“God, what do you want me to do with my life?”
This question was almost a daily thought for me from around the age of sixteen and definitely through my college years. I grew up going to Catholic elementary and middle school, was an altar server, and stayed active in the Church through college, participating in the campus Newman Club and teaching First Reconciliation and First Communion preparation at a local parish. I attended a business school, but realized quickly that God was calling me somewhere else. I was not passionate about accounting, or marketing, or even my computer information system classes which was my major. I found myself being called to activities that worked with children. I became a part of the Service Learning Center and started serving in local elementary schools, building computer labs with old computers donated from my college. I was able to work with teachers and students, leading classes and formed a technology-focused tutoring enrichment program.
This led me to join a two-year faith-based service program, the Inner City Teaching Corps, after graduation. I began teaching sixth grade at St. Pius V school in the Pilsen neighborhood on the south side of Chicago and knew that I was in the right place. God helped me start down a path that has led me to work as teacher, administrator and now school leadership coach in Chicago, New Haven, right here in Hartford, and Springfield for over twenty years.
Along the way, I believe God was influential in leading me to interact with the Connecticut Department of Children and Families and encountering many children who were in their care. When the time came to expand our family, my husband, Tee, and I decided to explore adoption through DCF. In June of 2015, a social worker dropped Lucan off at our home and we embarked on what I believe is our most important vocation – being a father. Lucan’s arrival changed my life in a number of ways – I was now responsible for the health and wellbeing of another human. It felt much different than the responsibility I felt for my students over the years. When his little sister, Bella, joined us a few months later, at first temporarily due to an emergency placement, our world was upended again. Amidst the chaos, though, it all felt right. God was leading me to form the family I was supposed to have, maybe not in the way I originally thought, but in a way that has been fulfilling, instructive, and enriching.
I now know the answer to that question I asked myself long ago…”God, what do you want me to do with my life?” “Be a dad, teach, help children.”
Submitted by Dominic Basile-Vaughan