Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think! Albert Einstein
In 1994 I found myself alone, raising two daughters. My salary was minimal. We lived on a budget of thirty-five dollars a week. Education seemed out of reach for a girl like me and I had one foot out the door by the time I was fifteen anyway. My mother had begged me to go to college and her sister even offered me a free college education if I chose to not get married until after college. However, the struggles at home were blinding and the path out seemed my only hope.
Walking down the hallway of a church I noticed a bulletin board with random cards attached to it. Curious, I stopped and read a few of them. There was an advertisement for Texas Wesleyan University’s new Weekend University offering financial funding to help pay for classes and childcare. I had never really valued learning. Yet, my heart leapt at the possibility to maybe offer a better life for my children.
Classes began in 1995. It would take me until 2010 to actually receive my bachelor’s degree. I earned credits for my life experiences and received the Lifetime Learner award. This brought incredible value to the life I had led, as difficult as it had been, and opened my eyes to the value of not just learning facts. Education is about growing, expanding your mind, examining paths less traveled and seeking wisdom and understanding on controversial issues such as race, religion, culture, philosophy, business, health, liberty, belief. The list is endless and exponentially important.
As a survivor of abuse, you sometimes fall back into old patterns without even realizing it, until you examine and educate yourself on why. Since I found myself in this situation, coming out of another abusive relationship in 2019, I began a new education. Learning is also unlearning.
Sitting in a quiet place repeating “how could this happen again” to myself, I began the hard road to recovery for the LAST TIME. This time I searched for different answers. I had to break the insanity. So, to avoid the possibility of another abusive relationship in the future, I uncovered some failings that formal education cannot provide. My formative years all the way to single motherhood was the psychological school of hard knocks. Somewhere in my subconscious mind lies were planted, beaten, manipulated, and whispered cunningly into my brain.
Let the wise listen and add to their learning and let the discerning seek guidance. Proverbs 1:5
This verse is engraved on my class ring. I value the process of education and learning, and I am always discovering how little I know. With abuse you must educate yourself on what it is, who an abuser is and why you are susceptible to it. When we fail to do so we find ourselves accepting behavior that we should never ever accept. Abuse sits deep and you have a responsibility to yourself to uncover its reach.
Abused or not, the process of undoing is enlightening. It is refreshment to a soul held down. It is refinement of spirit. It is freedom. Please educate, learn, grow, discern. That is what brings change. If you struggle with any recycled thoughts, actions, habits, hurts live in a posture of humility and grace as you seek truth to break cycles.
I am doing it. In fact, educating is how I found my way out this time. Although, I am still working through, I am rising as sure as I rose up as a young mother who did not realize the value of instruction until she found herself reading a blackboard in the halls of a church. Life is a lesson everyday if you only take the time to train your mind to think.
Susanne Moore 