From the Team: What We Learned from Mom

As we look ahead to the weekend, the Story Warren team wanted to pause for a minute to appreciate moms. Here are a few snippets of things we learned from ours.

Josiah Smith: My mom taught me that you can’t control everything in life, including the pain you’ll inevitably face. But in the midst of those challenges, you can choose to lean more deeply on a loving God.

S. D. Smith: I learned the power of encouragement from my mom. She did discipline me and hold me accountable, but also believed in me and cheered me on and was a source of enthusiasm and encouragement for me all my life. I was a painfully shy and introverted kid, and Mom’s confidence that God loved me and had a plan for my life was a desperately-needed ingredient for me. She was the constant voice encouraging me in my creative endeavors, especially writing. I learned that encouragement is a powerful gift.

Natalie Morell: I learned that you can discover your core values by asking yourself why 5 times when setting a goal. Goal: I want to read more with my kids. Why? (and so on)

Coralie Terry: I learned to find delight in the little things and to keep childlike wonder, no matter how old I grow. 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

Jaclyn Rader: How to cultivate a servant’s heart, as summed up in two of her favorite sayings. “Many hands make light work,” and “Don’t ask someone to do something you aren’t willing to do yourself.”

Kelly Keller: I learned an appreciation for the natural world: my mom loved birds, and she knew countless species by name. She arranged fresh flowers. She called our attention to how the maples’ red hues looked brighter on cloudy days. She loved the smell of rain.

Zach Franzen: My mom taught me that skills are learned. If there’s something you want to do, you can just learn it. What a blessing for our family!

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Kelly Keller

Kelly Keller is the managing editor of Story Warren. She has her BS in Elementary Education from Messiah University and has taught various ages, but her favorite was worldview and literature with high school students. The “gap” in her resume is actually a window of eighteen years of homeschooling, which she recommends as an effective, though demanding, way of expanding one’s home library.

When she’s not behind her laptop, Kelly enjoys live music, baseball, reading great books, and traveling with her husband, David. Kelly hails from beautiful snowy New England, but after nearly two decades in North Carolina, she feels right at home.

She invites you to subscribe to her newsletter, On the Common, or to follow her on Twitter or Instagram.

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