Gathered We Grow -How it all started

It all started when we were driving home from June Lake listening to Sally and Clay Clarkson’s book The Lifegiving Parent. When they talked about having family planning meetings, it resonated with us. We decided to start gathering as a family to be more intentional in our parenting. It didn’t go well at first, we were unorganized and unprepared. But as we kept meeting, we started asking the same questions, or similar questions at family times and writing down character growth areas to get more organized. We wrote them down on an iPhone notes app at first, but it seemed to work much better on paper, to keep us focused. We began to notice some real unity and character growth in our kids. And even more than that…we noticed a deeper connection in our marriage. We were on the same page and on the same team and it was amazing! 

I began talking to friends about our family meetings and how great they were. I realized that some families already regularly and intentionally met together, but many more had never even thought of it before. So…we had an idea, what if we took the questions we frequently asked at our table times and put them in a book, or a journal so other families had a guide to do the same thing? We started looking into printers and I asked others in the field who were doing it but no one gave me any answers. 

 I started to give up and figured we’d just keep doing it with our family. And as we did, we learned more, grew more, and our wheels kept turning because we really wanted to share this with more people. 

 But still… doors kept closing the more we looked in to printing the journal. And then, a friend told me about Growth Roots Co., a local small business run by Bree Barrios who created a journaling book with growth prompts, too. I looked into it and felt the Lord ask me to step out of my comfort zone and ask her if she’d give me advice. I had already reached out to several businesses who had created beautiful personalized journals, but they wouldn’t share much information with me. I figured, the worst that could happen was I’d reach out to her and she’d turn me down. Instead…she didn’t reply. I later found out she missed my message…for months!

 During that time everything I was doing kind of came to a hault…our photography business slowed drastically and the blog I had started 4 years ago with friends was coming to a close. 

We spent the summer enjoying our family and I felt like everything was off my plate. It was so freeing and I felt like it was a real gift. Our family was in a really sweet, simple season. But the future was a little unknown. We felt like something was coming but we didn’t know what it was…

 In August we went to a pastor’s appreciation dinner. A pastor from South Africa, Steven Oliver, came to speak and at the very end had a word for a young couple in the group who had stories they wanted to share, but not just stories, stories that would be lived out. David and I looked at each other. I was terrified because I knew in my heart he was talking about us. He asked us to come up because he wanted to pray over us specifically. David dragged me up to the front smiling all the way. Pastor Steven said he saw a pen being formed from an Asian reed over paper and words spilling out, calligraphy, journaled. He looked at us, grabbed us by the shoulders and said very seriously – “I don’t know if you journal, but if you don’t, go home and start tonight. And I would strongly suggest you go out, like tomorrow, and invest in a REALLY nice journal. You know like those ones at Barnes and Nobel that are like 20 or 30 dollars - but really nice.”

 We didn’t know what that meant at the time…we didn’t know if it was about more inspiration for the ideas we had for children’s stories or about the family journal we’d been trying to pursue with no breakthroughs. We just knew we were encouraged to write. And to keep going. And suddenly it was real. We had to do something about this very clear call to write. We were held accountable by this special Word from the Lord.

 Then, later that summer a friend shared a vision she had of us. She was standing in church watching us worship and suddenly saw us, holding our babies, joined together in our living room with a wire arch assembled over us. It wasn’t anything beautiful- just an outline of a thing. As we stood there, foliage started growing up the arch in vines and pushing out of our ceiling filling the space with growth and light. And that’s exactly what my heart longed for – to be home, growing with my children but still somehow spreading His light. 

 That same week I was offered a job at our church that I was praying about taking. It had to do with managing volunteers and working in the children’s ministry. David and I both agreed it could be a financial answer to prayer – as it happened to cover exactly what we needed to cover our monthly expenses. But it didn’t leave as much room for anything else. And we had been trying to get pregnant for a couple of months. So, this would really probably be all I had time for. The journal and stories and photography would be tabled for a while.

 As we thought about it more, I was most interested in offering resources to parents to help them see their families grow. But after organizing the volunteers I was nervous I wouldn’t have time to do what I actually felt called and passionate about. I had one week to decide. I was leaning toward saying yes…it seemed like the safest bet. But we committed to pray about it. 

 And then the day I had to give my answer, Bree Barrios from Growth Roots Co. reached out to me and said she would love to grab coffee and chat. It could only be God’s timing. As we talked business, life, and kingdom work, I not only felt encouraged to keep pursuing the family journal but I made a great new friend, too!

We gave our answer about the job later that night. We were going to go after this journal. Armed with new ideas and direction we decided I’d put the time into Gathered We Grow that I would have put into the other job. We had to give it a shot. God seemed to be making His message abundantly clear to us.

