Just Add Faith, Trust and Pixie Dust: back to school blessing

Showing posts with label back to school blessing. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 2, 2026

Back to School Blessing

We have a special tradition in our family. We call it the Back to School Blessing.

Right before we start school we cook a special dinner and dessert for our family.

Ahead of time we prepare a theme for the school year and most importantly a Bible verse to guide us throughout the year.

Scott and I put a lot of time and love into the dinner choice, dessert, and most of all the talk/blessing to our daughters.

It is so important to us.

Here are the pictures from this year and at the end I will post our talk to the girls.

This year we focused on the thought that even sometimes:

~ things don't go our way

~ we will make mistakes

~ we might feel broken

but...

God puts us back together. Not so that we are the same as before

but...

better!

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 2 Corinthians 4:7-8

Past Back to School Blessings

2025

2024

2023

Back to School Blessing 2022

Back to School Blessing 2021

Back to School Blessing 2020

Back to School Blessing 2019

Back to School Blessing 2018

Back to School Blessing 2017

Back to School Blessing 2016

Back to School Blessing 2015

Saturday, August 30, 2025

Back to School Blessing

Last weekend (before Abigail's big college move in day) we had our Back to School Blessing dinner.

This is now a long standing tradition in our family. It helps us to end the summer, reflect on our lives, look at the direction we want to strive toward, and build each other up for what is to come.

It takes me all summer to come up with our theme, color scheme, the menu, and the gifts. Most of my ideas come to me during my quiet time: early mornings in the summer when I can pray, journal my prayers, read the Bible and devotionals I love. I always journal what I am learning and what the Holy Spirit reveals to my heart. So after some time our "back to school theme" just kind of reveals itself. I love how it come out of my 'God times'.

This year as usual there were beautiful back to school engraved stained glass stars. I order those early in the summer and have them engraved with the girls school, year, and name. They both have quite a collection now and I hope they hang them in their homes someday as a reminder of their education journey.

I decorated the table on our screened in porch simply but I just love the way it turned out. These are old dishes, new to me, and I think they are so pretty. I even have the teapot which is my favorite teapot now. The twinkle lights were hanging and the sun was just getting a little lower in the sky when we got started.

After stars, our feast was next. I let the girls pick the menu this year but only if they picked out of my fall cookbooks. We loved this meal.

And then of course we had dessert.

I shared our theme for our school year: A Breed Apart: What does it mean to be set apart?

Although when we talk last into the evening about our theme and I present our message it's more of a conversation. That makes it difficult to put into words here on this blog. It just doesn't seem to come out right because after I explain it all we talk talk talk it all out until it really evolves into what makes sense to all of us. It's what our family does and we love it. But I will put a few points here so my girls can look back some day:

~ God wants us to walk in holiness

~ That means seeing our lives with eternity in mind

~ We must put away any root idols in our lives and anything that we look fora as our primary source of valus, joy, popularity that is not of God

~ Holiness means we must spend time in His Word

~ A holy person is committed to growing in love because this is what pleases God

~ Loving means putting away anger and harshness and seeing the other person through the eyes of serving and encouraging them

~ Holiness believes in God's presence in every moment of the day

We spent a lot of time talking about how to seek God and find him our lives on a daily basis with the new directions we are going in this year (my girls) Here are a few ideas I told my girls:

~ go through the psalms and circle or underline every promis or character quality of God (example: Psalm 23)

~ read one chapter of John or Matthew each day and write down one lesson you learned

~ read through Philippians and notice all the ways Paul tells you to follow Jesus

~ read the book of Hebrews to learn the lessons of what pleases God, the attributes of Jesus and his will for us to hold fast

~ read a chapter of Proverbs each day and keep a list of what this book teachers you about folly vs. wisdom

~ there are also so many ways to be with Jesus that are close to you: go to adoration, daily Mass, stop at church on the way home from school and sit and pray in his presence for a while.

~ we talked about the times in our lives when we put Jesus first and what happened when we did.

It was a beautiful, powerful night. I am so grateful for our little family and walking by faith.

Past years:

2024

2023

Back to School Blessing 2022

Back to School Blessing 2021

Back to School Blessing 2020

Back to School Blessing 2019

Back to School Blessing 2018

Back to School Blessing 2017

Back to School Blessing 2016

Back to School Blessing 2015

Friday, August 30, 2024

Back to School Blessing ~ 2024

On Sunday night, the night before Anna headed back to college, we had our annual 'Back to School Blessing'. It is a really special tradition that we started years ago.

