The Pilgrim’s Protest

By Sarah Nixon

Gretchen Wilhelm is a new teacher in the Elementary Education Program at CIU.

How did you start on your journey of teaching?
It was definitely a God thing. In high school I was really resisting being a teacher. I knew I had gifts in teaching—I come from four generations of teachers—but I wanted to try my own thing. I went to a music conservatory and was really pursuing music performance, but then I had terrible tendonitis in both of my arms and God really redirected things. I started teaching music and loved it, and I felt that instead of the performance stage I should be in the classroom. So after I got my bachelor’s [degree] I got a specialty degree in the Masters level for education and taught high school, middle school, and elementary. It was one of those things where God had gifted me but I hadn’t recognized it as God’s course until He slammed on the brakes.

In addition to music, what are some of your hobbies?
I love textile arts, and actually, I started teaching quilting professionally when I was 13. I just wore high heels and put my hair up and pretended to be older. It was funny because the women would ask me, “So, does your husband mind that you come out here?” and I’m 13 years old, and I say, “Um no, he doesn’t mind at all!” “Do you have children yet?” and I’m like, “No, not yet!” But I was the oldest, and I always looked and acted older so I got away with it.

You’re from Ohio, and South Carolina is a lot different from Ohio…what was the biggest culture shock for you in moving down here?
Probably restaurants called “The Fiddling Pig” and the “Lizard’s Thicket”. We don’t have that kind of thing up in our area. So the colorful cultural restaurants, and then of course it was the trial by fire of the August heat. That was a little intense for me as a Northerner moving down and that’s my first taste of South Carolina!

If you were to give yourself advice when you were in undergrad, what would it be?
I think the first thing I would say is to love others more and love life more. I think that’s important because when I ended my undergraduate [studies] I was pretty drained, depleted, non-existent as a person, and it was because I went so fast and so furious and so focused that I wasn’t looking to my right or my left and seeing the people in my life that needed me to be there. The whole “stop and smell the roses” thing really is true. I look back and see those as kind of some wasted years with the Lord, wasted years in relationships. I’m not regretful of them, but I think I could have gone through them in a way that met the challenge and still kept the perspective of “I’m here to glorify God and serve others”.

Where would you like to be in 10 years?
I am a hopeless romantic, and I would love if the Lord would bring someone special into my life. At the same time, I want to be busy serving Him until that happens, so I am completely content in my singleness. I believe the Lord is using me and guiding me and preparing me, and He has a perfect time, but I would really like in the future to have a husband and a family. I think that’s the greatest ministry I could have, to support a man of God and to raise children. However, I love it here—training teachers for the need I saw overseas, the need that I want to be proactive in supporting. I don’t believe the Lord has called me necessarily [overseas], but if I can be a participant in helping people to meet those needs and meet those challenges, it would be amazing.

Is there anything you’d like to add?
I am delighted to be here, and I feel that this place is a culmination of a lot of things that God has done in my life, and it’s such a good fit that I’m amazed that God brought me here.