Our Why
Defining Our Families Core Values
Our lives are full of so many gifts that God has given us — our marriage, our children, our community, our home, our time, our resources, our hobbies, and our abilities — we want to steward them well.
In the late summer of 2024, I was reading a book called The Joy of Slow: Restoring Balance and Wonder to Homeschool Learning by Leslie M. Martino. In the third chapter, Martino encourages the reader to identify their “why” in choosing to homeschool and define their core values that would guide them in their families homeschooling journey. After reading and thinking through that, I felt like it would make a lot of sense to do the same thing four our family unit as a whole and how we do life.
After a lot of prayer and list making, and talking with Paul around and around, we narrowed our core values down to four key words that all happen to start with “C”: Connection, Collaboration, Creativity, and Curiosity.
Our hope in defining our families core values is to use them as a filter for what we choose to do and what we choose not to do. I frequently have to remind myself of a quote I heard a while back that said “you can do anything, but you can’t do everything.”
There are so many good things we can do, but when we say yes to too many things, we have found that we really start to miss out on some critical things that really matter to our family. We feel that these core values are supported by our faith in Christ and that they also help us live out our faith in an intentional way.
To give you a visual — I like to think of our family life and culture as a fruit tree. Christ is the soil that our family tree is deeply rooted in - everything we need to do life comes from Him. Our core values are the 4 main branches that everything else grows off of. Over time, we have more and more smaller branches growing off of each main branch - those would be our activities, projects, commitments, etc. At some point, there becomes two threats of we continue in this trajectory. The first would be that the nutrients needed for healthy growth are being spread out across too many branches and some need to be pruned back. This pruning back allows for the tree to actually be far more productive and to produce better fruit. The second would be more devastating than just a lower yield — instead, the branch can become too weighed down with all of the branches and fruit that it will break.
We have gotten to this point before — I would say that my two autoimmune disease were the result of trying to carry too much. We overloaded our branches and our tree took a hit.
This is what we hope our core values can help us avoid in the future. Of course, storms come and branches break and we can’t control that. But, we do have control over how much we say yes to.
Connection
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Collaboration
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Creativity
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Curiosity
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Connection | Collaboration | Creativity | Curiosity |
Connection
We are building a life where connection thrives:
Connection with God through time in His word, in prayer, and in singing Him praises.
Connection with one another through grace, vulnerability, open and humble hearts, and love.
Connection with others through inviting others in. Making a space at our table and providing a place of belonging.
Connection with world God created through time outside in a posture of gratitude — enjoying and caring for His creation.
Collaboration
We were each created on purpose and with a purpose and we were brought together as a family on purpose and with a purpose.
Each of us brings our own unique interests, perspective, ideas, and abilities to the table. When we come together to share in the good work set before us, we also get to share in the joy and fulfillment.
We encourage our kids to join us in our work, not to “get out of the way”. We want to raise capable and helpful adults and that starts with raising capable and helpful kids who know that they matter and are valued.
Creativity
We delight in creativity — making the ordinary things beautiful and breathing possibility into each challenge we face.
God is so creative and all of creation reveals that to us. We (not just us, but every human being) were created in His image — He made us to be creative.
Our creativity is an outpouring of our connection to The Creator — it comes from the overflow of our fulfillment in Him.
We have the opportunity to use our creativity to reflect the Creator and bring Him glory through the work of our imperfect human hands.
Curiosity
We believe curiosity makes life much more enjoyable!
We want to raise our kids to be lifelong learners — to ask boldly, seek wisdom, widely, and learn deeply. We want to explore the world with awe-filled wonder - marveling at the intelligent creation and design of all things.
Valuing curiosity means we must be willing to fail. Our identity isn’t tied to whether we succeed or fail. Instead, we see failure as an opportunity for growth and as an indicator that we were brave enough to try.
We accept the reality that we will never know everything and we can confidently trust in the One who does.
We don’t have it all figured out and we’re learning every step of the way.
This is a space where our goal is to authentically share the ups and downs of our journey and to encourage you to keep pursuing Christ — through Him, you will live a life full of good work, beauty, and joy.