Homeschool Coffee Break

Are you homeschooling to escape the traditional school system, but still following its exact blueprint without realizing it? There is a trap that most homeschool moms fall into, and it quietly keeps your family stuck on the same conveyor belt you were trying to leave behind.
This episode breaks down what is leadership education, why it is completely different from the traditional (public school) model most of us grew up with, and how simple shifts can change everything about how you homeschool:
✅The ONE question you can ask your kids this week that sparks real critical thinking
✅3 signs your child is actually growing that have nothing to do with a test
✅The surprising historical reason schools were never designed to raise thinkers
✅Why finishing the checklist-curriculum is actually working against your child's growth
✅Why this approach pulls the best from 5 different homeschool methods into one clear purpose
Stop letting someone else's curriculum tell you what kind of homeschool mom to be. Hit play and find out how to take back the reins.
Resources to Help YOU
Raising Leaders, Not Followers Course.
How to Simplify Your Homeschool Course (3 daily videos, 5 minutes or less)
Factory Model Education: Why Homeschool Moms Feel Overwhelmed
Show Notes:
You Left the School System — But Did You Leave Its Blueprint?
Did you know many homeschool moms believe they have escaped the school system, but unknowingly they're still following its blueprint? The trap? They are focusing on information instead of transformation.
Why do so many moms follow the traditional school model? Now, this isn't traditional over thousands of years — it's just the last 150 years. Why do we follow it? Because it's what we know. We grew up on the conveyor belt. It feels comfortable because it's what we know, and we don't know where to go to get off it.
The traditional system was built during the industrial revolution. What was its purpose? To train workers for factories. They needed people that could not think. They needed worker bees that would do what they were told. And let's be honest, that's really where our society is. Most people don't know how to think.
Where This Model Came From — And Why It Was Never About Your Child
Horace Mann was an education reformer who helped popularize the Prussian model of school back in the 1800s. This is what Charlotte Mason was so totally opposed to. That model treated a child as if they were a container that you just poured bits of information into and then let them regurgitate it. And that's a lot of what we do today in a traditional school — whether that's a public school or a private school.
Horace Mann's goal in moving this from Europe to America was uniformity, obedience, compliance, and efficiency. It was not leadership. It was not innovation. It was not freedom. They wanted to control society. Industrialists were pouring billions of dollars into the education system, and Horace Mann went right along with it.
Homeschooling, if we do it a different way, gives us the freedom to pursue a completely different goal. And Christian homeschooling does the same thing — just with a faith-based foundation.
What Is Leadership Education — And Why Does It Matter?
Instead of asking what information should my child memorize — which is teaching our kids what to think, a checklist mentality that isn't even your checklist, it's someone else's — leadership education asks a completely different question: what kind of person is my child becoming?
Do they have the tools of learning and the desire to learn anything they need? Leadership education, or freedom education, teaches our kids how to think instead of just what to think. That's what I wanted. I wanted my kids to know how to think critically, how to think in wisdom, and how to think biblically.
We homeschooled for 10 years. Halfway through, I started with Charlotte Mason, then moved to classical and interspersed some unit studies. But then I found leadership education and I was all in — because I believe it integrates all the best things from different approaches. The best of Charlotte Mason, classical, the Christian principal approach, unit studies, delight-directed learning — all put together with the purpose to raise kids to lead.
And y'all are like, "Well, my kids aren't going to be a leader." Well, they may not be CEO or mayor of the city, but they're probably going to have kids someday and they will need to lead their family.
From Information to Transformation: A Shift in Perspective
When we quit asking about information and we start looking at transformation, we make a shift — a shift to character, thinking, initiative, responsibility, and so much more.
George Washington had little formal education. What shaped him the most was mentorship. Lord Fairfax helped shape George Washington as a man — full, well-rounded mentoring. Thomas Jefferson had George Wythe mentoring him. They were all there at the same time during the colonial period.
And what were they using? Reading, being responsible at a young age, writing about it — Benjamin Franklin talks about that in his autobiography — and then discussing it. Read, write, discuss. This is how we can mentor young people to lead. These are the leadership qualities that allowed George Washington to lead a nation right in its very beginning.
What You Can Do This Week
I'm just giving you the tip of the iceberg here. But what are some things you could do this week?
Start asking your kids leadership-type questions. What do you think about that? Don't tell them what you think. Let them think. Too often, moms, we answer our own question and don't give them the opportunity to think. And they catch on — Mom's going to answer it anyway, so I don't have to think.
Try: Why do you think that happened in the story? What would you have done if you were that person? These questions get them to think and open the door for discussion. Discussions grow thinkers.
It's just one mindset shift that can bring instant clarity. Shift away from "did we finish the lesson?" — that's checklist productivity and it's not what you want — to "did my child grow today?" That is where they begin to take ownership of their own education, and you begin to take ownership of your homeschool instead of letting some curriculum tell you what to do.
Growth might look like curiosity, deeper questions, moral insight, responsibility, perseverance, or even kindness to a sibling. There are a lot of ways that growth can look. Instead of just having a test to check off, we want to look at their growth on a regular basis.
Free Resource: How to Simplify Your Homeschool
I know this may feel overwhelming, but I have created a free course called How to Simplify Your Homeschool. It's three short daily videos — five minutes or less each. It gives you ideas to simplify your homeschool and to think beyond the textbook and beyond the conveyor belt, so that you can see your child actually growing.
Grab the free course at howtoschooolmychild.com/simplify.

Ever feel like you're running a miniature public school in your living room? You're overwhelmed—not because you're doing too little, but because you're trying to do too much using the wrong model.
Most homeschool moms recreate the factory model education system they walked away from. They don’t mean to, but they do. This system teaches kids what to think, not how to think. It, also, turns them into followers, not leaders. But what if doing LESS actually produced stronger learners?
In this episode:
✅The 3-question filter to eliminate busy work and focus on what actually matters
✅ONE simple practice to start this week to stop overwhelm
✅75 reasons you’re totally overwhelmed, homeschool mom
✅How factory model education creates followers for the Industrial Revolution—not thinkers
✅Why depth beats breadth
✅How great leaders like Edison and Lincoln learned differently
Ready to break free from factory model education?
Grab the free 3-day video course "How to Simplify Your Homeschool" with daily emails, short videos, and printables to help you put it into practice!
