Friday Five - Fork in the Road

Songbird over at the RevGalBlogPals writes:

I am at a life-changing juncture. I do not know which way I will go, but I have been thinking about the times, people and events that changed my life (for good or ill) in significant ways. For today's Friday Five, share with us five "fork-in-the-road" events, or persons, or choices. And how did life change after these forks in the road?

Wow. That is an interesting question. I feel like I've had quite a few of them.
The thing about all of these is that I'm a person who usually does not agonize over decisions. All of these were decisions I made pretty quickly some perhaps impulsively but I never had second thoughts or regretted them. That's me. I jump in and I don't look back.

1. My first life changing decision was when I decided to go on a
Semester at Sea in my junior year of college. This is a ship on which you
literally travel around the world while taking college classes. I dropped out of school for 6 months to work full time to earn the money to do it and got a work study grant that paid for half of it. Even that experience of going to work everyday (I was a receptionist at an office in downtown Los Angeles) at such a young age was good for grounding me and giving me a taste of how many people live their lives because after that I was going to spend a LONG time going to school

Most of our stops were third world countries. It changed me and my outlook forever. And it put a taste in me for travel that has stayed forever though I've never again done anything quite that adventurous.

2.My next life-changing decisions was to go to seminary. That took me a few years. First I was accepted at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago but I was living in San Francisco at the time and at the last minute decided to stay and go to Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley. I lasted about one semester, dropped out and worked (for the travel industry!) for a couple of years. Then I quit my job, took a trip to Israel and went back to Seminary.



3. The next fork involved a lot of changes and tranistions in just a few years. Between 1985-1988 I graduated, moved across the country to Wisconsin (the picture is of me in my new car about to set off from Berkeley to Coon Valley Wisconsin) got ordained (1986), got married (1987) and had my first child (1988)!



4. My fourth life changing event was not any decision I made. My husband was killed suddenly in a car accident on August 1, 1999. I did make a decision that I was going to survive, that I was not going to be sad for the rest of my life. That next part of my life was the most difficult in my life, my children were 9 and 11 at the time. Both my kids had it very hard, my son was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome during that time. Plus I was in a mean, sick, dysfunctional congregation. It was horrible. But we all survived. And it looks like my kids turned out okay, they are in college and are really good people.

5) Well I'm in a new period of my life. Kids are ready to be more independent and don't need me as much. I'm in a healthier congregation. I sense there is a fork coming around the corner sooner than later and I'm ready for it.