Yipes! I truly cannot believe that it has been just over a year since I wrote the first installment of this series. At least I noted in that first post that this series would “stretch for many years into the future” and that it would be “occasional.” Can’t say I didn’t warn you :)
I’ll repeat my caveats from part one: there will likely be no groundbreaking ideas here. But if you’re anything like me, you need the regular and very simple reminder that family discipleship does not always have to be complicated. More than perhaps any other area of my life, I have the instinct here to build the big machine, to devise the elaborate practice – and still, more often than not, to worry that I’m not doing enough.
This is not all bad: I believe there is a direct relationship between how much creating a fertile environment for our children to know and trust Jesus matters to me (and John) and how much thought we put into how we are doing that. But I hope through this series I can encourage you (if it’s something that matters to you) AND MYSELF that little by little adds up.
Here are three more (very simple) family faith formation practices that we’ve been practicing with our 8-year-old, 5-year-old, and 2-year-old.
We say “great question!” a lot.
Basically any time any of my children ask me anything about faith, the first thing out of my mouth is “great question!” More than any individual answer I can give, I want them to know that their questions are valued, desired, and honored, and that I’m grateful and delighted they’d bring their questions to me.
“Great question!” also buys me a beat. Instead of rushing into an answer, it’s a pause that reminds me to slow down, calm down, and get curious. It leads naturally into follow-up questions, like “What made you ask that?” or “Can you tell me more about what you want to know?” This entry into the conversation helps me meet them where they are and figure out what kind of answer might serve them best.
Worth noting: I didn’t always feel this way! Questions used to make me nervous! But as I’ve grown more knowledgeable myself over the last few years, I’ve gotten more confident – both because I do know a bit more, but also because I know that I’ll never know it all. That’s okay. No one knows it all this side of heaven, but I now know where to go so we can try and figure things out together.
We read the Jesus Storybook Bible.
John and I were marveling the other day about how the idea of the Bible being one unified, overarching story with Jesus at the center is common these days – and yet was simply not a part of our upbringing. There are so many resources now to help connect the dots (The Bible Project, for one!), but I think the Jesus Storybook Bible, with over three million copies sold, deserves a ton of credit, too. Sally Lloyd Jones is raising up a generation of kids who understand that Jesus is at the center of both the Old and New Testament in a way that I never did.
And our kids love it! Our go-to reading time is while they’re splashing in the tub – we leave a copy on the half wall in our bathroom. At 8, June is beginning to add in other resources, but she still enjoys it – she and John have recently been going through the stories one-by-one together and talking about them in a deeper way.
Sally’s writing hits such a sweet spot – winsome and accessible for kids, but delightful for parents to read, too. Highly recommend.
We faithfully go to community group.
Community groups are a staple at many churches, and they are at our church, too. Our group, which is made up of young families (June is actually the oldest kid!) and some singles, is very precious to us.
It hasn’t always been that way. We’ve been a part of community groups that we lightly dreaded going to – that felt like an obligation – but our current group is truly a highlight of our week. Whether we’re meeting with the full group for dinner and Bible study or splitting off into guys and gals, it’s a chance to gather with people who care about us, our kids, our marriage, and our faith lives. It’s a place where we’re known, loved, and spurred on to grow. In a time in our country of great loneliness, isolation, and individualism, it’s a balm.
Our kids reap the benefits, too. They’re forming relationships with the other kids, yes, but also with adults who know and care about them. That’s important now, and it will be invaluable as they grow.
So there you have it! Three (relatively) simple faith formation practices our family has found helpful. I hope there’s something you can take away, whether fostering your kids’ faith also matters to you or if there’s something else you hope to grow in your kids (or the kids you love). If you’d like to share, I’d love to hear a practice that has been helpful in your family, or something that has stuck with you from your own upbringing!
Writing about your own generosity is a tricky thing, isn’t it?
On the one hand, there’s the very real fear that you’ll come across as prideful, a show-off. Or that you’ll needlessly make others feel bad about their efforts – which might represent a real sacrifice – or feel shame about the gap between your generosity and theirs.
So why risk it?
Of course, there’s also this, just one chapter later – also from the mouth of Jesus:
Giving in public = bad? Giving in secret = good? If only it were so easy :) The Christian faith is not interested in being simple; it’s interested in being true. In the end, the motivation of the heart is what categorizes the same act as either a treasure or a disgrace in the eyes of God, which can make it confusing to know when to share. However – as long as I can feel reasonably confident that I’m sharing to reflect the light and love of God and not to be praised by men blog readers, I want to do so.
