The Mother and her Family's Legacy

For years, my husband and I made half-baked decisions based on best case scenarios and short-term knowledge. We thought we knew what we were doing each time we moved from place to place, switched jobs, and completely overhauled our lifestyle. When we went to graduate school at the same time and took out student loans to cover it, we didn’t feel concerned because in a few short years we’d have two high-paying incomes. No big deal, right?

I was a few weeks into a summer internship at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston when I found out I was pregnant with our first. My husband was back home in Oklahoma working and taking summer classes. I was halfway through my degree and also teaching social studies for a local private high school.

What we thought we knew as the plan — dual income, pay debt off quickly — turned into moving cross-country for my husband’s first speech pathology job (harder to get than we anticipated and none locally where we lived), and I became a stay at home mom with our 6 week old daughter.

That was 15 years ago, and although life has continued to throw us curveballs and 3 more children, it’s also led me to study and consider the role of the mother in a family’s legacy. But before we get there, let’s actually talk about what is a fruitful family legacy.

Probably like you, I love reading, researching, and considering the intersection of various ideas. Over the years I’ve really asked myself: what makes for a good family life?

The heart of a strong family life is being anchored in timeless values that carry your family from one generation to the next. It’s letting yourself be guided by your faith and trusting that God has a unique plan for YOUR family then taking steady daily action to build it out.

For many years we made decisions without consulting God, letting the whims of our emotions, and especially our fears, bounce us around. Sure, at the time we would’ve told you they were thoughtful decisions, but in hindsight we can see the fruit never appeared.

Sometimes fruit — the visible presence of your wise family decision making — takes a long time to appear. Those seeds you planted years ago are slowly germinating and pushing through the soil.

Sometimes the fruit never has a chance to grow because it wasn’t watered and tended properly. You abandoned it too quickly.

Sometimes it is simply the wrong fruit to plant at all.

We had many years of planting the wrong fruit or abandoning it, uprooting, replanting, and learning this lesson over and over.

Can you relate?

Have your adult years gone how you hoped or imagined?

If so, you’re not alone.

I do believe that — with God’s help — we can plant fruit that will leave a legacy for our children’s children. Sometimes that looks like a literal inheritance and sometimes it’s the lessons we’ve learned the hard way. Perhaps the goal is both, to create a steady foundation for future generations of our family line, by leaving both a financial and spiritual inheritance.

In 2022, my husband and I realized we radically needed to change our path, but we knew we couldn’t do it alone. Our own self-sufficiency was crumbling as we faced the loss of his father, career changes, the ups and downs of my business, and the ache of spiritual hollowness.

I think God saw us in our weakness and scooped us up, but the path out was not easy. That’s a story for another day, but what changed everything for us was to let God lead us, even when it was hard to give up control.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3: 5-6

I return to these verses over and over as a reminder that even when I don’t understand, or think I know better, that ultimately I can trust God with our family’s story. It’s a source of peace knowing I don’t have to figure everything out.

Our life has so dramatically changed, in the best ways, but from 2022-2025 it was a season of pain, waiting, and hardship. It truly tested our faith and led us to deeper trust as we righted our family ship and did a 180.

This season of tilling the soil and replanting has also changed my perspective on my own role in our home and how I get to help shape our family’s future.

After 3 long years, my husband was offered his dream job on the due date of our 4th child. He started his new job when she was two weeks old, twin blessings of financial security and a long-hoped for 4th baby.

It became painfully obvious that the lessons I had been teaching my children were not the ones that would steady them in the future.

So I began asking myself: what am I actually called to teach my children and how should I be leading them?

This led to me bringing more liturgical practices and prayer into our home. Daily repetition of praying together, praying over my children, singing and reading the Bible together changed the tone of our home.

It also meant bringing more consistency to our homeschooling and not letting other distractions interrupt our day.

I began thinking long-term about the fruits I hoped to plant in my children’s lives, the ones that they could be nourished by as adults growing their own families.

As mothers, we have such an honorable role in cultivating our family’s rhythms today and legacy into the future.

The daily actions we take can seem so inconsequential, but they deeply matter as they form the tapestry of our family story.

Instead of asking myself “what has to get done today?

I began asking “what is God calling our family to do today?”

And often, it can look the same because the work of a home and keeping it running is necessary work. But it can often look like setting down my agenda of a clean kitchen and instead reading with the children.

It’s praying for patience when I respond to my children — because I want their formative ideas of motherhood to be a woman who is patient and kind — instead of impulsively and brashly responding.

It’s allowing myself to be reformed and reworked over and over again and forgiving myself when I mess up.

This is the holy work of the mother in planning a family legacy: planting the tiny seeds that may take decades to sprout.

Now, when my husband and I are faced with a decision, we no longer rush it.

We pray. We seek God. We still the urge to rapid-fire decide and wait.

It’s really not easy! But our goal now is to make decisions for the long-term good of our family, not what feels good in the short-term.

Although we don’t know the future, we try to imagine how these decisions may play out over the long-haul.

I’ll give you an example:

We’ve owned 2 homes prior, but it’s been 8 years since we sold our last one. We’re currently working the Dave Ramsey debt snowball, paying off all of our debt, then saving up for a good downpayment.

And in today’s economy? Buying a house is a lot tougher than it was when we bought our other two homes, especially in the coastal area where we live.

Taking this slower path requires patience, diligence, and trust.

We also are waiting for the right home, to be our family estate, the one we’ve been dreaming of where our children and grandchildren can gather around our table and plant fruitful seeds of their own.

I have no doubt we could go buy a home today. We could get a mortgage. Maybe not THE house, but a house.

However, because we are thinking of the long-term, we aren’t rushing it. We trust that God is holding the plan and will guide us to the right home, in the right timing.

And truthfully? That feels so much more satisfying than rushing a decision out of fear, then paying the cost of that impulsiveness.

What decisions do you need to make that could benefit from slowing down?

Could you decide from the lens of your family’s legacy instead of your current fears and desires?

It’s hard work, important work, and we are called as mothers to do so. I’d love to hear in the comments: what resonated most with you?

Sending you so much love as you build your family legacy day by day! If you enjoyed this essay, consider subscribing below:

With you on the journey,

PS. This post is feeling long, so I’m going to share some of my favorite books and resources on this topic in the comment section. Meet you there!

Nomadic life was full of adventure and isolating

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November 3, 2025

Covid was only a freshmen when we set off on a cross-country family road adventure by way of a 35’ 5th wheel travel trailer. With a rambunctious Welsh corgi puppy, three children ages 3-9, and the belief that life would be better deep in nature, we spent a couple of years living on the road.