Resources Mentioned:
Free Course: How to Simplify Your Homeschool
Course: Raising Leaders, Not Followers (17 tips on encouraging a love of learning)
Show Notes:
Have you ever looked at your homeschool plan and felt like you were running a miniature public school in your living room? Many homeschool moms feel overwhelmed — not because they're doing too little, but because they are trying to do too much and follow the wrong model.
The real issue is that, unintentionally, we recreate the system we walked away from. Think about it: three kids, times five lessons a day, times five days a week — that's 75 lesson plans a week. No wonder you're overwhelmed.
Most homeschool moms were trained on the factory school model of education. They all come in to first grade, they do all the same things, and they go down the factory line all the way to 12th grade. Everything the same. Tested the same. It's like a factory.
This model teaches us that learning must include multiple-choice tests, many subjects a day, and textbooks for everything. We've only had textbooks in the last hundred years — before that, they used real books. This model teaches us that worksheets, grading, and constant assessment is what education is. And even when we leave that school system, subconsciously we recreate it because that's all we know.
All that system does is teach your kids what to think, not how to think. Don't you want your kids to know how to think and not just be a follower? That system creates followers — many worker bees. It was built because of the industrial revolution and they needed a lot of workers. So they built an education system that would produce followers.
What Thomas Edison's Mom Knew That We Forget
Thomas Edison struggled in traditional school. His teacher called him addled. His mother removed him from school and homeschooled him in the 1850s — we're talking almost 175 years ago. How did she homeschool him? Through reading, through curiosity, and through experimentation.
That set up Edison to be a leader. He developed the light bulb, but because of curiosity and experimentation and strong character, he said, "I didn't fail a thousand times. I found 10,000 ways to not make a light bulb." He kept experimenting. He kept being curious to figure out an answer.
He later credited his mother with giving him the freedom to explore ideas that led to over 1,000 patents — not just the light bulb, a thousand patents. One devoted parent focusing on curiosity can outperform an entire public school system.
Why Doing Less Actually Produces Stronger Learners
I think it's not doing less education — it's doing less traditional conveyor belt education and doing more leadership education. Freedom education that gives your kids the freedom in life to pursue whatever they are called to do.
One big factor is depth. Depth creates real learning. The brain builds strong connections when ideas are explored deeply rather than just skimmed quickly. Abraham Lincoln had less than one year of formal education. He educated himself primarily through reading a small number of great books repeatedly — what we would call classics.
Some of you hear "classics" and you go, "Oh, boring." Well, I consider Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie a classic. I consider The Hobbit a classic. Don't think just because it says classic, it's old and dusty.
I remember when my girls were going to read the Iliad. It comes in and it's that thick. I told myself I was reading it with them — if they're in high school and they can understand it, surely as an adult I can read and understand it. It was an awesome book. These books shaped Abraham Lincoln into a great leader. He didn't study a whole bunch of different subjects. He studied fewer ideas and he really dove deeply into them.
The Three Question Filter: Cut the Busy Work
Before you add anything to your homeschool, ask yourself three questions. Does this help my child love learning and think deeply? Does this strengthen their character or their wisdom? Does this move them toward becoming an independent learner with lifetime learning tools?
If you say no to one of these, it may just be busy work. And if it's busy work, get rid of it. You can see more learning taking place in 20 minutes than an hour or two of worksheets.
I am not asking you to add something to your homeschool. Whatever your kids are already doing, get rid of all the extra stuff if you're overwhelmed and let's just focus on three things this week. Make sure they're reading, make sure they're using thinking skills, and make sure they're growing in their character.
What to Do Today: Go Deep Instead of Wide
Ask yourself this question: if my child mastered three things this week, what would they be? Write them down. If you're driving, say them out loud. What three things could each child master this week? That's what you want to dive deep into.
Let your child choose one subject this week — something they are going to go deeper in instead of just passing through and checking off a checklist like public school. If you follow their interest instead of yours, this encourages a love of learning. Let them make a choice of something they're interested in and dive deep into it.
Then let them read a short passage about it. Ask them what they learned. What was their favorite part? Have the discussion. For younger kids, start with narration — just let them tell back what they learned. For older kids, ask a question that starts with how or why. How and why questions will get them to start thinking.
Reading will produce a love of learning if you can find the right books. Believe me, I had to work hard for one of my children. My son Hunter didn't like to read. I was constantly on the lookout for a good quality book, and it took time and effort on my part. But he's an avid reader now. All of my kids love to read now.
What Homeschooling Is Really About
When you simplify your homeschool and you're not trying to do it all, you create space that actually matters — space for a love of learning, for thinking and discussion, for character building, and for leadership development. This is what homeschooling is about for me. I wanted my kids to grow in all four of these areas.
Free Resource: How to Simplify Your Homeschool
If you're overwhelmed and need to simplify, I have a free 3-day video course called How to Simplify Your Homeschool. It comes each day in an email with a short 3 to 5 minute video and a printable of how you could put that into practice.
I've had moms say how much this has helped them get off that conveyor belt and start to simplify their homeschool. You can find it at howtoschooolmychild.com/simplify.

What if you could focus on just 7 core areas and know your kids are getting what they truly need? Meredith Curtis discovered the Seven R's during one of the hardest seasons of her life—caring for dying parents while homeschooling five children. This framework helped her "major on the majors and minor on the minors," and it will transform your homeschool too.
In this episode, you'll discover:
✅Why relationships are the foundation that makes all other learning possible—and what happens when they're broken
✅The secret to raising kids who actually love to read (hint: it's not assigning book reports)
✅How to teach writing so your kids can communicate clearly, graciously, and persuasively for any audience
✅Why math mastery matters more than moving through a curriculum—and what to do when kids fall behind
✅The difference between Googling answers and true research skills your kids will need for life
Ready to simplify and focus? The Seven R's will help you cut through curriculum overwhelm and build confident, capable lifelong learners.
Resources Mentioned:
Get your FREE Basic Pass to Life Skills Leadership Summit 2026 to give you confidence that your kids will be ready for adult life:
The Seven R's of Homeschooling by Meredith Curtis - Practical guide to majoring on the majors and minoring on the minors
Who Dun It? Literature & Writing by Meredith Curtis - Teach high schoolers to write their own cozy mystery
HIS Story of the 20th Century by Meredith Curtis
Meredith Curtis, pastor’s wife, mom to 5 homeschool graduates, and Grand-Merey to 8 angels, loves to read cozy mysteries, travel, hit the beach, and meet new people. She is always learning because the world is just full of mysteries and beauty! Meredith loves to encourage families in their homeschooling adventure because her own was such a blessing. She is a curriculum creator and author of Jesus, Fill My Heart & Home Bible Study and Who Dun It Murder Mystery Literature & Writing. Find Meredith at PowerlineProd.com, along with her online store and blog.
