My youngest child, now a man, graduates from Washington State University next Saturday, May 7, 2011. He will be receiving his Bachelor of Science degree in Biology. This will be the end of a long period of tuition payments for the Edgerly family–or at least a short reprieve.  Three college educated adults and 11 years later, no more checks to WSU or the UW from our account.

I was mowing my lawn last year and had plenty of time to sit mindlessly behind the wheel and gather my thoughts about just the above. At first I bemoaned the fact that no one had paid my way through school some thirty-plus years earlier. I worked three jobs to pay the tuition, books, and rent, and became the first in my family to hit the college ranks.

And, no one had stepped up to pay the tuition of any of my children. Two valedictorians and a contender at 3.9 something later, I was hopeful that at least “scholarship” would have a voice in relieving some of the burden of a secondary education for one of them. But scholarship has now been muddled together with financial aid. And that, a physician’s children don’t qualify for.

Then I began thinking more clearly. It was nobody’s  job to pay for my children’s education. It was my privilege.  Why should the public be taxed just so my children could go on to a secondary education. Education is not the government’s job and they have demonstrated their ineptness in trying to make it so. This was family business, not public business.

I am proud of the fact that God has blessed my family with the will to work and the means to pay our own way in the world. As King David once said, “I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.”  Psalm 37:25  Our family celebrates a job well done for our son and we give praise to the Father who provides all our needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.