A 1774 William Cooper poem that goes, “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform,” has been paraphrased over time to "The Lord works in mysterious ways."
It's something Dawn Seekings in New York state knows well. She never expected to find the mysterious message on her laptop screen one night early in 2025. Recently widowed, she was browsing aimlessly until her despair called for a break.
“I said a prayer, ‘God, listen, you’ve got to give me something to do,’” Seekings said. “I was working as a school bus monitor and knew that’s not what I was supposed to do for the rest of my life.”
She ended her prayer, got up and headed to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. Seekings said her mind wandered while waiting for her cup. Then she returned to her laptop.
“On the screen was a message about Grand Canyon University,” she said. “I have to be honest, that was the wildest thing, in a good way, but the wildest thing I’ve ever seen. It was just absolutely amazing.”
A few weeks later, she was in her first class on the way toward a teaching degree. Taking the introductory University Success course in the College of Education through the College of Online Teaching and Learning at GCU marked the first step of Seekings’ new journey.
“She’s a little bit more of a traditional student coming from a different generation than some of our younger students,” said professor Lynn Basko, Seekings’ first GCU instructor. “So she would ask a lot of questions just trying to figure out how this online thing worked. Then she sent me a message sharing her story out of the blue. She just said, ‘I want you to know, here’s why I’m here.’”
Working as a special needs bus monitor, Seekings wants to parlay that relationship into an elementary school teaching role. During the early months following her husband’s passing, she realized there was a void in her life to be filled, and she didn’t have any idea how to fill it.
“It wasn’t too long after my husband passed, I actually looked at my kids and I said, ‘What am I going to do with all of this free time? I’ve got to have something to do,” she said. “For at least five years, that’s all I did: I worked, I came home and I took care of my husband. I went back to work, came home and took care of my husband. That’s all I did.”
That’s when she sat down at the table and prayed for guidance and something to do with her life.
She talked about starting married life at 17.
“I was pregnant with my twin daughters, who unfortunately passed away after just a few months,” Seekings recalled. “It was 31 years ago. We went on to have two more kids. And so life happened.”
Earlier, in the midst of raising children and working, she attended community college in 2010 and earned an associate degree.
“I got my associate degree in criminal investigation. I had a lot of fun doing that,” Seekings said. “But because I live in the state of New York, after I graduated, I was told that for me to become an investigator on the crime scene, which is what I wanted to do, I would have had to become a cop first.”
So life returned to routines and raising the children, caring for hearth and home. The kids were in school, and Seekings and her husband were working full time. Then in 2008, she became seriously ill.
“I had 25 procedures over 10 years,” Seekings said. “It’s that life got in the way. Life happened, and I never really pursued the idea of going back to school.”
Grandchildren came along, and she helped with them. Five years ago, her husband became ill, and the thought of returning to college never entered her head.
“On Jan. 11 (2025), we went to bed, and he told me, ‘I’ll always love you no matter what,’” Seekings said. “He asked me to pray with him, and then we went to sleep. He wasn’t in bed. (When I awoke the next morning,) I came into the living room and found him in his chair; he had a stroke and died. Just 50 years old, and he had a stroke.”
The couple had celebrated their 31st wedding anniversary just days before.
Seekings said that she’s not one to sit around and do nothing. She was back to work within a week of her husband’s death. Despite pressure not to, she had graduated from high school, completing her classes and walking the stage while pregnant with twins. Then she set a goal and earned her associate degree in criminal investigation. Now, facing a new void in her life and seeing the message on her laptop, returning to college became her goal.
“I found her to be more motivated than younger students,” Basko said. “She wanted to understand. It wasn’t just about getting grades for her. She wanted to understand the purpose behind the assignments. She was really motivated to learn and grow.”
Basko said that in her University Success course, some students are more focused on getting through to start their content courses. Seekings was in the group that found the course important enough to tell her that they were glad it was offered.
GCU is embracing paraprofessionals who want to become teachers, like Seekings, with scholarships and professional development from the university's National Center for Teacher Preparation. The goal is to help paraprofessionals improve their lives and stem teacher shortages across the country.
“Dawn wanted to know how to do things and why we were doing things,” Basko said. “She wanted to do them correctly. When you come back at an older age, it’s because you really want to. You want to
be successful.”
Seekings says she’s proceeding with one course at a time for now.
“I’m glad I’m not (taking more than one) because there is no way I could keep up with two classes, not with work,” she said. “And two? No, I couldn’t do that. So for now, because I do work full time, one class is definitely plenty for me.”
She wants to move from being a bus monitor to becoming a teacher’s aide and then an elementary school teacher in the district where she works. And she wants to head to Phoenix to walk across the stage at her graduation.
Seekings finds support in her journey from her three children and four grandchildren, but still, “It’s incredibly lonely because people who have not been through the loss of either children or a spouse (don’t understand what it’s like); there’s just no comparison.”
She chose GCU because its Christian values aligned with hers. She relies on her faith to continue reaching for her goals.
“For anybody who is truly struggling, you have to be patient with yourself; think good things are going to happen, but you have to be patient,” Seekings said. “Patience is not a virtue of mine. You also have to see the insight if you want it. You’re the only one who can change it. If you want to do it, you have to do it. Nobody else is going to do it for you.”