Also, we hear a lot about Christians behaving badly. But there are many, many, many more stories of light that go untold – stories of quiet, unsung acts of selflessness, compassion, and generosity. We need those stories, too, to remind us about the beauty, grace, and truth of a life spent imitating Jesus (imperfectly, always, but earnestly, too).
Finally, on a practical note, I like hearing about the positive things others are doing! It inspires me to be better, to do more, to stretch my conception of what I think I’m capable of and comfortable with – and it gives me ideas for how to do so! It reminds me that people everywhere are doing their best to make people feel loved and the world a better place. It buoys my hope and optimism about my fellow man and the world we inhabit together.
So — with that lengthy introduction, I submit to you three ways we’re trying to live generously this Christmas season – written with humility and love!
We’re giving generously to our kids’ teachers.
Currently, Annie and Shep each have two preschool teachers, while June has her second-grade teacher, her math teacher, and a student teacher. In past years, we have given physical gifts to preschool teachers, like fresh wreaths, snap totes, and Cultivate goodies. I love all of these ideas and may return to them!
This year and last, however, we’ve moved to giving gift cards (accompanied by handwritten notes). Last year we gave each preschool teacher a $15 gift card to a local ice cream shop. This year, we’re giving them $50 gift cards to a local gift shop I love, and the director (who is also a teacher in Shep’s classroom) a $100 gift card to our favorite local restaurant. It’s been a challenging year in their school, and we want her and her husband to enjoy a fun dinner out.
For June’s main teacher, we’ll do a $75* gift card to either a local garden store or the same local restaurant – I haven’t decided yet! (I always try to choose based on their hobbies – last year, we gave her first-grade teacher, an avid runner, a gift card to Fleet Feet.)
*I had planned to do $100, the same as our preschool director, but our district put a $75 cap on gifts this year.
For her math teacher, we chose a 3-month subscription to the Book of the Month Club, and her student teacher will get a Cultivate tumbler stuffed with crinkle paper and a $50 coffee shop gift card.
Again: I include the dollar amounts not to show off (blerg), but to gently encourage. Last year, $15 for five preschool teachers felt like a stretch. My understanding is that even the smallest gift card is appreciated, and if $5 per teacher is what’s possible, it will be gratefully received.
This year, we can do more, so we are. When I think about what it would cost to send our three children to private school (I did the math right here), $100 per teacher feels like a drop in the bucket. Excellent teachers are the lifeblood of our schools and I’ll do almost anything to help them feel appreciated.
We’re giving generously to our pastor.
Moving on to our next category of challenging jobs :) Full-time ministry – whew! It is not for the faint of heart, for the pastor or for his or her family. They (joyfully!) sacrifice so much for the people in their care, and last year, John and I felt compelled to share one of our very favorite traditions with our pastor and his wife.
We wrote them a note explaining our end-of-year celebration dinner – what it is and what it has meant to our relationship over the last many years – and included a $100 gift card to a local restaurant in the envelope. We wanted to make it easy for them to start their own tradition, if they wanted to. We’ll do the same thing this year. Sowing into their marriage feels like sowing directly into God’s Kingdom, and we’re grateful to do it.
We’re giving generously to our garbage and recycling guys.
This is one I come by honestly – it’s straight from the brain of my mom :) Growing up, she’d always leave a Subway gift card and bag of peanut butter balls on top of our trash and recycling cans in December, and honestly, I thought it was weird – ha!
But I also just thought it was normal, and sure enough, when we moved into our own home a decade ago, I taped a colorful (eye-catching!) thank you note, a Jersey Mike’s gift card (we usually do $20 – enough for two guys in each truck), and a bag of peanut butter balls to the top of each can one Wednesday in December. I can only hope my children will think this is weird and then grow up to do the same thing, too.
Of course, I’d love to hear: big or small, how are you being generous this season? This group always has the best ideas.
Thank you for coming along for this ride, friends! In this series, I hoped to give voice to committed Christian families who have made the decision to attend public school and who have had a largely-positive experience. I wanted to encourage other Christian public school families, and offer greater understanding to those who’ve chosen a different path. With the help of five generous friends, I believe we’ve done that, and I’m grateful.