You can also follow Meredith on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and on the Finish Well Podcast.
Show Notes:
Kerry: Hey everyone, Kerry Beck here with Life Skills Leadership Summit where we are going to be talking about an extremely important topic that is tools of learning because I think all of you want your kids to be able to learn as an adult and not be dependent on a teacher or on you. And that's what Meredith Curtis is here to talk to us about. So, welcome Meredith. Thanks for being here.
Meredith: Oh, thank you for having me. I'm really excited about this year's conference and I love this topic we're talking about. I either call it tools of learning or the seven Rs and they're just so helpful in staying focused and making the majors the majors and the minors the minors.
Kerry: That's a great way to put it. We're going to dive into her seven Rs and how it can apply to your homeschool. But before we do that, could you just tell our listeners a little bit about you?
Meredith: Yes, I would love to. So, my name is Meredith Curtis and I am a pastor's wife. I'm the mother of five homeschool graduates and I have eight grandchildren that are perfect angels and I feed them too much sugar.
I love spending time with my grandchildren. I love to travel. I love to read. I love Jesus. That's probably the most important thing. And I'm a writer and a speaker.
Kerry, I love creating curriculum. I love teaching. I love creating curriculum. I love writing Bible studies, studying the Bible. Probably one of my favorite things is I wrote a curriculum called Who Done It? It's my most popular book, and it basically is a high school English class that teaches teens how to write their own cozy mystery.
And I actually started writing a cozy mystery series. I have three books in it so far—Tea Time Trouble, Pumpkin Patch Peril, and Old-Fashioned Christmas Murder.
Kerry: Okay, y'all. She has two interviews and we've talked about the cozy mysteries in the last one. So, y'all go listen to that. But I was just fascinated. I knew she taught the kids, but now she's written three of her own mystery books. And so, I just think that is so exciting as well. Plus, her husband, does he have four books out now?
Meredith: He does. Well, he actually has a fifth book that's not fiction. It's called Forging Godly Men, and it's about mentoring godly men.
Kerry: The other ones are novels. So he's got the four novels plus the one on raising our boys to be godly men. Today we're going to talk about writing, but let's back up. I know you either call it the tools of learning or the seven Rs. How did you discover these tools of learning?
How the 7 Rs Were Born from Crisis
Meredith: Okay. So, I was in my early 40s and I had a four-year-old, five-year-old, six-year-old. My oldest was already graduating from high school, starting college. And so I had this wide range of five children.
And my parents got really sick, Kerry. They were so sick and they live four hours away. So I was constantly taking a trip down to South Florida. I live in Central Florida and I would drive that 4 hours and stay with them a few days and then come home.
I had to leave one of the older kids in charge of one or two of the younger ones and bring another older one with me with the younger one. And it was just very challenging. And of course, I was heartbroken because my parents were very sick.
So during that time, I had to just ask the Lord, "What is the most important thing for my kids to get done?" Because they're going to be doing school apart from me. And the other one, we're going to be in the hospital or we're going to be in doctor's offices or we're going to be taking care of my parents. And I need to be able to at a glance know that they're getting it. So I really need help, Lord.
And that is, you know, this is kind of birthed from that. You think about the three Rs, reading, writing, arithmetic. So, this is kind of what I felt like I discovered as a homeschool mom, that these were the tools of learning, the majors, and that if some of the other stuff fell by the wayside, these tools that I kept focusing on were going to allow them to learn anything at all that they needed.
It was a really sad season in my life and my mom ended up passing away. My father moved close to us and then two years later he passed away. So it was a very hard season but out of that the Lord taught me not just life lessons but homeschooling lessons. God always brings good things out of very sad things.
Kerry: I'm so sorry for your loss. And yet I see it because you got to take care of the majors and let go of things. And there are seasons in homeschooling, seasons in our lives that you may not go to every activity or every art lesson or whatever. You've got to just take care of the majors.
Relationships: The Foundation of Everything
Kerry: I know that you and I, there's one thing in particular even beyond academics and that's relationships. So why would you say relationships are so foundational to everything else?
Meredith: Well, I think that life is basically number one thing relationship. God says he wants to have a relationship with us. In Revelation, he stands at the door and knocks and if anyone hears his voice, he comes in and eats with them. And you only eat with people you like. You know what I mean? Like that's relationship.
So I think we have a relational God. He created people to be relational. And learning, I think when learning is birthed out of strong relationships, it is so different because I love Jesus. So I want to learn because I want to glorify him. I want to know what did he create and how does things work.
When I became a Christian at 16, learning was a whole new thing for me. It just fascinated me. What is God doing in history? What is he doing here? And so I think when relationships are strong, that's the vertical relationship, but my relationship with my children, if my children know how much I love them, how much I respect them, how much I want their life to be blessed and fulfilled, they're going to be motivated to learn, not just for me, but with me.
I think we learn as a family. I didn't know everything when I started homeschooling. I loved learning along the way. And every time we went back through US geography, I learned more.
In contrast to that, when relationships are bad and there's yelling, there's always going to be fighting in a home, especially if you have more than one child. But how you resolve it can be resolved in a way that they can be closer afterward.
But if there is constant bickering, if your children don't feel like you're for them, if you don't have a high opinion of your children, you're frustrated with them, learning doesn't really take place well. They might be learning, but so often in those situations, I see kids memorizing facts for a test, but they don't enjoy learning.
I have just had some of my middle school classes that I teach online. These kids, they're not shy yet, you know, like some of the high schoolers are shy, but they're just—I love learning. And I think they have a family, a home that's happy, that they feel loved by their family and it always bears it out when they talk about their parents, they talk about their siblings, it's positive.
So, I think relationships set the atmosphere, but also all the studies I've ever read, the most confident people know that they're loved. And when our children know that they're loved, it gives them a confidence that they can learn anything.
Kerry: So good. And really, relationships are what's going to last forever and ever. I mean, even beyond this earth. And so we want to build those good relationships.
