Something I have been thinking about a lot (esp since getting engaged) is how growing up in a conservative evangelical megachurch, marriage/children was presented as the cornerstone of growing up vs. working/other achievements.

You graduate, you maybe go to college, you get married, you have babies. No mention of how to find the right career for you (unless maybe it was in a ministry context) or how to find satisfaction in what you do from day to day. I really did think life had to be all about family.

That’s wild because most of us live in a world where we have to spend 40+ hours per week doing something that likely has nothing to do with our families and can drain your soul if you’re not careful. And in my experience we were given no roadmap to navigate that.

I really like my career! But I wonder if my path would be different had I been given the tools early on to understand what it means to handle your career in a God-honoring way and how to navigate the changes that come with that because it is truly a jungle out there!

Instead we got advice on how to pick a spouse! In middle school! I don’t know if boys had the same experience but I had no role models of women who liked/cared about their career, again unless they married a pastor or a missionary or something.

The women I interacted with at church were ideally stay at home moms, which there were plenty of in a white affluent church. If a woman worked, she did it for the paycheck and I don’t remember those leaders talking about their work ever.

I just assumed good Christian women didn’t love their jobs so I never thought about what my adult working life would be like. My idea of my future revolved around a husband and children so as I grew up and had to make huge decisions about what I wanted to do, I felt lost.

This thread doesn’t have a point or like a zinger at the end or all. I’m just thinking about how life is so much more complicated than I was told it would be. I can’t wait to get married, but I have a career (and hobbies and other pursuits!) that is immensely fulfilling as well!