Though it feels like there’s little to add at this point, you’ve got me today :) Let’s do it!
Tell us about yourself and your family.
You know me :) But for those who are new, I work part-time as a writer for a goal-setting company. My husband, John, is a financial planner, and we have three kids – June (7, in second grade), John Shepherd (5, in a Montessori preschool), and Annie (2, in the same preschool). We live in a suburb of Raleigh, NC.
Why are you choosing public school for your family?
John and I both grew up attending public schools and had positive – even great – experiences. I remember arriving at college and being surprised by the subpar writing skills of some of my classmates who had graduated from prestigious private schools. Our K-12 school experiences weren’t perfect, but the laughably-strange teachers along the way were more than balanced out by the incredible, life-changing teachers we were lucky to spend time with. We made great friends, had wonderful (albeit not particularly glamorous) opportunities, and were well-prepared to succeed academically in college, which in turn set us up for careers we love.
Structurally, school is very different here than it was growing up in Connecticut. We grew up with town-based schools, so pretty much everyone in our town went to one of three elementary schools, then the one middle school and the one high school. There was one magnet school and one Catholic school I can think of, and that was it.
Where we live now, the options are seemingly endless. We’re in a county system, so everyone has the option of a traditional or a year-round school (and rezoning feels like a looming threat). Next, there are tons of themed magnet options that are within the public school system. Beyond that, there are yet more charter, private secular, and private Christian schools to choose from. It is truly dizzying to consider, especially for this Enneagram 5 researcher. Each comes with pros and cons, from cost to technology use to commutes to school population to ideology.
Still, with all of those options (or perhaps because of them), we considered our neighborhood public school our default choice. Something relatively dramatic would have needed to happen to push us to another option, and it didn’t, so we didn’t.
We also believe strongly in the importance of a vibrant and healthy public school system. It’s scary for me to think what our schools – and, ultimately, our society – would look like if all the Christian parents, or all the engaged parents, or all the wealthy parents, or all the parents with social capital, pulled out of public schools.
Speaking of cost, though we theoretically could afford private school, it is mind-numbing to think of the money we are saving by not paying tuition 36 times over. If I consider the actual most likely private schools we’d consider (because you know I’ve done research!), we are realizing a savings of between $242,700 and $461,250 in today’s dollars by sending our kids to public school over their schooling lifetime. That is an INCREDIBLE amount of money that could – and does and/or will – go to improving their current schools, giving generously to our church and other organizations we believe in, starting our own non-profit, funding scholarships at our alma maters, traveling the world with our kids, and helping them launch families or businesses one day, if they should so choose.
Finally – and I have been trying for weeks to figure out exactly how to word this, so bear with me – we believe our children are infinitely precious, but not fragile. We don’t believe we need to coddle them, and in fact believe that they will have a better chance of growing into the people we hope they’ll be, and leading the lives we hope they’ll live, if they do not have every lesson handpicked and fine-tuned for them and their interests, every opportunity presented to them on a silver platter, every environment perfectly suited to their liking, and every obstacle mown from their path. We believe they’ll grow from having to navigate less-than-ideal learning conditions (within reason, of course) as well as different personalities and opinions along the way. In the long term, we don’t think the absolute best is, actually, always the best.
What has been your experience with public school so far? Give us an overview.
Our experience thus far has been pretty much uniformly positive! Our teachers have been fantastic – communicative, capable, warm, and ready to see our daughter as an individual and meet her where she is, with lots of creative ways to make sure she’s being challenged. Our feedback has been warmly received. June truly loves going to school, loves her teachers, and loves to learn. She has also made wonderful friends.
As parents, we are hands-on, and this feels like a calling and (mostly) a pleasure, too. I read every email and handout that’s sent home. I read policies and meeting notes. We go to as many events as we can. I peruse the library books she brings home. I connect with and talk to other parents. We vote in every local election. Her school makes it easy to be involved, and we take them up on it.
What has been one of your favorite parts about your school experience so far? Has anything been challenging?
Let’s do two of each!
First, we love going to a neighborhood school. Especially since the majority of students walk or bike to school, there is such a sense of community as everyone streams toward the campus in the morning. We love sharing a common experience with our neighbors, where it’s easy to ask for and give advice about school activities, teachers, etc. As Claire noted, this makes it much easier to love our neighbors in tangible ways. And, as I’ve mentioned many times before, biking to school is our favorite. It’s a delightful way to bookend the day, and because our commute is so short, we get more time back to be together as a family and spend in ways that are valuable to us.