Plus sometimes, you know, later in life, your kids, their siblings, they may need their siblings to be there for them. And we need to build that relationship and that security so that when they take that risk to go learn something that they're not really sure if they know how to go learn it, then they still feel safe in doing that.
The Seven Rs Explained
Kerry: I know you've got these seven Rs. Can you just sort of rattle them off real quickly for us so people sort of have an understanding of what we're talking about?
Meredith: Okay. So it would be relationships, reading, rhetoric—it's really communication and thinking—and then writing, research, arithmetic, and right living.
Kerry: We're going to dive into some of these. And you mentioned rhetoric and that's a term that's sometimes thrown around. I believe that a couple hundred years ago, everyone really understood that because it was just part of education. And in the 20th century, we have really gotten away from that term. So tell us just a little bit about what that is and why that would be a tool of learning for our kids.
Rhetoric: Learning to Think and Communicate
Meredith: Okay. So rhetoric is basically communicating in a way to inform or persuade. Cicero wrote about rhetoric, Aristotle wrote about rhetoric and people still read those. They're not really difficult reading, but some high school kids would enjoy reading those two men. Aristotle was Greek, Cicero was Roman.
And it's basically being able to think through things and being able to communicate.
So it would cover everything from greeting people and having casual conversations with them, saying, "Oh, Kerry, how are you today?" things like that. And then it would go all the way to watching the news and saying, "Okay, is this logical? Does this make sense? Does this jive with this over here?"
And then being able to communicate in conversations, even as far as speaking, eventually reading aloud, all those things to communicate clearly and concisely and graciously.
We have some really dynamic speakers in our day, Kerry, that are so ungracious. And sometimes I listen, I'm like, I agree with everything you say, but I wish you would be nicer or you wouldn't use bad language. And so, all of that is involved in rhetoric—the thinking and then what we allow to come through our mouth.
Kerry: That is so good. And we need to teach our kids how to communicate instead of just regurgitate a bunch of facts which tends to be sort of our school system. And I could go off and tell y'all stories but we're not going to.
Reading: From Struggle to Success
Kerry: I sort of jumped straight to rhetoric and I overlooked reading. Because you sort of have to be able to read. I mean, you can communicate like this, but we need to be able to read to then be able to make decisions and think through and think critically to then communicate. So, can you tell us just a little bit about raising our kids to be able to read and not hate it, maybe actually enjoy it a little bit?
Meredith: Yes. Yes. And so, I mean, I could do a whole workshop on this, so I'm going to be really quick, but basically, teach your kids to read. I taught with phonics. I thought it was very simple. But teach them to read and then once they can read, give them everything possible that they can read that's easy and makes them feel successful.
In everything when you're homeschooling, you want to lead children from success to success to success, a challenge, then more success, success, success, so that they're mostly feeling confident and then sometimes challenged.
And so with reading, they read all these easy readers and then you start introducing classic literature like Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little and then you just keep going with classic literature.
The reason I say classic literature is because a lot of the writing even for adults in our culture is at about a third grade level if you went a hundred years ago. So, if we want our children to value freedom, they're going to have to read things by John Locke. They're going to have to read things by Edmund Burke, and they're going to need to be able to read at a stronger level.
So, when you keep giving children classic books, the stories are amazing. It's going to build their vocabulary. It's going to help their reading, and they're eventually going to be interested. They hear about a topic, they'll think, "Oh, I'll pick up that book and read it."
The way I really made sure that my children enjoyed reading, that was my goal for them to enjoy reading. So I never assigned books until they were in high school.
What I did is I had a bookshelf and it had about six shelves and I filled it. They could read anything they wanted from that bookshelf and they just had to tell me the book they read and I would write it down and I would say did you like it or who was your favorite character or what was your favorite thing about it.
I never had them—I taught them how to write a book report and they wrote like two or three but that wasn't my goal because I wanted them to love to read and I wanted them to meet friends in make-believe places, in real places and say I want to go back, I want to read that again. So that was my goal.
My son was my hardest and he just hated to read and he loved math but he didn't like reading. And so I remember he got saved in like middle school and he came to me. He's like, "Mom, I didn't read any of those books I told you that I read." And so this summer I'm going to read them all because now I want to live for God.
But in high school, by the time he graduated from high school, his favorite book was The Count of Monte Cristo, which is like a thousand-page book. So eventually he learned to read. I never gave up on him. But I always tried to find things that he would like, series that he would like. He loved biographies and I got him a lot of biographies. I got him like all these war books about, you know, this bomber, this plane.
My goal the whole time was I want my children to love to read and to be able to read anything they want.
And I just want to add this. If you have a child with a learning disability, don't just limit them to listening to audio books for the rest of their life. Maybe they need to listen to every other book audio because the reading assignments are too much. But if they're going to do audio, have them read along with the book and follow with the book because that is going to help them to become a stronger reader.
There's also a lot of tools for kids with learning disabilities. Don't give up on reading. I've met like 11th graders and they're like, "I don't read. I just listen to audiobooks" and I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to challenge you to read."
I had one student like that. And he said, "Okay, I'm going to read this book." And we were reading Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford. He didn't get the modern translation. He got the one from the 1600s.
And I said, "Honey, this was the worst book that you will ever read in your life. And if you got through that, you can read anything." And he loved to read after that, but his mom had told him he couldn't. He had a learning disability. And so he had a lot of drive to be able to read like the other kids in our homeschool co-op.
I think reading opens the door. You have to read emails, you have to read texts, but reading is just such an open door to adventure. So, I love reading. I'm a very big fan. My parents were both big fans of reading, too.
Kerry: Well, and I think your story plays out. I know for me, you've got to get if you have a child that doesn't like to read, continue to search for something of their interest. And you just have to be patient and give them grace. Give yourself grace.
My son did not—I mean he could read, he could read a book and he would do it but did he enjoy it? No. And now he's 31 years old and once he got out of college, he loves to read. We exchange titles but like that was 15 years of time just waiting and you're thinking oh next month they're going to love to read.
Look, God takes time to work with me so be patient and give yourself years. For my son, it was 12 years.
Kerry: And we're like, okay, our kids are grown. Take it from someone that's already been there, not someone that's in the same level as you are.
Writing: From Speaking to the Page
Kerry: So we have reading, we've got rhetoric. Then the next thing, what do you see as any kind of secret to writing effectively?
