Invariably, the words I write at the top of my PowerSheets each month are some variation on “This time is yours to enjoy.”
This, apparently, is the reminder I need month after month – not a reminder to work harder or do more, but a gentle (yet insistent) remix of my grandmother’s “I just tried to enjoy them.” In the swirl of work, and distractions, and travel, and daily responsibilities, and evenings, and mornings, and after-school afternoons, it is the call that most resonates with me: to look around. To notice. To delight. To enjoy the imperfect abundance all around me, and to reflect gratitude to the One from whom all blessings flow.
I am extending that offering to you this month, too.
On my calendar: — Trick or treating in a family Halloween costume once again, though this year’s theme is child-directed and looks to be less creative than past years… — Our annual fall mountains trip! We are headed to Boone. Very excited by our lineup of hikes and restaurants and also by the fact that it will be in the 30’s when we wake up some days (!). — Two back-to-back camping trips – one with our small group from church and the other, our rescheduled outing with the Rays due to torrential downpour.
What I’m loving right now: — 2024 PowerSheets are available now! I went with the Jade cover and it is even more beautiful in person. Join me! :) — These little penguin ice packs are perfect for sliding into lunchboxes or anywhere you need something slim! — Poor Bishop Hooper is a new-to-me duos that sets the Psalms to music. I think this playlist is the perfect background for cooking or tidying up the house in the evening.
As a reminder, you can find allll the things I’ve loved over the last few years neatly organized right here!
What you’re loving right now:
New segment alert! I thought it could be fun to highlight a few items here that have been popular in the last month with fellow readers, based on my analytics. Maybe this will help you find something you’ll love!
What I read in September: — The Vanderbeekers to the Rescue | June and I continue our parallel reading of this series :) Just the sweetest! — The Common Rule | A friend and I are leading a book study of this at church, so I’m re-reading it one chapter a time. It’s been great, and I’m experimenting much more with the habits than I did when I read it on my own! — Golden Son | The middle book in the Red Rising trilogy, which I’m re-reading after a few years. Though my YA author friend calls this the best dystopian fiction he’s ever read (and I can see why), I also remember why I never went on to read the third book last time: the ending is crushing. Going to push through and complete the trilogy this time, though!
My reading list for 2023!I’m still 19 / 24 so far for the year, but I feel confident I’ll complete the list over the next three months! :)
Revisiting my September goals: Work out 3 hours each week (I did not quite hit this, but I made lots of progress! I also need to figure out a better way to track this… going to experiment with using my monthly planner in the month ahead.) Tackle the garage (YES! Major win!See a little reflection on this project here.) Film Sheptember Make our 2015-2019 photo album (Progress! I laid out 2015…) Write and design the Articles Club guide (Moving to October!) Book a fall family photo session (Booked + completed!) Share the first half of the new blog series (Yes! Thank you for all your kind, thoughtful participation here – it’s been a joy!)
October goals: — Write and design the Articles Club guide — Edit Sheptember, Volume 5 — Host the chocolate chip party — Tackle Annie’s closet — Organize the gift storage (There’s a particular spot in our attic where I toss things throughout the year as I buy gift or stocking items on travels, at consignment sales, etc. It’s time to go through it so I know what I’m working with as December approaches!) — Send care packages to our college babysitters — Finish our 2015-2019 photo album — Execute an extra-special setting for the 8th anniversary of Articles Club
As a reminder, many of these are drawn from my 2023 goals!
Last quarter of 2023, here we go! Feel free to comment on anything I’ve mentioned here or anything else on your mind!
Much like Shelby, talking with Krystal at a work gathering earlier this year planted a seed for this series. She and her husband, Scott, both work alongside me, and they are kind, smart, funny, intentional – and exactly the kind of family you want in your village if you’re choosing a somewhat countercultural schooling route. I loved what she had to say below about finding friends you can trust to make schooling decisions with and walk alongside, and I’m glad we can do that in a small way for each other. I hope hearing from her family offers that encouragement to you, too!
Krystal, I’m honored to have you here – take it away!
Just a note: if you haven’t read the intro post yet, start there!
Tell us about yourself and your family.
