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.