Mom, Seminary Is for You, Too

When my husband and I first moved to Philadelphia for seminary, we moved as a family of three. No one suspected we were expecting our second little one. Our son arrived that winter and new church friends filled our kitchen table with home-cooked meals. Class schedules punctuated our family rhythms as we settled into our seminary apartment. Winter gave way to our first spring in a new state, and two little ones became three, and then eventually four.

I’ve spent seven years as a mom in seminary. The beauty of those years? When I say that I’m not the same person I was when I started seminary, I mean it.

Moms, could you benefit from a seminary education? Will you use what you’ve learned? Are you needed in the classroom? I’d firmly answer “Yes” to all three.

Personally Fruitful Years

I sat under the weight of my failure and a recorded professor’s prayer on a Thursday morning at my kitchen table. Parenting wasn’t easy. I’d kept a tally of each mistake and raised voice from the past several years, and they clung to my back like a child desperate to hold on.

I let this professor’s prayer cover me, let the words inch their way into my heart. My professor prayed for each one of us, speaking of the slowness of sanctification and the truth of the gospel. Of course I’d heard these words before. Still, something about those words on that morning broke through to a heart that had forgotten what it meant to be forgiven. I’d forgotten the gospel’s balm was for me, too. 

Moments like these happened often throughout my time in seminary. Motherhood never allowed me to shut up my learning in a book-lined study—little hands forced the door open. My daily tasks are always hands-on and ask a lot of me. So much of my life is spent crouched down, eye to eye with a toddler, picking cheerios from under a sticky highchair. What I’ve learned in a seminary classroom couldn’t stay in the classroom. Big truths couldn’t stay stuck in my head.

Concerning the life and study of a seminary student, B.B. Warfield wrote,

There may be some among you . . . who are inclined to set their studies off to one side, and their religious life off to the other side, and to fancy that what is given to the one is taken from the other. No mistake could be more gross. Religion does not take a man away from his work; it sends him to his work with an added quality of devotion. (“The Religious Life of Theological Students”)

As Warfield notes, personal life and study life are interconnected. Both feed into the other. The busyness of my life as a young mother has not taken away from my years of seminary but has increased them—a “good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over” (Luke 6:38).

These years have not been easy, but they have been fruitful.

Kitchen Table Ministry

At the kitchen table, we pulled out our catechism curriculum and talked about the forgiveness of sins. “Who is the Redeemer?” “The only redeemer is the Lord Jesus Christ.” Just days before, we’d talked about this in my systematic theology class—I knew this truth well. But it was one thing to talk about it in class and another thing to present it to my children, whose hearts still wondered if it was true.

Those moments at the kitchen table took concepts from a seminary classroom and made them bear fruit in my home. How do I communicate a concept like forgiveness of sins so that a two-year-old might understand it? How do we hold the tension between works and grace when disciplining? If I believe prayer is important, how do I implement it in my home when my five-year-old comes to me in the middle of the night and says he’s afraid?

We don’t need seminary classes to share the gospel with our children. However, many of us might wonder if we’ll waste our education unless we work full-time in ministry. I’d say no. My children’s religious formation is just as shaped from my personal time with the Lord as it is from my time spent in the classroom and in textbooks.

Needed in the Classroom

I still remember the faces of my younger peers in summer Hebrew, lamenting the late-night and early-morning study sessions that began blending together. Having found out I was pregnant a couple of weeks before, late-night study sessions were ruled out—I was promptly asleep by 9 p.m. My body refused to wake before 6 in the morning. My nights after class were filled with fixing dinner and bedtime routines instead of vocabulary flashcards and verb parsing. Still, the Lord used the little I had to offer during those summer months and brought fruit from them.

While I gave all I could to my time in seminary, I always had one foot firmly planted in my home. Charles Spurgeon once wrote to his students about men “not as other men are.” Entrenched in religious life and theological musings, they become like birds out of place in their surroundings. He encouraged his students to remember that if one wanted to be effective, he should remember that “the more simple and unaffected he is, the more closely will he resemble that child-man, the holy child Jesus” (Lectures to My Students, 180). Motherhood helps cultivate this simplicity and unaffectedness because it keeps our feet on the ground. Our religious life is embedded in day-to-day practicality. Little ones with formidable questions keep our theological musings humble.

Plus, there’s something about the giving of yourself over to sustain another person that makes you grow. Spreading yourself thin for others transforms you. Don’t we need voices like these in our seminary classrooms? Voices cultivated in the mire of 2 a.m. feedings, family devotionals, and chocolate consumed behind closed doors. Voices hoarse from tears shed over a prodigal child, a surprise “I love you,” or a memory of the little years long past. Voices necessarily mediating the theological classroom and real life.

The world needs our experiences and the lens through which we look at God—a lens that motherhood has helped shape.

Graduation Day

At my graduation, I’ll look out over the sea of faces to find four familiar ones, most likely leaned toward their neighbor to ask when the ceremony might end. I wonder if someday they’ll know that the hours spent at the kitchen table were just as important as the time spent in the library. I wonder if they’ll feel that what I learned in the classroom translated to my mothering, my friendship. I wonder if they’ll see the seminary years as fruitful instead of barren, useful instead of wasted. I hope they might.

I wonder if you might think this about your experience too.

Moms, you may feel unwanted in seminary classrooms, but you’re needed. Your voices are valuable. God has given you unique experiences that will encourage and enlighten your peers. Your motherhood-shaped perspectives will serve those around you.

And who knows? You might not be the same person when you leave either.