In a few days, re-enrollment will begin for the next school year. Some of you may be at a crossroads, deciding whether to re-enroll. May I take the next few paragraphs to share my thoughts with you? This past school year has been one with many significant events for me. This February, I will be entering a new decade. (I won’t tell you which decade, hoping you might think it’s my 30’s.) Professionally, I am now in charge of the preschool program. And this past August, my younger sister passed away from breast cancer. What does all that have to do with re-enrollment and the verse above?
As the Director, I have been meeting with new prospective parents and extolling the merits of our preschool program. In order to do this, I’ve had to do a lot of introspection about a parent’s responsibility to the children they’ve been blessed with. Reaching a monumental birthday also causes me to ponder my life, past and future.
My parents are from Japan. They arrived here with nothing, working and saving in order to buy a house. When I was entering junior high, they did not like what they saw in the public schools. They desired to “raise their children up in the way we should go” so they enrolled my sister and I in a Christian school. They had to make sacrifices—no dinners out, family vacations to Disneyland, or new clothes when we wanted them, all in order to pay tuition. They did this because they felt a Christian education was the most important, valuable, and lasting investment they could make. I am so thankful for their sacrifice. I was able to see their love through this action.
This past August, when my sister passed away, we gave or threw away all her things. But she’s not lovingly remembered for the “adornments” but rather her gentle and quiet spirit. Parents, everything you are working so hard to accumulate for yourself and your children will pass away. What lasts is who your child is. My parents understood this. So did my sister and her husband, who sacrifice to send their sons to Trinity. My nephew wrote this for one of his college application essays:
I gained a true understanding of what it means to be committed to God, even to the death. My mom always had said in regard to her cancer that, “to live is Christ and to die is gain.” I never really understood that statement until after my mom’s passing. Her entire life was a testimony to God and she lived like Christ did. When she went to heaven, that was her gain.
A Christian education is a long term investment for your child. You will have to make sacrifices today for tomorrow. But you can never go back and have “do over’s.” Trinity wants to partner with you as parents so that your student’s hidden person of the heart will be precious in God’s sight.
Linda Kawakami
Director Educational Services