My husband Scott and I just recently moved to the north Houston area of Texas with our two boys. Cal is in 4th grade and Judah is in 2nd. It is such a fun stage of life for our family and we are loving every minute of it!
Why are you choosing public school for your family?
We seek to make the best decisions for our family with the information that we currently have, including our school district, our financial means, and our kids’ educational needs. I abide by one of my friend’s education mottos: “Every child, every year.” Meaning, we evaluate the needs of our family each year. When we made a decision to send our kids to public school in kindergarten, we knew that they might graduate in a completely different school environment.
I have past teaching experience in almost every schooling environment: Christian, private, charter, and public schools. That has influenced our decision, as well, in recognizing that one truly isn’t better than the other—it all comes down to what is best for each family. Each type of schooling has its strengths and weaknesses. A particular school does not guarantee a particular outcome. Schooling is a personal decision based on your family’s needs, your individual child, and where you live.
If anyone is interested, I would highly recommend a Risen Motherhood podcast episode with guest Jen Wilkin about public school. Regardless of your school choice, Jen brings some great points as someone who made the decision to send her own children to public school. That whole series is great, as they talk about several different schooling choices!
What has been your experience with public school so far? Give us an overview.
So far, we have loved it! I have enjoyed getting to establish relationships with teachers and other parents. Though I work full time, I try to be involved to the best of my ability through sending school supplies, writing encouraging notes to teachers, going to events, etc. Right now, we are in a new school meeting new friends and family, and when we moved, we made the decision to live within walking distance of our school. We want to invest in our community, and that includes our school!
What has been one of your favorite parts about your school experience so far? Has anything been challenging?
My favorite part might also be one of the most challenging, which is having my children meet, interact with, and become friends with other kids who are very different from them. I want my kids to see experiences outside of their own, but it can also bring up some difficult conversations. I was very nervous for my kids to hear or see things that I couldn’t control, but over the years I have seen them become opportunities to enter into my kids’ lives as they share those things with me. I pray that they see our home as a safe place to be able to talk about whatever is going on in their lives or at school.
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?
As is the case with many families, we feel that we are sometimes labeled in extremes. For example, we are not sending our kids into the public school system so they can be little missionaries. Though we pray that they would have conversations about Jesus, they haven’t professed faith themselves. That is a lot of pressure to put on kids at this age.
On the flip side, we are also not handing our kids over to “the world.” Sadly I have talked with some people that believe we are not being faithful Christian parents because of our school choice. (Again, go check out Jen’s episode on Risen Motherhood! She covers this well.) I think we have to remember that many of us are in a place of privilege to even discuss school choice. Many do not have this option, let alone have a safe place for their children to attend school. We seek to trust the Lord with the decisions we make for our family, and we believe God is sovereign over the school, teachers, and classmates that our kids interact with.
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?
We try to incorporate spiritual formation in normal conversations in addition to more structured family discipleship rhythms. With our kids in public school, it has allowed discipleship to be a part of our everyday lives as we navigate situations they are experiencing with teachers or other kids. Being a part of a school that is (literally) in our backyard will hopefully create more opportunities to develop gospel relationships with families in our neighborhood!
What are your hopes for your kids and their education? What’s the best-case scenario?
For us, education is not ultimate in our family. Loving God and loving their neighbor is. We care deeply about education, but regardless of what schooling they receive, my hope is that as parents, we are involved in connecting what they are learning in school to the God of the universe. I think the best-case scenario is that they love to learn and read, and that Lord willing, they live out their faith as they mature.
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?
It is definitely with open hands! I have friends who have kids in all different schooling environments and friends whose kids attend all different kinds of schools. And yet, each school reflects steps of faith for those families as they pursue the Lord in their decisions! It is very humbling and encouraging to know that we can make a different decision if it is needed. We have no idea what the Lord has in store for our kids. But we will revisit as needed. “Each year, each child.”
Anything else to add?
Remember that you are held accountable to the decisions that you make for your family, but you are not responsible for your friends’ or neighbors’ decisions. We can each focus on making sure we are walking in obedience for what the Lord has for our families—even if it looks different than the people around us.