On this night we like to pause and share with our girls a family intention for the upcoming school year.

This summer I spent a lot of time pouring into my girls. So at the end of the summer I really wanted to pull together all of the learning we had done all summer long.

Part One:

This summer I read aloud the classic story, The Secret Garden (the unabridged - I do think there are some shorter chapter books out there and even some picture books) by Frances Hodgson Burnett. There is so much I could say about this book, truly a book about light and darkness and what happens when we let beauty into our lives... when physical beauty comes into our lives it changes us.

I read that book bit by bit, chapter by chapter throughout the summer and finished reading it aloud by the end of the summer.

On our Back to School Blessing night I reread this quote from chapter 27:

"So long as Mistress Mary's mind was full of disagreeable thoughts about her dislikes and sour opinions of people and her determination not to be pleased by or interested in anything, she was a yellow-faced, sickly, bored, and wretched child. Circumstances, however, were very kind to her, though she was not at all aware of it. They began to push her about for her own good. When her mind gradually filled itself with robins, and moorland cottages crowded with children, with queer, crabbed old gardeners and common little Yorkshire housemaids, with springtime and with secret gardens coming alive day by day, and also with a moor boy and his 'creatures', there was no room left for the disagreeable thoughts which affected her liver and her digestion and made her yellow and tired. So long as Colin shut himself up in his room and thought only of his fears and weakness and his detestation of people who looked at him and reflected hurly on humps and early death, he was a hysterical, half-crazy little hypochondriac who knew nothing of the sunshine and the spring, and also did not know that he could get well and stand upon his feet if he tried to do it. When new, beautiful thoughts began to push out the old, hideous ones, life began to come back to him, his blood ran healthily through his veins, and strength poured into him like a flood. His scientific experiment was quite practical and simple and there was nothing weird about it at all. Much more surprising things can happen to anyone who, when a disagreeable or discoursed thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable, determinedly courageous own. Two things cannot be in one place.

Where you tend a rose, by lad,

A thistle cannot grow.

Oh that thought in there about how we push out the bad thoughts - how we can fill our minds so much with the good that there is no room for discontented, unhealthy ones. "Two things cannot by in one place" We spent some time on that piece there.

There really are so many times when we are in dark days and it just feels impossible to lift ourselves. I wanted the girls to have a picture in their mind of the secret garden in that book and how the two children changed because of the beauty. We all need to be reminded that goodness and beauty are waiting for us and they will change our thought patterns until we are changed.

I believe strongly that when beautiful thoughts begin to push out the old, hideous one, life comes back and strength will pour into us like a flood.

Part Two:

Oh goodness, I didn't take a photo of something important that was on the table that night. Throughout the summer I had typed up all of the notes from every bible study - every dinnertime devotional - every discussion that I tried to reach their hearts. They are now all in one document that they can have forever. And I talked about how now they have everything they need. As Proverbs states in chapter 4, we get wisdom and when wisdom is part of your life, it is beautiful.

Part Three:

I read my intention statements for the school year and charged them to do the same. When we write out and state our intentions we are better able to remember when our thoughts gets dark where we want to be headed. Here is what I shared with the girls:

I feel calm at school. I am well prepared for each day. I smile and look into the eyes of each student and reach their heart with God's help.

I meet individual needs and move my class forward in an organized whole approach.

I stay focused and remember why I am there each day: to bring light and goodness, skill and loving curiosity and fun first to my class, second to all of those in my school.

I am grateful even on challenging days to be what God planted as a seed in my heart all those years ago.

I am a child of God. The same God that sees me today is the one that held me as a little girl, a teen, a young adult, through early marriage years, and young motherhood. He knows my future and I trust in His steadfast love completely.

I spend time each day in prayer, reading His word, and immersing myself in the writing and inspirations of saints and other that can guide me. This is the oxygen to do life well.

I am kind first to my little family. I look and pray for ways to bless them, love them, and show them a bit of God's reality in this life. I speak life-giving words to give them a treasure chest to draw from throughout their lives.

I am a memory keeper so my girls can look back with delight on their years.

I make time to enrich my life, mind, body, and spirit. I put effort into my home to create a beautiful, restful, cozy, happy place to be.

I don't compare myself to others but rather run my own race continuing to stay on the path God leads me on. I remind myself to not be so serious and rest in His faithfulness knowing that god will work things together for good those that are called according to his purpose.

And of course I decorated it for the upcoming season of fall. Here are a few pictures of our special night including the stained glass engraved stars the girls opened.