My Dream Babysitter
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Angels Among Us
By Patricia Beaumont

Pay attention to your dreams — God’s angels often speak directly to our hearts when we are asleep.
~Eileen Elias Freeman, The Angels’ Little Instruction Book

I had just become a divorced mother of two young children. I remember the fog of those days; this new title I had acquired, the sadness and anger, the feeling of being lost and not knowing what to do next. A counselor I had been seeing suggested I go to college to upgrade my skills, as I’d been out of the workforce for six years. She thought it might be a good experience for me to not only study something I loved, but to help recover emotionally from the divorce. I thought the idea was ridiculous.

But I began the process anyway. In May of that year, I went through the motions of admissions, testing, meeting with a financial aid officer, thinking in the back of my mind that this was never going to happen, nor did I care. I had always loved to learn, so I wasn’t afraid of failing. Instead, I was afraid of how I was going to do this: attend college full-time, work part-time in the evenings and on weekends, raise two young children who had been my whole world for six years. Daycare was out of the question because they were familiar with home, with one-on-one attention, and I didn’t want that to change, especially now. The world I had known for years was gone. (Keep reading)