Fund Rising

I'm not sure what I expected when I asked for help Educating Brian but I didn't really expect this.  I'm humbled by almost daily notices of people willing to and wanting to invest in my education.  I'm grateful for expressions of support and encouragement to pursue this dream.  I appreciate every single offer of help, from those kindly passing on links to my blog to the $5 donations to the hundreds of dollars donations.

Part of my education in all this has to do with the kindness of friends, the generosity of strangers and the willingness of other people to make an investment in the future.  Out of my desperation I reached out for help with little expectation and in my need I'm discovering the power of friends.

I've still got a long way to go to my goal of $10,000 but the journey has started and I'm getting by with a little help from my friends!

One of my old friends sent the link to this video to me.  It resonates.

p.s.  there are a bunch of ads on here now.  Sorry about that but it's another way to raise the funds that Student Loan says I must have banked away and the Bank says I don't have enough of to get a loan.

30 Years Late(r)

Homework.  I left that behind once and then I had kids.  Once they were old enough that I couldn’t help them with their homework because I didn’t have a clue, I was done with homework again.  So why would I willingly put myself back into a situation where I’m doing homework, my own this time, again?

My original plan was to go from undergrad to grad right away.  Then life intervened.  I talked with a prof in those days who told me that as long as I was open to learning I’d always be a student.  I think he was right but that insight became all the excuse I needed to let the study I was interested in give way to the job I needed.

And then years went by and then decades and it became much harder to convince myself that going back was even an option.

Just over a year ago I came to a “dark night of the soul” that lasted a whole season.  In the midst of that process there came some clarity.  I was searching for answers about my future and I was coming up empty.  Piece by piece I was getting disassembled, it felt like God was taking my world apart.  In the midst of great uncertainty came this one clear step: go back to school.

I like to think that my undergraduate studies have taken me 30 years to complete.  I know there’s a depth in my reading that didn’t exist 3 decades ago.  Life has given me some perspective that I seriously lacked when I was 20.  Suffering, disappointment, relationships, unexpected satisfaction, grace and hurt have all marked this road I travel on.  For me, now is the time and though it’s 30 years late(r), I’m ready for it again for the first time.  Besides, how long is too long to wait for a dream to come true?


Thanks to all my friends who are helping me on this journey!