Second, it is a great delight to love on the teachers, staff, and administration. While we could do this in any school we attend, my sense is that it’s more needed and valued where we are. Our goal is to make the school noticeably better by our presence. We want our kids’ classmates to be better off than if we had not been there, and to leave teachers grateful that our kids were in their class. None of this is to make our name great, but because it’s what we believe glorifies God.
(There are a lot of specific ways we do this, and I’m happy to share them. However, this post is exceptionally long already, so if there’s interest, I’ll add this topic to the queue for the future!)
Now for the challenges…
First, what has been most challenging personally is dealing with comparison and jealousy. For as confident of a person and parent as I am, school choice is easily the area where I feel the most doubt and experience the most jealousy. Private Christian school, classical school, homeschooling, Acton Academy, Montessori – you name it, I’ve probably researched it and can see the good in it. We love our kids and know that schooling is a huge part of their lives, and so it’s easy to feel a lot of pressure to “get it right” and to want the absolute best (whatever that is!).
Second, I know this is a series particularly about the place where our faith and our kids’ education meet, but the thing I most wish I could change three years in has been technology. In second grade, phones are not a thing, but every kid has a school-issued laptop and they spend time on them within lessons each day, and I just wish they didn’t. This is probably not surprising :) They’re certainly not on them all day, and I trust the balance the teachers are striking, but still, I’d change it if I could, and I’d also give the kids more time outside. We balance these school-day downsides by maintaining our low-tech environment at home and pushing them outside as often as possible!
What does faith formation look like for your family outside of or alongside school? How are you helping your kids to know and love God and their neighbors?
How much time do you have?! Ha! Knowing that our kids are not being formed in the Christian faith in public school, and in fact may be counter-formed in some ways, we spend an incredible amount of time and energy thinking about this and acting on it.
We worship and serve at church on Sundays. We invest deeply in our small group. We encourage their friendships, and our family’s friendships, with other believers. We continually point to our faith daily in conversation. We pray together. We play worship music on the go and in the house. We talk about the many forms of generosity, and invite our kids to live a generous, abundant life alongside us – and to share that life with others.
What are your hopes for your kids and their education? What’s the best-case scenario?
Honestly, my answer is a mash-up of Ginna’s and Krystal’s – they summed things up so beautifully!
We care deeply about education, but it is not ultimate in our family: loving God and loving their neighbor is. My hope for their education is that they learn from teachers who inspire them and alongside peers who bring them joy. I hope they grow to love reading and learning itself. As parents, I hope we can be involved in connecting what they are learning in school to the amazing God of the universe.
It’s also hard for me to tease out my hopes for their more formal schooling from their upbringing in our home. I could say much more about my hopes for who they are as one-day grown-ups, but that is not something I expect school to accomplish.
Do you plan to continue with public school indefinitely, do you plan to change course in the future, or do you hold it with open hands?
We will take it year by year. We have had a great experience so far with elementary and hope and plan to continue with it for all of our kids. We’ll consider our options anew when it comes to middle and high school.
Anything else to add?
For me, it’s been incredibly important to have close Christian friends who are walking the same public school path as us. Both of the other families in our small group who have elementary-aged kids have chosen public school, and that is an invaluable support, especially when the doubt or jealousy or fear creeps in.
Friends, please feel free to respond to anything I mentioned in your usual kind and thoughtful way. I’m sure this will not be the last time we touch on this subject, but I’m grateful that we could cover as much ground as we did over the last few weeks. Thank you, as always, for being a part!
The world would be a better place if everyone had a friend like Ginna. She’s kind, she’s wise, she’s generous, she’s humble. But perhaps my favorite thing about her is that she has this incredible gift of living in and ably navigating the real world, with all its brokenness and ugliness, while also faithfully looking toward the kingdom of God – and drawing the eyes of everyone around her to it, as well. I am easily a better friend, mom, wife, neighbor, and follower of Jesus because I get to walk alongside her.
Ginna has some powerful, wise words to share with us today. This is a lengthy post, and I hope it blesses you like it has me!
Just a note: if you haven’t read the intro post yet, start there!
Tell us about yourself and your family.
