Merry Christmas, GDA

“We could have been homeschooling”, I reflected while dishing out the annual cash to the kids for the GDA Christmas store. There would have been no kids Christmas concert. No classroom parties. No teacher gifts to buy. And if that had been the the way that 2024 faded into 2025, we would have been ok. Our family would have gathered around our kitchen table with gladness of heart and hope for the future. But instead and much to be preferred, I get to be thankful that we were back at GDA this semester.

Institutions can be very robust or they can be very fragile. Best Buy can survive despite the naysayers and Enron can go belly-up, despite the optimism. These things are hard to predict. If you have been a part of the GDA family for a while, you know that some extra peppers got thrown into the recipe the last couple of years and the resulting heart-burn has not been fun.

 And yet we are here again, sending our kids to the Christmas store and preparing for classroom Christmas parties. How did this happen? I’m not asking in a tone of shock, but in the way that an engineer might poke and prod an engine. Seriously…how did this work? We could easily imagine a semester in which GDA, like George Bailey, had ceased to exist. Credit goes to a lot of folks for their faithful partnership in this endeavor to educate our children as Christians, and if I tried to think of everyone I would undoubtedly omit someone indispensable and obvious. So I won’t try to think of everyone who deserves some credit. 

But if anyone deserves some extra credit, and extra gratitude, and extra encouragement, it is those on whom the weight of these events has fallen most heavily. So without being asked to do so and only in my role as a GDA dad, I want to express my gratitude to the administrators at GDA: Carrie Jaques, Missy Kaiser, Bonnie Dugger, Michelle Raithel, Gennie Strain, Catrina Steinmann, and Keith Clouse. My family is a “Riverstone Family”, so I am extrapolating my perception of the administrative team -as well as my gratitude – from Carrie and Missy, who have been our principals and our friends since we came to GDA 6 years ago.

As I sift, like an archeologist, through the artifacts of 2023-2024, I see that they were the ones upon whom the weight fell most heavily. I observe, like an engineer, that they were the gears, the fulcrums, and the hinges upon which stuff got done. And as a grateful dad, I know that they have all paid a price for carrying that load on our behalf. They have all shouldered extra responsibilities in order to accommodate a smaller staff. They have all invested more time in meetings necessitated by events that none of them desired. They have all endured difficult encounters and labored through hard conversations, and they have done all of this for less financial compensation (another sacrifice made to help the school through our difficulties) and more grace than is possible without the help of the Lord.

We don’t know what the future holds for GDA, but we do know that a future is possible thanks to the faithfulness of so many in the GDA community, among whom are our faithful administrators. Let’s take this season to encourage those who have labored in this ministry. Let’s give them some time to rest over Christmas. Let’s express our thankfulness in our words and our actions. These are the ones who have stepped up on our behalf, and I hope they have a chance to sit down and enjoy their families over the holiday season.

Merry Christmas, GDA!