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On September 4, 2014 I emailed Mike asking if he would support me in exploring the possibility of going back to school. At the time, I was thinking I would get my Masters of Science in Management Information Systems (MS, MIS). We talked and dreamed together and there was one thing that was obvious - my husband would do more than support me in my pursuit of additional education, he was going to be my biggest champion.
After research, prayers, and conversations with mentors we arrived at the conclusion that our time and money would be better invested in an MBA instead of an MS, MIS. We began exploring options and quickly realized that I needed to study for and take the GMAT before we knew which schools I would be able to get into. So, on September 25th I ordered the Kaplan GMAT study book and began preparing for the exam.
My best friend from September through December.
For those of you unfamiliar with the GMAT, it is the exam required for admission to most graduate business school programs. Think back to how your SAT scores played a big impact on which undergrad programs you got into - that is how the GMAT is for MBAs. The exam has four parts - Analytical Writing Assessment, Integrated Reasoning, Quantitative, and Verbal. Five years after graduating from Texas A&M I had a lot of studying to do.
For the next two-and-a-half months I studied two hours a day during the week and four hours a day during the weekends. And we prayed. Oh, how we prayed. We begged God to move and to show us what his plan was. We had felt the Spirit leading us down this path and so we started moving and prayed for God's continued guidance. There was one main prayer that I echoed over and over again during that time - "God, please use the GMAT as a tollgate that will show us what you want us to do with my MBA."
I should know better than to expect how God is going to answer my prayers but yet somehow I did have an expectation for how God would answer my prayer. I expected God to give me a "Yes" or a "No" as to whether or not we should pursue an MBA. Well, God does not live within the realm of my expectations. On test day my jaw quite literally dropped when I received my score report (yes, you receive your unofficial scores immediately). The score was higher than I had dared to dream of and much higher than the average score (or even the median 80%) for most of the schools that I had been looking at. As Mike and I celebrated this unexpected answer to our prayers we also stared at each other in confusion, uncertain what God was leading us toward.
For weeks God had been urging my heart, telling me to "dream God-sized dreams." Now God had answered my prayer of whether or not to continue pursuing my MBA in a way I never dreamed he would. Now what should we do? What was God trying to ask of us?
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Tune in next week to hear how Mike and I unpacked the big news God delivered to us via the GMAT.
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