Graduation — A Young Woman Prepared

Hello. I am Claire Bennett. I am eleven, and I teach Junior Academy. Mrs. Hale is our headmistress, but this hour is mine. This is week 36. Today's lesson is Graduation — A Young Woman Prepared. Sit with me and we will learn it together. We began this year at these doors. We said this academy was not a class in being decorative. It was a school of household leadership. You have cooked, budgeted, mended, hosted, spoken, planned, and practiced courage. Some of you are eleven and just learning that a made bed is a kind of promise. Some of you are seventeen and leaving with a binder that could run an apartment. Hear your commissioning: Go serve — your family, your church, your neighbor — without disappearing. Stay wise — test charm, test isolation, test anyone who wants you uneducated or afraid. Keep learning — a diploma is a beginning. Protect the vulnerable — children, the sick, and any woman or girl being harmed; peace is not silence about cruelty. Build peaceful homes — tables, budgets, prayers, and locked doors that keep the right things out. Joshua 1:9 is not only for soldiers. Be strong and of a good courage. The Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Marriage and motherhood, if they come, will be honored callings. So will your mind, your work, and your safe no. You are a young woman prepared. Now go and look well to the ways of the households God will give you.