Also, find friends that you can trust as you process schooling decisions for your family. It can be difficult navigating public school as a Christian family, so seek out ways to connect with other believers. It has been a huge encouragement for us to know that we are not alone!
Krystal, 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 Krystal mentioned in your usual kind and thoughtful way. Grateful for you! And just to orient you in this series, know that we have one more interview coming up next week (from my absolute GEM of a friend Ginna – you won’t want to miss it!) and then I’ll share my thoughts to wrap things up the following week.
When conceptualizing this series, I knew I wanted to include a family with older kids. For me, a public elementary school can feel a world apart from a public high school (or, to be fair, actually any high school), and so I was eager to include the perspective of a mom a little farther along.
Thankfully, I knew just the mom to ask. Amber is the kids director at our church, and she is one of the warmest, most welcoming people I know. She and her husband have three terrific kids, all of whom are in high school or college. She’s walked the public school walk for many years, and she graciously agreed to share a bit about the highs and lows with us.
Amber, I’m honored to have you here – take it away!
Just a note: if you haven’t read the intro post yet, start there!
Tell us about yourself and your family.
We have three kids. Our oldest girl is 18 – she just graduated from public high school and is starting her freshman year at NC State University. Our middle girl is 16 and in 11th grade, and our youngest boy is 14 and in 9th. We live in the Triangle of North Carolina. My husband is a creative director in a corporate marketing department and I work part time as the Kids and Families Director for our church.
We stay busy! Our girls have been in the marching band; our oldest is continuing that in college. They have also been involved in many theater productions, as well as chorus and concert band. Our son has run track, played basketball, done debate team, and will join a special technology and engineering academy at school this year.
Why are you choosing public school for your family?
When my oldest was starting kindergarten, we considered all schooling options: private, homeschool, charter, magnet, regular public, and more. While I saw the merit in each type of school, we really felt called to public. I remember specifically thinking: if Jesus were a parent on earth right now, he would be in the midst of the public schools. Not that I am REMOTELY like Jesus – but I want to be! I felt he wouldn’t place himself with his own immediate family or only with other believers – he would be “in the world.” I felt confident and secure that God was guiding our decision to go to public schools.
This is of course personal, but I also did not feel it would be a good use of our money to pay for school tuition for three kids over many years. When we first entered school in 2010, our county had great schools with a good reputation, and I had heard good things about the elementary school that we were zoned for. I felt comfortable sending our oldest there.
What has been your experience with public school so far? Give us an overview.
How much time do you have? Ha! Like anything in life, public school has its plusses and minuses.
I’m grateful that it seems my kids are able to learn everywhere. They do well in school, but they also did well during the COVID months when they were at home. However, I love public school for all the extra experiences it provides. My girls have thrived in marching band, and they could not get that at home or at many private schools. And for my youngest who loves all things STEM, our high school has extensive course options. It would be challenging to teach the subjects he loves and provide the robotics, design, and technology experiences he gets at school at home.
The hard part is likely not surprising: with older kids in the times we live in, it’s hard to feel that the non-educational things that are taught are out of our control. Of course, this depends a lot on the area of the country you live in, but in recent years, I’ve been more and more unhappy with this.
What has been one of your favorite parts about your school experience so far? Has anything been challenging?
I would say my favorite thing is the opportunity for my kids to interact with and become friends with diverse groups of people. Of course, that also has its challenges, as that diversity can be opposite of Christian beliefs. I am a relational person, so I also love the relationships I’ve made over the years.
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?
I wish we wouldn’t be so judgmental of each other. (I am convicted of this as well, so I’m also speaking for myself!)
I feel like people assume that public school is the easy, or even lazy, choice. No – for us, public school is hard. We are at the schools a lot – not just pouring into our own kids, but also kids we’ll never know. We take care of teachers and administrators. We give a lot of time and a lot of money to our community schools.
Additionally, I have been a part of prayer groups for all the years that my kids have been in school. Seeing God move through the prayers of public school moms has been such a blessing. Just this past week, we met and did a prayer walk around the high school, praying over specific buildings and gyms and athletic fields and parking lots and bus loops. If teachers or administrators passed by, we reached out and asked them how we could pray for them, and we prayed over those things on the spot.