 And from that night on, I worked from 7:30pm when I put my kids to bed at night until 2 or sometimes 4am writing, designing, and researching for the Gathered We Grow Family Journal. Many nights were spent working late at my parent’s house with my mom’s help and endless Keurig coffee refills. I couldn’t have done it without you Ma! It was exhausting but I felt filled with so much energy, vision, and direction. It could have only been the Holy Spirit!

 There are so many other things I could say to explain the way God completely covered and guided this whole process…

Like how we came across Psalm 128 in a Nancy Wilson book, which is now our theme verse because of how perfectly it portrays family gatherings, with growing children around the table like olive branches. How we were then able to use beautiful olive branches as part of our branding. And then…the Branch Journal name for our children’s journal because it’s not only a branch off of the family journal but it’s made for kids – who are like the olive branches bearing fruit from Psalm 128.

Or the miracle financial gifts that we saved and also prayed for that came at the perfect time to order these journals. In the beginning of this process we didn’t know how we would make this first order. David cheerfully said “I’m just going to pray for a miracle financial gift.” He told me the number and I laughed and said, “Ooookay.” And we plodded along, faithfully. The day before we ordered the books to print and had to make our first payment, a family friend who had heard about our project came over and handed us a check for the EXACT amount we’d been praying for. Only God, guys.

And finally, since about June we’d been trying for a fourth baby. We got pregnant really quickly (like the first month) the previous three kids so after months of trying we didn’t know if we’d be having a fourth after all. But we were open to whatever God had for us. During this time I worked on the journal. There is no way I could have put in all the late nights writing and designing it if I was pregnant or had a newborn! God knew. Two weeks after we turned the final copy of the journal in to print, we found out we were pregnant. Then, during our first ultrasound of the new babe we got an email we’d been waiting for for weeks - pictures of the first real-life printed copies of our book that were being mailed out the next day. It was like seeing our two babies -human baby and book baby - right next to each other and God’s complete faithfulness. Such an encouragement!

Once God started opening doors and we faithfully started walking through them one step at a time, He opened another. And another. We are so excited for this journal to get into the homes of so many families because we KNOW that God is behind this! And we are so eager to see the doors the Lord continues to open for families all over.

It’s More Than a Journal…It’s a Lifestyle

Gathered We Grow is more than just a family journal - it’s a lifestyle. We are firm believers that as we gather our family together, committed to each other, our children, and our God –we grow. And our lives are changed as we begin to look more like Christ. When we come together as a family, we learn from each other…and grow. We model our priorities for our children, they see our imperfections and that there is room for improvement…and we grow. We see our children’s growth and are encouraged, too…and we continue to grow. Gathering together is powerful. When we begin asking these Gathered We Grow questions, we reframe the way we think, go about our days and the way we see each other because we begin to recognize the great potential we have in Christ. The Gathered We Grow Family Journal is more than just a journal – it becomes a lifestyle of leaning into Christ for yourself and your children, recognizing and calling out God given strengths and gifts, and leaning into Him for refining and growth in all areas. And as you write it down, you record your family story to look back on for years to come. To see the hand of God across your family – His provision in all forms, guiding your growth, your story, your unique purpose.  Together, let’s live a lifestyle of gathering and growing. 

How to Use the Journal for Fruitful Family Meetings

“Teach us to number our days, that we may present to you a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12

It was the summer of 2018 and we were driving home from our family’s favorite camping spot up in the Eastern Sierras. Our three kids slept quietly in their car seats in the back and we had audible playing Clay and Sally Clarkson’s latest book, The Lifegiving Parent as we road-tripped back home. Little did we know the impact Chapter 2 - “Numbering Your Child’s Days” would make on our growing family. 

This chapter talked about the importance of planning your life, and teaching your kids to do the same, to take responsibility for every day – for goal setting, growth, your walk with God and to talk about it with each other.

“As a family, we would gather to describe and discuss our goals, desires, and relationships with God. Whatever came out in those family times was wisdom born of God’s presence among us. It was a natural part of our life together with God as a family,” (The Lifegiving Parent, 28).

We wanted this – for these kinds of discussions to be a natural part of our lives together. We realized the importance and opportunity family times like this would offer. In that same chapter Clay talked about “a ten-year period of childhood we call the four-to-fourteen window—the prime parental teaching period…because the window of childhood is so “transient,” to use David’s language, we need to make the most of those years.” So, we came back from that camping trip eager to set up regular family planning meetings so we could be the ones intentionally helping shape our children’s values, attitudes, character, and walks with God. Because if we weren’t - someone or some thing else would.