Hello, EFM readers! My name is Ginna and I live in Durham, NC, with my husband, two daughters, and dog. My oldest daughter is 7, in second grade, and my youngest is 6, in kindergarten. My husband is a software engineer and I run a bookkeeping company. You can find me @ginnaneel on Instagram. I know Emily through Articles Club and we have talked about this topic many times over delicious dinners!
Why are you choosing public school for your family?
The choice of where to send your children to school is really a pretty recent concept, since up until maybe 60 years ago, for most people, there was only one school choice based solely on your location. Now, there seem to be endless options! This can be helpful, especially if you need an alternative learning style for your child, but having so many options can also make the decision challenging.
As we were approaching the elementary years and having long (looong!) conversations about where to send our kids, we ultimately decided on public school.
I never felt called to homeschool, so we were left with the choices of private, charter, public, or moving to another district.
Historically, our county has a reputation for “bad schools.” In fact, just a mile away in Wake county, the same layout of our house would go for $50k+ more simply because it’s in a different school district.
When I asked around about the school we were assigned to, I heard a lot of, Oh I would never send my kid there… heard bad things… low-scoring school… kids from bad homes… etc. After pressing a little bit more, I learned quickly that the school was generally dismissed before taking a tour, trying it out, or hearing any first-hand experience from parents whose children had attended recently.
I finally got in touch with a friend of a friend who attended our church and sent their children to the school. She had nothing but amazing things to say about the teachers, the staff and her kids’ experience there.
Aside from a few personal reviews from other parents, the other reasons we chose our public school were:
1. The diversity of public school gives our children the opportunity to become friends with people who do not look like them or come from the same social-economic background.
2. Financially, it just made more sense to our budget.
3. We really wanted our children to be close to home and did not want to spend a lot of our time driving to/from school, like many of the charter schools would have required.
4. We knew that since they were not getting a Christian education at school, it would require my husband and I to be vigilant about instilling in our children a Christian worldview at home.
5. And finally, we believe that all children have the right to education, and feel that our educational system needs more believing Christians entering into it and not fleeing from it.
Now, this topic of school choice is a fiery one, and I totally get it! I still feel a lot of insecurity about our choice, even though it’s going well. I feel like each individual family needs to make their own decision on what is best for their child. I grew up going to a Christian private school and loved that experience! It was the coziest, loveliest school, and I have some of the best memories and friends from my time there. I also know so many friends who are homeschooling and doing it beautifully!
But ultimately, we decided to enter into public school and take it year by year, child by child.
What has been your experience with public school so far? Give us an overview.
We are starting our third year in public school and love it! My oldest entered in fall 2021 (bless those who sent their kindergarteners a year prior!) and last year my youngest and our former foster son were in the public pre-k program at the same school.
Academically – the reason they are there, after all! – it has been great. I am so impressed with all that they have learned so far. They both arrived at school after years of preschool and in some cases are more advanced academically than some of their peers, and the teachers do a great job of tailoring their work to their academic level so they are not bored.
We receive information from the teachers on a regular basis on their progress and behaviors. I have the personal cell phone for each of the teachers, receive updates and announcements through a private class app, and receive emails and phone calls for any county-wide or school announcements. Each quarter we have a check-in with the teacher on their progress, normally through phone, Zoom or in person.
Aside from academics, I think the key to a happy kid at school are good teachers and positive friendships, two things that are kind of outside of your control no matter the school. But so far we have had some amazing teachers and great peer friendships.
What has been one of your favorite parts about your school experience so far? Has anything been challenging?
The school community is great. Any time we’ve had a school-wide event, the staff, parents and students are all so friendly and I have gotten to know many of the other parents in our class through volunteering and chaperoning field trips. The cost is pretty sweet – you can’t beat free! And public schools are given a lot of state resources and programming that other schools are not afforded.
As for challenges, because it is a large county school, we have a lack of control over classroom or teacher choice, like you may in other schools. Because the system is large, sometimes making a change can be time consuming. For example, I tried to get my former foster care son occupational therapy at school, but due to the case load and some details needed by social services, it took longer than we’d like.
The only other challenge is that kids are assigned laptops to occasionally watch educational videos. I haven’t see any negative effects to them socially or academically, but it is certainly more screen time than they ever have at home (which is very minimal).
What do you wish other Christians knew about your life as a faithful family in public school? What might surprise people about your journey in public school so far?
