Connected: The Big Moments

One of the scariest aspects of college life is the uncertainty of the future before us. You may seem to have your whole life planned out, but sometimes things just don’t go your way. If that happens to you, don’t be discouraged. Life has a way of working itself out. Our families offer some of the greatest proof of this. If you dig deep enough, you may find that your family exists because of a defining moment or because someone’s life took an unexpected turn.

For Nicholls’ own Drs. Chadwick and Kaisa Young, astronomy lovers who met and got married while pursuing doctorate degrees at the same university in Austin, Texas, this couldn’t be truer. The two accomplished their goals and now have a family of their own, but they didn’t reach that point without their own share of frustrations. A short time after the pair began dating, Dr. Chadwick broke up with Dr. Kaisa because of unhappiness with the nature of their relationship. Dr. Kaisa said that the breakup was initially very hard on her.

“Chad was the first guy that I ever dated,” Dr. Kaisa said. “When he broke up with me, that was not what I expected. I was very upset.”

Dr. Chadwick believes that if they had continued on, their relationship would have “crashed and burned” after another few months of that, if they did get married, their marriage wouldn’t have been built on proper foundation. Now, he feels the breakup altered the course of their lives. Both attribute their Christian faith as the force that propelled their marriage.

“In the month prior to [getting back together] I had been praying a lot about our relationship and what that meant. We began this very intentional path toward being married,” Dr. Chadwick said.
Dr. Kaisa believes that their marriage is better because of the breakup.

“During the time that we were apart, I had to figure out what was important to me, and I realized that God had to be important to me in order for any other relationships to work,” Dr. Kaisa said.

Drs. Chadwick and Kaisa certainly know the confusion that can come from an unexpected life event, but they also offer us proof that those moments can eventually turn into something wonderful. As they said, the future of their relationship may have been completely different had they not had time to grow as individuals.

My own family came to be because of lives taking unexpected turns. In the early 20th century in Ireland, my great-grandpa was arrested by the British army who believed him to be his twin brother, a member of the Irish Republic Army. On the way to the jailhouse, the British allowed a woman to bring the Irish prisoners water. Sometime later, my great-grandfather escaped from the jail and married that woman.

A few years later, my great-grandparents and their children emigrated from Ireland to Brooklyn, New York. After serving in the Korean War, my grandpa accepted an offer to play basketball at LSU, so he moved to Baton Rouge. At the university, he had to go to the registrar’s office to sign up for the financial program that allowed him to go to school for free due to his military service. He made a habit of knocking pens from the desk at the office onto the floor so that the woman working the desk would get scolded by her boss for not having enough pens out. A few years later, he married that woman.

I’m pretty certain my great-grandpa didn’t expect to be the victim of an accidental arrest or to fall in love with a woman he had a chance encounter with along the way. I don’t think my grandpa, an Irish immigrant living in Brooklyn, expected to fight on the front lines in Korea or to move to Louisiana and fall in love with the woman he joked around with at the registrar’s office. Their lives certainly took them down unexpected roads, but from those unexpected roads came their families. From their families came my own family.

I don’t know whether you believe in God, some kind of god or anything at all. I know that I personally believe in God and that everything in my life has been orchestrated perfectly to lead me to where I’m meant to be. Whether you’re part of a religion or not, though, there’s a universal truth that remains: you will always end up where you’re meant to be, in whatever capacity that is. Look to your family for proof of this. Every family has its own incredible, unique story. There’s a chance you exist because the life of someone before you didn’t go where they planned. Your plans could change, too, and that’s alright. It may be difficult to accept, but one day you’ll be able to look at your life and realize that you wouldn’t want it to be any other way.

Drs. Chadwick and Kaisa get to see the result of how their lives came together every day. Dr. Kaisa said that getting a job at Nicholls was a defining moment for her, since she was raising their children and hadn’t been working full time for seven years. At the time Nicholls offered her the job, the university had been making huge cuts. Then, around the same time, a spot opened up for their daughter at the school that their son attended.

“All of these things coming together caused me to think I am really blessed,” Dr. Kaisa said. “It is a privilege to get to do this job that I want to do, have my family taken care of, and get to work with my husband at this school that I really like.”

Dr. Chadwick said that every interaction he has with his wife makes him very grateful to have her.

“When I see her at work and around me, I’m grateful for that. It’s almost as if no one can do anything against me,” Dr. Chadwick said.

As hard as it may be, try not to become discouraged if your plans for yourself don’t go as you expected. Take my family and the Young family as proof of this. Our families’ stories are full of twists and turns, but they have their happy endings. Dr. Kaisa said that if she could offer any advice to students worried about their futures, it would be that there is a bigger story at play.

“Even for a student that is not a Christian, begin looking beyond… and begin seeking your purpose in the bigger story,” Dr. Kaisa said.