Meredith: Well, I think if you can communicate an idea, then it's easier to write it. So if you can speak, it's easier to write.
So what I would often do with my children is—number one, if I was asking them to write a paragraph, we would read paragraphs together. See how this is a topic sentence and how these sentences—or let's read this essay. This is so interesting.
First of all, I think for writing, you have to be able to read the kind of writing that you're going to write. Children just don't naturally know how to write an essay. And if you give them the directions, but you don't give them an example, they still don't know what to do.
I would always have my children talk to me. Tell me what you want to write about. And then we would just talk and oh that's a great idea. And you know, kind of helping them think through. I had a pattern for teaching writing.
I spent a couple of years on sentences because a good sentence makes or breaks a paper. And I still, you know, I teach high school kids and I have some of them who can't write good sentences. So we spent a lot of time writing sentences.
First they were so young they would dictate to me and I would write it and then soon they could write their own and then we wrote paragraphs and we wrote all kinds of different paragraphs and we always enclosed our writing in a letter to grandparents because that teaches children early on.
Okay, so you're writing this paragraph for grandma, then you're going to write it differently than this paragraph that you're writing for Aunt Julie because she's interested in horses whereas grandma is interested in books and knitting. It teaches them to think in terms of an audience which is really important when you write.
So then from paragraphs we would actually move to reports, essays and things like that in middle school. So we did a lot of basic writing and then whenever they wanted to write stories, I'd say, "Oh yeah, write the story." And if they couldn't write well, they could dictate to me and I would type it on the computer.
Then in high school, we did all the analyzing literature, writing a research paper. We wrote a novel one year. And fiction is very different than writing non-fiction. So I think my kids wrote every kind of essay, every kind of report. But I tried to make it really fun.
And one thing I also did in high school was I'd say, "Okay, here's a paper from two years ago. I'd like you to turn it into a blog post." And they really enjoyed that. But blogging is a completely different kind of writing than writing an essay.
We always shared our writing with other people because I wanted them to have in their mind an audience. Whenever I teach homeschool co-op classes, I always have the kids read their papers out loud and that allows them to have an audience.
So I say when you're writing this paper, look around the room. This is your audience and you're going to read it out loud to them and you want to write something they'll enjoy. So when I grade their writing papers, I always look for readability. Is it enjoyable to read? Is it written for the audience?
And three of my children went into writing. So one became an editor at a magazine and she writes—now she has her own business. She writes. My other daughter taught writing and literature at the local university and now she's a stay-at-home mom. And my youngest daughter has written a screenplay and short stories and stuff like that.
Now my daughter Juliana who works for Verizon says she hates writing but she's actually a very good writer. She just doesn't like it.
Kerry: That is so good. You know you said something that I know we did a lot in the beginning years. It is easier for kids to speak sentences than to write their first few sentences. So if they speak it as a sentence, I would type up—Hunter would be talking to me about snakes or whatever we read about and we would type it, then the next day he would copy it or edit it.
The other thing is giving your kids a reason to write and getting a grade is not a real life reason to write. You've got to have an audience. And if there's an audience, that alone can motivate some kids to actually do a better job because they feel like they're writing to a person. And if you're just writing for a grade, that's sort of dull sometimes.
Arithmetic: Consistency and Mastery
Kerry: We've got writing, then we have arithmetic. And I know there's some moms that have some fear. I was a math minor and by the time my kids got in high school I was like what did I learn in my math minor years? I loved math in high school but by then I didn't really care for math as much. So what kind of tips can you give them because we do need our kids to be able to use math skills?
Meredith: I think my number one tip for math would be do math every day and put a time limit on it so it doesn't feel like, oh my goodness, I'm going to be here two hours to finish this lesson. But I think consistency is the most important thing with math.
And be confident. Don't be afraid to hire a tutor for math or to put your kids in a co-op class for math because if mom hates math then it's hard for kids to like math. And I have a friend named Leanne and she did so much tutoring in our church for co-op kids because their moms just hated math.
I was like you—when my son took calculus I said honey, no idea. I don't know. But so I would say make sure that they're scoring 90% or higher on their tests and they know why they got the problems wrong.
And here's why. The early years they learn so many foundational things. And a lot of times when I'm helping kids who have trouble with pre-algebra, with algebra, with algebra 2 or geometry, it goes all the way back to fractions and decimals and multiplying and dividing.
One child was really struggling with math. So I just repeated a grade. I just repeated a whole grade in a different curriculum. And she ended up joining this engineering club called Math Counts in middle school and went all the way to state. So she wasn't dumb. She just needed more repetition.
I hear people say, "Well, why should they do repetition?" Well, I would say that math is learning to get the problems right over and over and over again until you're solid.
I always started with math because I feel like it kind of gets all the neurons charged and working—like sort of the workout for the brain. But again, I would just do it every day. It's better to do a half hour of math every day than do like a slug session for three hours because you're behind.
If kids get behind in math, they get behind in math and that means we do some math over the summer. That was kind of how I looked at it. But I was a real stickler with math and as a result the kids did well with math. But it wasn't necessarily anyone's favorite except for Jimmy my son.
Kerry: Well you know I think you hit on another good point—mastery. I was a public school teacher and we did have a minimum but nowadays it didn't matter if you know it or not. You just keep moving those kids through the school. What's the point?
If those kids do not understand single-digit division, they're not going to understand long division. So, work on it. And, you know, you can find some fun activities to make it all work. There's lots of hands-on. I do believe mastery in math because it is sequential and it keeps building on it like you said with geometry.
Meredith: That's a good point. Math is one of the few things that is sequential. Everything else you could learn, you know, American Revolution and then ancient history. It doesn't matter. But math is sequential. And so if they don't learn the basics, they're always going to struggle.
Research: Beyond "Hey Google"
Kerry: Okay. So after arithmetic, next we have got research. So how is that a tool? How would you encourage moms?
Meredith: Okay. Well, I think right now if you say research, people just look things up on Google.
Kerry: I know that's true. Or you know what? My grandkids wouldn't look it on Google. I'm not going to do it because I've got a little Google machine. They just go, "Hey, Google." And then they'd ask whatever that question is and let it speak to them and they don't even have to read it. They'll just listen.
Meredith: I always think, what if an enemy of the US just shut down our internet for a week? It would be like, oh my goodness.