This past year, we had a teacher email our group leader and ask if we were still meeting to pray because she could see the Lord working at our high school in so many ways. What a blessing to be making a difference in prayer – again, not just for my own kids, but for my community, as well!
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?
Now that my kids are older, I am hoping and praying that we are coming to a place of my kids starting to choose their faith because it is, in fact, what they want – that it is their faith, and not just their parent’s faith. And that they want to go to church and don’t just go because we are making them :)
My kids’ faith is tested, for sure, in the public schools. They won’t go to college and hear opposite faiths and beliefs for the first time. They’ve already heard it – daily! The blessing is that, when they hear things that are contrary to what they’ve heard in church and at home, they’re still under our roof and we can have talk through them together, as opposed to hearing opposing views for the first time in college when my husband and I would have much less influence. My kids have questions, and we have conversations constantly – the door is always open for discussion.
What are your hopes for your kids and their education? What’s the best-case scenario?
The best-case scenario is that they finish high school, go on to college or work or whatever is next for them, and find a relationship with Jesus that is their own – that they fall deeply in love with him out of the love he has for them. There’s nothing I desire more. Of course, I’d love for them to do well in school and all that. But ultimately, in my heart, that is secondary.
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’ll stick it out in public. We’re almost done, ha!
Amber, 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 Amber mentioned in your usual kind and thoughtful way. Grateful for you!
Just in time for us all to get back into cozy fall routines, I bring you another round of family movie night reviews! You can read more about how we do family movie night here, but the most important thing to know is that in our house, the parents choose the movies. The kids get to choose their shows during the week, and we relish getting to curate a family canon of our favorite classics and new hits on Friday.
A fun yet unrelated photo from our weekend in Charleston. I matched the decor :)
Onto the movies! Here’s what we watched last school year, when June was 6 and 7 and Shep was 4, as best as I can remember and roughly in order, with commentary along the way as needed.
The Little Mermaid
Beauty and the Beast (June thought it was scary – a theme continued from last year!)
Tangled (June, John, and I all cried at the end – really, really loved this one.)
Matilda (This was the 1996 version, a favorite from my childhood, and June absolutely looooved it. “Send Me On My Way” and “Little Bitty Pretty One” were frequent Spotify requests in the weeks after we watched!)
Inside Out (June and I cried again, ha!)
Paddington (I get that it’s meant to show character development over the course of the story, but I didn’t love how the kids behaved and the family treated each other at the beginning. Otherwise, sweet. I’ve heard the second one is better!)
The Princess and the Frog (There are some excellent songs in this one!)
Homeward Bound (A complete and total 90’s classic!)
The Grinch (original)
The Santa Clause (This is one of my very favorite Christmas movies from childhood. Be warned, however: June asked me some pointed questions about Santa in the aftermath and ultimately joined the “parent team,” if you will. I have complicated feelings about Santa as a grown-up and felt our parenting messaging on him was muddy at best, so ultimately this was fine, but rather stressful in the moment.)
Elf
The Jungle Book (This one was just kind of wonky? It was fine, not my favorite, but fine. I guess it just feels a little more tired than some other classics.)
Matilda the Musical (June loved this version even more than the original (though I still prefer the original!) Shep did not particularly enjoy this version; I do think we could have waited another year, because some parts seemed a bit stressful for June.)
Sing (This was fun! We laughed out loud :))
The Wizard of Oz (A classic for sure, albeit a little wacky.)
Sing 2 (Again, lots of laughter all around! The music is fantastic and the parents loved the pop culture references. June was a little scared of Crystal the wolf.)
Babe (Both kids definitely enjoyed this one, and particularly thought the singing mice were funny – ha!)
Mulan
Alice in Wonderland (A little too wacky for my taste, but the kids enjoyed it.)
Parent Trap (The original version – I love it so much.)
Lilo and Stitch
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (We watched after we read the book, and the kids loved it.)
The Parent Trap (The Lindsay Lohan version, an absolute treasure from my childhood. June now claims it as her favorite movie.)
June just happily noted that we’ll have to restart the cycle next year when Annie turns three and can join us for movie night. We’re all looking forward to it :)
I would love to hear: what movies have been hits at your house for movie night lately?