Believe it or not, there are other Christians in public school! I think there is a Christian subculture misperception that public schools are full of evil, secular people, but that is not the case. I have met a handful of other parents and teachers who are Bible-believing, church-attending Christians.
Another surprise is that everyone seems to know my kids! I thought we would lose out on the coziness of a private school, but just the other day we had open house and so many teachers recognized my kids by name.
I was also delighted to find out how deeply these teachers love the kids. I’m sure that’s not the case for every teacher, but the ones we have go above and beyond to make sure their kids are happy, healthy, learning, and invested in their growth – not just academically, but also in their character. (Let’s push to increase teacher salaries, shall we? :))
What does faith formation look like for your family outside of or alongside school? How are you helping your kids to know and love God and their neighbors?
Because I know the kids are not getting a foundation of a Christian worldview in their school, it has really challenged me to step up our faith formation at home. This has been such a blessing!
We are not perfect at this, but our regular home life includes prayer before meals, reading Bible stories and books that share our faith, weekly church services, devotional journals, and they attend Awanas near our house for worship and bible memory. I try to reinforce that our faith is not just with our immediate family, but that there is a whole community of believers in our extended family, neighborhood, and city.
At the end of the day, though, I know more is caught than taught, and modeling the behavior I want them to emulate speaks more than any teaching I can do. This challenges me so much to model the values we believe to them – serving each other in our home, offering an apology and repentance when we fall short, and modeling what it looks like to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the least of us in our community through foster care.
What are your hopes for your kids and their education? What’s the best-case scenario?
My deepest desire is for my children to grow to love and serve God. My hope for their education is that they learn in a safe environment with teachers who inspire them, peers who bring them joy, and that they graduate high school as students with a strong foundation to enter adulthood with wisdom and discernment, ready and equipped to bring joy and healing to this broken world.
Do you plan to continue with public school indefinitely, do you plan to change course in the future, or do you hold it with open hands?
We are holding our kids and our decisions with open hands, trusting God will provide us with guidance along the way. As long as we feel like our kids are learning and safe, we will stay the course.
Anything else to add?
I want to encourage those who are in the middle of their decision-making to ask yourself whether you are making a decision out of prayer or out of fear.
The American Christian subculture has a strong bias against public school in favor of home school, private school, or some moderation between the two. If you are a Christian parent, then you no doubt have seen it, heard it, and probably believe it. (I certainly did!) The messaging is strongly encouraging parents to protect your child from the secular world’s evils and give your children a secured environment that not only teaches them academically, but also the foundation of God’s truth.
But this narrative, I believe, is actually bad theology on two fronts.
First, by this logic, we are telling ourselves and teaching our children that God is only God for the rich. Because to have a choice at all in education is a great privilege: only the privileged in time can have one parent home to homeschool, and only the privileged in money can pay to send their child to private school. And even though many middle class parents could probably decrease their lifestyle to afford such privileges, there are so many lower-income families working minimum-wage jobs who simply cannot, nor will ever, have any choice for education except public.
Secondly, if we think that in order to be a believing, God-fearing adult you must grow up in a fully-sheltered Christian environment, that is limiting God’s power. We are called to be good stewards in raising our children, but ultimately salvation belongs to the Lord.
So my encouragement to you, as believers in a world full of many messages, is to pray and use the Holy Spirit to be your guiding light when you make this decision, not what the latest podcast or Christian influencer is sharing. You are the very best parent for your child and are equipped with all you need. I switched preschools for my oldest a few years ago because I just had a feeling that I should. It didn’t really make a lot of sense! But I am glad that I went with my intuition and felt a great peace with that switch.
I hope this has been helpful! Please take my experience as one of very many out there. As a private school graduate (who adored the whole experience, truly), a friend to so many fabulous homeschooling moms, a neighbor to many charter school attendees, and a fellow public school parent in the trenches at the PTA meetings, I see you all and your hard work and love for your children. I pray that God will give each of us wisdom and strength as we parent this next generation. And thank you, Emily, for the chance to share my experience!
Ginna, you are a gift to me and to many! Thank you for taking the time to share your family and your thoughts with us – it truly means so much.
Friends, please feel free to respond to anything Ginna mentioned in your usual kind and thoughtful way. Grateful for you! Next week will be our final post in this series as I share my thoughts to wrap things up.