But I think it's important for kids to know how to find things in books, like how to read a textbook to find the table of contents and how to go find the subject you're looking for. How to use directories, how to use an atlas, how to use maps. They could use Google Maps, but how did they find stuff on Google Maps?
And then just being able to go to different kinds of research books like a dictionary, a thesaurus, an encyclopedia, and then actually to research—to look things up and to find different books about it and research a topic and especially in research to read about opposing viewpoints.
I think that's very important to read about this viewpoint and this viewpoint that are completely polar opposites. I think that's an important part of research because there's been a main point in our school system for years and it's been like almost brainwashing kids but we don't want to do the same thing.
We want to make sure that our children know both sides of the issue and then where we stand and why we stand where we stand logically, not just based on emotion.
I think that's an important part of research. It kind of ties in with rhetoric. Also everything is research from looking up a recipe and finding the best recipe to researching for a research paper.
And so, you know, one of the things about research is trying out different things until you find what's best. Trying out different exercises till you find the one that works the best or you enjoy the most. So, research is really a lifelong thing.
Kerry: Even if you are saying, "Hey, Google."
Meredith: Yes. They're like, "Oh, Gigi, that's okay. We'll go find—here. Come here." And they take me over to their little machine and ask it a question. Sometimes they understand, the girls, sometimes they don't.
Kerry: That is so good. And I like that idea of research is all different things. It's not just writing a research paper. My kids actually every year in high school had to write one research paper. And we just really—the requirements in ninth grade were different than the 12th grade because hopefully they were growing in their research skills as well. And they do have to write so many research papers in college. So that was probably really helpful for them.
Now we got AI. So y'all go listen to the AI talks that we have in this summit because we're going to show you—no, you can't just go get AI to write your research paper. So we got a few little speakers on that. Y'all probably need to go listen.
Meredith: Oh, I need to listen to it because someone mentioned it and I was like, "My children in my classes would never use AI."
Right Living: The Closing Bookend
Kerry: The last one we started with relationships, which I think is super important. We got a lot of academic things. Right living—and that's the last one. But I don't think it's the least. So, tell us a little bit about that and why you put that there.
Meredith: Well, I put it last because it's kind of a sandwich of the academics. Relationship and then right living because right living is weaving through everything.
And you teach children to be polite, to be obedient, to work hard, not just with their chores, but with their schoolwork. And so it just makes sense.
And also there's something about living right even before children give their hearts to Christ. When you live the right way in a way that's moral, you feel better. You don't have like a lot of guilt. You don't have a lot of shame because you've done the right thing. You've worked hard. You've done what you need to do.
So, I feel like it's a confidence booster as well to have right living be part of a focus, but it makes teaching easier when you're focused on training children to have manners, to have virtue. It makes it easier to get school done because it's just part of their character to—okay, this is kind of my job. I'm going to do it well.
Kerry: That's so good. And I was thinking I didn't mean to steal your thunder by saying what I said, but relationships, right living—that's the most important. And I got the academics in the middle.
Meredith: Exactly. Yeah. It's like a sandwich. And so it's a reminder—I think when you start with right living, you can become legalistic, you can become harsh. But if you start with relationships and sandwich it with right living, I think it helps you have a really good balance between the two.
The 7 Rs Resource
Kerry: That is so good. Hey, I know you've got a really good resource about these seven Rs that could help our homeschoolers. Could you tell people a little bit about that?
Meredith: So, this is called The Seven Rs of Homeschooling. And you can tell all my books have a little Florida flair. A lot of them do. But it goes through each of the seven Rs I mentioned—how to teach them, practical resources.
It was again birthed out of that season where it was a necessity for me to major on the majors and minor on the minors. And so it's not like oh this is my theory from my Ivy League tower but this is where we had to live. And it really helped me kind of refocus.
And it ended up putting writing assignments and speaking, conversational—that's how we ended up putting book clubs in our literature classes and history classes because I found out how important conversation was. We just would have conversations all the way down to my parents' house.
So I really recommend The Seven Rs. It's an easy read and it goes through each one and how it's a benefit and how you can in practical ways—it talks about if you have some issues with reading with your kids and how to go step by step.
It's written for elementary, middle, and high school. So, you can pick it up when they're still in high school and just sort of give an overview of your children. If you pull your kids out of high school, out of a public school, and you bring them home, one of the things you want to do is you want to kind of evaluate where they're at in these—not with a test, but with just observing what are they able to do, what are they confident in, what do they still need more help. So, this is another good tool for that.
Kerry: That is awesome. So, wherever you're listening to this, look below and we will have a link that you can click on and go grab a copy of this excellent resource because I mean this will give you practical tips to be able to implement these seven Rs and evaluate where your kids are.
Meredith, thank you so much for being here. I am going to put a little note on there saying I'm sorry for the darkness on parts of the video, but I know we were in the late of the day and the sun's going down and we couldn't get the light to work. But you know what? The content here is excellent. So, thank y'all for just listening as well. And thank you for being here, Meredith. I appreciate it.
Meredith: Thank you for having me. I always love being here. Thank you.
Kerry: All right. And I'm Kerry Beck with Life Skills Leadership Summit. We'll talk to you next time.
Ready to major on the majors in your homeschool? Grab Meredith Curtis's book The 7 Rs of Homeschooling and discover practical, battle-tested strategies for raising lifelong learners. Visit lifeskillsleadershipsummit.com for the for a free Basic Pass to this year's summit and build confidence in teaching life skills and leadership!

Peter denied Jesus three times, rebuked the Son of God, and walked away weeping bitterly. Yet God used him to start the New Testament Church and lead 3,000 people to salvation. If you've ever felt disqualified by your failures, shame, or mistakes, this powerful message will transform how you see yourself and your calling as a leader.
In this episode, you'll discover:
✅ Why Peter's biggest failures uniquely qualified him to lead the early church with compassion and understanding
✅ The common lies Christian moms believe (I'm not doing enough, my kids won't turn out okay, I'm all alone) and the biblical truths that replace them
✅ How to identify the enemy's attacks in your own thought life and respond with God's truth instead
✅ Why accepting God's forgiveness—and forgiving yourself—is essential to stepping into your leadership calling
✅ The surprising truth about rest, busyness, and why filling every moment doesn't make you enough for God
Ready to replace lies with truth? Leaders aren't born perfect—they're made through failure, forgiveness, and faith. Discover your calling today.
