Last Saturday my baby girl graduated from La Salle Catholic College Preparatory. Next year she will attend the University of Oregon.

As the inevitable and much dreaded (by me, not her) day of the Big Event approached, I reflected on her school career and how she has grown over the years and the many factors that have influenced her growth.

My husband and I did not originally intend to send our children to Holy Family. I went to public school, and I started out as a public school teacher, and I felt that would be just fine for my daughter too. She attended a local public elementary school for kindergarten, and it was fine – but not good enough for my baby. The principal didn’t know her name. There was little sense of community in the school. Needless to say, they did not attend Mass, and there was no mention of the Gospel teachings at any time.

I started teaching at Holy Family in 1990, and after seeing first hand the difference in public versus Catholic school, I knew I needed to move my children here to benefit from an education intertwined with the teachings of our faith. It was an excellent decision.

During her years at Holy Family Catholic School Genny was nurtured, loved, shaped, and frequently redirected. She learned to love math,

Spanish, and art. She tolerated English and history class. She was exposed to community service and it changed her for the better. I believe that service will become some part of her future as a result of her exposure at Holy Family Catholic School. She attended and participated in many, many Masses. She was a first grade Mass helper. She got to be an angel in one Advent program. Sometimes she complained that other kids were mean to her, and we worked together to learn how to deal with challenging people, and to reflect on how her behavior might be contributing to the problem.

When she graduated from Holy Family and went on to La Salle, she went with confidence in her ability to learn and an emerging level of self-confidence. Her years in Catholic high school have continued to strengthen and guide her into the (fairly!) mature young woman she is today. High school was not always easy and fun. Sometimes she found some subjects to be more challenging than she would have liked. She had the skills and confidence to ask for help and the work ethic to master the material. Sometimes people did or said mean things. She had the skills and confidence to handle the situation.

Today she is excited to set out on the next leg of her journey, confident that she is well prepared, and I believe that she is.

Sometimes I make the mistake of counting the money that we have spent on her Catholic education, and I imagine what else we could have done with that money (like buy groceries!), but then I count the many, many blessings that she has been offered as a direct result of our decision to bring her to Holy Family Catholic School, and I believe to my core that she would not be the person that she is without those blessings. I know that it was worth every cent and then some.

God is good!