We came back with great intentions for fruitful family times. But then, it didn’t happen. We found ourselves calling family meetings because the kids needed discipline - NOW. So we’d gather everyone around the table, lay down the law, set expectations and consequences, the kids would get discouraged, lose patience and we’d get frustrated they didn’t want to be there. We found no one enjoyed these family meetings at all. We were missing something. This was not the “fruit” we desired. 

And then, something clicked. One day I started writing some talking points down in a journal before our family gathering times started. We noticed that the kids seemed to receive whatever we had to say a whole lot better if we started with encouragement first, then we moved on to an area we thought we could grow in as a family, and then each of us personally. This helped make talking a lot more straightforward and organized. We started realizing a pattern that worked best in the way we communicated and the questions we asked our kids during this time. 

As we followed this family meeting outline month after month, encouraging each other, talking about the same questions, and picking things to pray over together as a family, we started to notice real growth in all of us and a much more natural sense of conversation around the table. It even started to become second nature for David and I to be thinking about the growth questions during the week and things we wanted to bring up at our next family gathering. We began to feel united, as parents and in our marriage which was a huge blessing! No more date nights were taken up talking about the slew of child discipline problems. We had a framework to quickly talk through the big things we wanted to address that month, knowing we would have time for any other things in the following weeks or months. Then we were free to enjoy each other, knowing we were on the same page.

As we saw growth in our own family and marriage, we knew we wanted to share it with other families. So we took the questions we had been asking in our own family meetings and compiled them all in one place – the Gathered We Grow Family Journal. 

This journal gives you an organized and simple outline that, we hope, will remove some of the pressure of a family meeting. We can easily track growth, progress, encouragement, milestones, prayers and more. As you talk about these questions, they become second nature. Talking about growth and God becomes more and more normal as the months go on. Now, our kids look forward to family gatherings as we’ve made them a special monthly event (or weekly if needed!) complete with coloring pages at the table, their own Branch Journals, and a delicious special snack. 

We realize that the window for us to be the most influential in our children’s lives is short – just 10 years. By going through this journal once a month with our kids, we are having 12 purposeful conversations a year about growth and God. There are months we miss, because…life. But a little intention goes a long way over a lifetime. We hope, as you commit to regularly gathering your family together to cultivate deeper conversations and discipleship that the Gathered We Grow Family Journal would be just as much a blessing to your family as it has been to ours. 

FAMILY VALUES

Why are family values important? We’ve all probably heard the term but have we sat down to define them, or really think about what makes them important?

Defining family values can help you see the areas of your life that you need to be intentional in so you can live the life and leave the legacy you desire. 

We sat down and started listing our family values by first coming up with some categories that made sense for our family. This is by no means an exhaustive list! But it might give you an idea of where you can start, too.

Our Family Values

| Christian Values |

Love God, imitate Jesus and receive his Holy Spirit.

Act, live and speak according to the Bible

Be an active member of the Church

Be a good steward 

| Character Values |

Honesty

Servant-hearted

Courageous

Humility

Committed

Generous

| Social Values |

Respect

Honor authority

| Civic Values |

Be informed 

Pray for our community and country

| Work Values |

Work hard

Walk in your God-given strengths and giftings

| Home Values |

Do your share around the house

Unplug often

Spend time together

| Recreational Values |

Go on adventures

Enjoy God’s creation

Your list of family values may be really long. You’re likely not going to remember each of them, but through them you may find themes. Write those over-arching themes down and try to make a more concise, simplified version of your values that you can reiterate to yourself and your children until it is remembered. 

| Over-arching Values |

Faithful

Servant-hearted

Pursuers of excellence

Learners

Growers

Then you can write these out into a sentence you can repeat often and and remember!

We are the Matrangas, we are faithful, we serve, we pursue excellence , we always keep growing and learning. 

When we want to quit, we remind ourselves - We are Matranga’s and just like God is faithful, so are we.

When we don’t feel like lending a helping hand, we remind ourselves that just as Jesus served, we serve too.

When we’re tempted to settle for less, we remind ourselves to pursue excellence because He is excellent. And just like Phil 4:8 says, we will choose to focus on anything that is excellent, worthy, good and beautiful.

When we feel bored or lazy, we remind ourselves that there is always something new to learn about God’s creation or world

When we feel stuck, we remind ourselves there is always a way we can grow more into the likeness of His image.

| WHY |

These values guide us in how to grow ourselves and our children into the men and women of God we desire to be. We pray that as you take the time to think through your family values that the Lord would bring to mind a clear picture of the overarching themes He desires your family to continue to cultivate.