Resources Mentioned:
Get your FREE Basic Pass to Life Skills Leadership Summit 2026 to give you confidence that your kids will be ready for adult life
Living Fearless by Jamie Winship - Finding your identity and calling in God, identifying lies you believe, and replacing them with truth
Unbound - Fighting Human Trafficking - Learn more about this important ministry and how to keep your students safe
Show Notes:
Hey everyone, Kerry Beck here with Life Skills Leadership Summit. Oh my goodness, it is finally here. It is Sunday night, five o'clock. We are going to have an awesome week.
We get such great response from the Life Skills Leadership Summit. And I think one reason we have many homeschoolers here, but this is not just homeschooling, how to homeschool or homeschool curriculum. This has something that has some purpose and intention and that is to raise our kids to be ready for adult life, to raise our kids to walk in Jesus and lead and influence for Jesus.
We have some people that homeschool, some people that don't. I would say most people do. But tonight, what I want to do is do a few things.
Before I tell you this, I want to introduce my friend Meredith Curtis. She is our prayer coordinator. Let me tell you, we need a lot of prayer for this. I just got home from Dallas. My granddaughter, who's not even two months old, was dedicated. So I drove in and I just bounced right into this.
I was praying on the way over here from Dallas. It's a three-hour drive just that y'all would be blessed. I really hope that God speaks through you. It may not be tonight, but I pray that he speaks to you sometime during the week, gives you encouragement, gives you motivation, helps you to finish strong, gives you wisdom in what you're doing, whether you're homeschooling or whether you're just raising your kids to follow God.
What Is Leadership?
Tonight is our Sunday kickoff. I am going to begin a series on Peter—Peter's leadership journey from failure to faith. And we're going to talk about the failures tonight. And we will expand it through the week.
Let me tell you, sometimes I think Peter a leader. And we'll talk about that because you're like he denied Jesus. How could you be a leader? And yet God works so many things through him. So I'm super excited about that series.
Before we get started, I would love for you to put something in the chat and tell me what is a leader. Let me just talk to you a little bit about a man named John Maxwell. He is a guru in leadership. And here's what he says: Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less.
Think about that. Leadership is influence. If you are being salt and light as Jesus commanded, then you have begun to obey God's call to leadership. It is influence.
Too often we think my kid's not going to be president of the United States or CEO. But almost all of our kids will lead their families. They will be husbands and wives. They will have sons and daughters that they will need to lead. And so that is what leadership is.
Another quote from John Maxwell is this: Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. How do you gain influence from people? You invest in them. How do you invest in them? It starts with giving them time.
Peter: From Bold Declaration to Immediate Failure
We are going to look at Peter today. Yes, we're going to look more at his failures, but then we're going to move forward and look at the way that he influenced people. Again, I said 3,000 people trusted Jesus as their savior when he gave his first sermon.
When we look at Peter and we look at Mark 8, Jesus and his disciples left Galilee and went up to the villages near Caesarea Philippi. As they were walking along, he asked, "Who do people say that I am?" Well, they replied, "Some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say you are one of the other prophets."
Then he asked them, "Who do you say I am?" Peter replied, "You are the Messiah. You are the son of God." He gives this great answer. He tells them truth. Peter grasps and he boldly declares exactly who Jesus is. Jesus commends them for that.
But then immediately after that, Jesus starts talking. Jesus began to tell them that the son of man must suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elders, the leading priests and the teachers of religious law, that he would be killed. But three days later he would rise from the dead.
As he talked about this openly with his disciples, Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. He just said he's the son of God. And then he's like, "Oh, let me reprimand you. Let me tell God what's going on."
Jesus turned around and looked at his disciples and he reprimanded Peter, "Get behind me, Satan. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God's."
The Lies We Believe
In the same conversation, Peter is praising him. And then the enemy is saying, "Oh, go tell Jesus this, that you need to rebuke him." Those are lies from the enemy. Peter makes a serious error in judgment. And Jesus corrects him.
Can you relate? I can. I will tell you my personal story. For years, I've been doing this. I will be praying in the morning. I love to prayer walk. And I am praying for our family. And I'm praying to cling to Jesus, to walk in righteousness.
And by the afternoon, I'm sinning and doing something that I shouldn't. I pray every morning that we will abide in Christ and cling to the vine and Jesus' fruit will pour out of us. That we will put on the armor of God, that we will love. And I go through all 1 Corinthians 13, and the other one is that we will forgive because God forgave us.
And then something happens in the middle of my day and then all of a sudden I'm sinning again and I am not trusting God. And that's sort of what Peter did. God exposes that I have wrong thoughts that need to be replaced with truth.
What are some of the lies that you believe? Peter believed a lie. He believed that he needed to tell Jesus that is wrong. Don't say you're going to die and raise up in three days.
One of the things I heard several years ago is that I need to yield my right to be right. I need to be humble. I need to yield my right to be right. I have begun praying that for my family mostly and then all of a sudden I was like Kerry, you're not praying this for yourself very much. You are not always the right person.
I lead the leaders at our Bible study at church. I had one leader say, "Hey, before you divide into groups, could you just give me a call?" So I did. And she gave me some concerns, but she goes, "But Kerry, if you need to do this the way y'all have it planned, that's fine. Maybe God's teaching me."
That was humility. She was admitting that maybe I don't have the right idea about this. I'm just going to share it with you.
Some of you might be thinking, I'm not doing enough. And yet, God says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And he has made you exactly like you are because you are who you need to be for your kids.
I'm not a good mom. Oh, but our identity is in Jesus, not in being a good mom. And again, he has given you everything for life and righteousness.
All other moms are homeschooling better than me. That's not true.
I don't have time to spend with God. Oh, but if you have time for an hour of social media, maybe you do have time to be with God.
I need to fill every moment of my day so I can be enough for God. I want to make sure when I get to heaven, I've done enough. No, that's a works mentality. We need to rely on our faith and grace from Jesus.
I don't have what it takes for my kids to grow up and follow God well or to homeschool. Actually, that's not true. God has given you everything you need for your children. He may not have given you everything you need to homeschool the people down the street. But he made you like you are and your kids like you are. And he supplies all your needs in Christ Jesus.
God calls us to a time of quiet. He calls us to rest in him. And we don't need to fill every second of the day with activity. I personally believe we need rest. We need sleep, but we need to rest in God to trust, but we also need to rest. We need to be quiet.
