The Lessons We Learn to Teach
Happily N’ever After – When Sandcastles Fall (Part 6)
“The same threads that once bound me in fear would one day become the colors I used to guide my daughters—toward light, toward safety, toward their own voices.”
— When the Dragons Awoke
Even in the unraveling, something deeper was still being woven.
I wanted so desperately to guide my daughters toward light and safety. But what I didn’t yet understand was how hard it is to lead someone down a path you’re still learning to walk yourself.
There are things you know—and things you learn.
My husband and I knew it was important to raise our girls in truth and righteousness. In a world full of dragons, that felt like a full-time job. So we decided I would stay home with them—a choice both easy and hard. Easy, because it reflected what we valued most. Hard, because, well... the Sheriff of Nottingham still collected his taxes. One income, raising children—it wasn’t easy. But oh, I was rich in ways that gold could never touch. I gained treasures that could not be stolen: watching first steps, hearing first words, teaching play while learning it myself, being the one who caught the tears and the laughter.
Money was tight, so I took on small creative jobs that allowed me to stay home. One of those was sculpting. Using photos, I shaped tiny replicas of people into necklaces, ornaments, or desk pieces. What began as a creative outlet soon became my small business—Family † Connections™. It didn’t make much money, but it made meaning. Every piece I sculpted felt like an offering —a way to honor connection, to hold something sacred and human in my hands. The creative work became a quiet release, a way to reshape pieces of myself from the dungeons and dragons of my past.
Around that time, I attended a seminar for Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF®). I went simply to learn how to teach my girls about God. “I hadn’t grown up in church. Faith was implied more than spoken, lived more than taught.” But what I received at that seminar sparked something deeper. Within months, I was attending classes to become a certified CEF® teacher. That experience opened unexpected doors—including one to the VP of CEF®, who commissioned a sculpture from me. In preparing that project, I met a woman named Flo. She wasn’t just a contact; she became a mentor—a lifeline.
At our very first meeting, halfway through our conversation, she said, “Jenni, when I look at you, I see a hurting child inside.” How could she see that? We had only just met. But her words landed with both truth and grace. “You can’t hide unhealed pain. It leaks through smiles.”
Flo had walked through her own fires. She encouraged me to seek counseling and became the steady friend who helped me survive the dragons and the flames they breathed. Over countless coffee chats often without paper—Flo would grab napkins and scribble notes of encouragement. Reminders of who I was in Christ. Tips for mothering, marriage, and healing. Those “napkin notes” became sacred artifacts—wisdom smudged with coffee rings and grace.
One afternoon, Flo tucked something extra into one of her napkin notes — a five-dollar bill with a pink Post-it that read, “Don’t lose the dream. Love, God.” It was a small gift with a huge heart. Money was tight for her, yet she wanted me to buy clay—“just to play,” she said. “Not to sell. Just to feel.” I never spent it. All these years later, that pink note still reminds me: sacrificial love and quiet kindness often arrive in small, ordinary ways—woven into our lives like a golden thread, binding what might have unraveled.
But the unraveling wasn’t done. What the mind buries, the body remembers. Healing, I was learning, wasn’t about erasing the past—it was about reclaiming the pieces of yourself that trauma tried to steal. Growth is painful. And I was growing—through singed tapestry threads, weaving something new even as the old frayed beneath my fingertips.
On the outside, I looked composed: bedtime stories, warm meals, church smiles. Inside, I was fighting wars no one could see—measuring warmth, masking cold. Behind every Family † Connections™ sculpture was a mother trying to hold her own seams together.
Yet still, even in the unraveling, something deeper was being woven. I held tight to my faith and my sword, determined to keep fighting the dragons that hid in the shadows. I was wounded—bleeding—but not defeated. I couldn’t be. I still had lessons to teach. My daughters were my world, my reason, my heartbeat.
Love keeps teaching. And life—especially in heartbreak—keeps weaving lessons through pain.
The next chapter of our story would unfold with a new rhythm as I learned that sometimes, the teacher is still the student.
📖 Next → Riding the Golden Years
🐉 Previous: When the Dragons Awoke
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🧵 Read parallel reflections in Tapestry of Life.