hall to receive my "official" piece of paper – my degree in Communication (with an emphasis in News Editorial Journalism and Public Relations), graduating with Highest Honors – I stopped on stage and hugged the Director of the School of Communication who had become my biggest supporter and advocate at school.

I was extrordinarily happy.

That still is the single proudest moment of my life.

[Again - how would you answer the question? What is your proudest moment of your life?]