I'm all alone. That may be the lie that you're listening. You know what? First of all, you're not alone. You can get support. You can get support in our community group.
Speaking Truth Over Ourselves
Several years ago, I was driving home from Dallas and that week I actually sat down and wrote out some truths for me to recite to myself to pour into my soul. So I'm going to read these to you.
Like Jesus, I am chosen by God to be holy. I am chosen by God for great honor. I trust in Jesus. Therefore, I am not put to shame. God loves me and always takes care of me.
I am precious to God because he bought me with his son's blood. I am a daughter of the king, a princess. I live in the light, shining for Jesus all day long.
I control my thoughts, my words, my food, my drink. I receive God's mercy and grace. So I give grace, mercy, and forgiveness to others.
I leave my case in the hands of God who always judges fairly. I speak with pure and reverent behavior and a quiet and gentle spirit.
I wait quietly on God. I am patient. I am kind. I always forgive. I forget offenses against me.
The Holy Spirit renews my mind, my attitudes every day. God never leaves me, abandons me, or fails me. I listen well. I trust in God to fight my battles. He wins my battles.
The one about I listen well, I realized I was interrupting my son on a regular basis. I was like, I changed that. That's a lie to interrupt people. And so I added that.
Those are just some truths and most of them are very biblically based that I have to say to myself. Peter needed truth to replace the lies that he was believing.
Peter's Greatest Failure: Denying Jesus
Let's talk about the biggest thing, the most obvious thing Peter did. He denied Jesus three times.
They arrested him and led him to the high priest's home. And Peter followed from a distance. The guards lit a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat around it. And Peter joined them there.
A servant girl noticed him in the firelight and began staring at him. "This man was one of Jesus's followers." But Peter denied it. "Woman, I don't even know him."
After a while, someone else looked at him and said, "He must be one of them." Peter says, "No, man. I'm not."
About an hour later, someone else insisted, "This must be one of them because he is a Galilean." But Peter said, "Man, I don't know what you're talking about."
And immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. At that moment, the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Suddenly, the Lord's words flashed through Peter's mind. "Before the rooster crows tomorrow morning, you will deny me three times."
And Peter left the courtyard weeping bitterly.
There was a time he was like, "Deny you? I would never deny you." And yet he didn't think he would, just like we don't think we're going to deny him, but he did. Can you imagine the shame and the guilt that he was walking with? He walks away weeping bitterly.
I did not do this in my younger years or when my kids were home, but I actually truly feel badly about my sins. And I have wept over them. Some of the things that I will say, some of the things that I will do, and even some of the things that I think.
If I were Peter and I denied Jesus three times, I would feel shame and guilt. Shame is a powerful thing. It can just bury us. And we don't want that to happen. And we need to get over that.
God's Bigger Plans for Peter
We do that by accepting God's forgiveness. Most people that live in shame cannot truly believe that God will forgive them. There are times I have walked in shame. And yet if I pray in the morning and I'm sinning in the afternoon, I have to realize God forgives me and I just need to move on and say, "Okay, God, you are faithful. You are forgiving. I'm going to accept that and I'm going to move on because you have greater things for me. You want me to live a life of influence and a life of leadership."
God had bigger plans for Peter. He used his sin to actually grow him, eventually to lead the New Testament church.
Don't you think that as Peter was leading all these people, he could relate to man's shortcomings? He was dealing with people that were maybe walking in shame themselves. And he could understand that.
Just like Paul, Paul persecuted the church. I mean like kill people because they trusted Jesus. And God uses those experiences for us to relate. In second Corinthians 1, God talks about our sufferings and our trials and he takes us through those things so one, we can grow closer to him, but also so we can encourage others that are walking through something similar as well.
Leaders will make mistakes. Peter did. I do. You will, and your kids will. And we need to all accept God's forgiveness. We need to forgive ourselves or teach our kids to accept God's forgiveness and forgive ourselves and forgive those around us, but also learn from our mistakes.
Finding Your Calling
The biggest thing I really want you to think about is we make mistakes. God forgives. Are we going to learn from that? But God has a calling for Peter. He has a calling for Peter to lead the New Testament church. He has a calling for you and he has a calling for your children.
More than likely if you're here, God's calling is to homeschool your kids, to raise them to influence and to follow Jesus. But your children may have a different calling than you.
Maybe your child is called to go be a missionary in Africa. We had some friends. I could not imagine now as a parent letting your kids go off to Africa or South America or wherever to be a missionary. And yet God calls us to do things like that.
We need to look at our kids as they are growing up and pray for them and help them discern what God's calling for their life is. And we want to raise them to be a leader.
What's a leader? It's an influencer. Peter did influence others. He started as a fisherman, but he turned into a fisher of men. 3,000 people were saved on the day of Pentecost.
That is a great calling. God took his failures, put them into faith, and then continues to use them.
Ready to dive deeper into raising leaders who influence for Jesus? Join us at the Life Skills Leadership Summit where we equip parents to raise kids with purpose, intention, and eternal impact. Visit lifeskillsleadershipsummit.com to learn more!

What do you do when you're walking with God but your spouse isn't? Erin Cox shares her powerful testimony of marriage restoration that started in a living room encounter with Jesus and led to a complete transformation of her family.
✅ Why "Christianese" was actually pushing her atheist husband further away
✅The 1 book that changed how she loved her unbelieving spouse
✅ How 1 Peter 3 became her daily prayer strategy
✅The moment the Holy Spirit told her exactly what to say after years of silence
✅ Why God can save anyone—even in a living room with no one else around
Ready to discover hope for your marriage?
Grab the resources mentioned in this episode below!
Resources Mentioned
Get your FREE Basic Pass to Life Skills Leadership Summit 2026 to give you confidence that your kids will be ready for adult life: https://HowToHomeschoolMyChild.com/lsls26
I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, by Norman Geisler
Sacred Influence, by Gary Thomas
Erin Cox is a seasoned homeschooling mom of four, ranging from elementary age to young adult. Alongside her husband Danny, she serves over 100,000 homeschool families through publishing Charlotte Mason and Classical education curricula, all from their homestead in central Alabama. When Erin isn’t wrangling sheep, Australian shepherds, two rambunctious boys, or her energetic grandbaby, she enjoys audiobooks, podcasts, and the occasional quiet moment with embroidery.
Connect with her at ShopGentleClassical.com and LifeAbundantlyBlog.com. You can find her on Instagram and Facebook.