Coram Deo Academy started making an immediate impact on my family when I started 7th grade back in 2001. Homeschool was what I knew up until that point, and what I found when I first walked into the small church building was more familiar than I imagined: kids like me, eagerly awaiting something similar but also different than what school had looked like their whole life. It didn’t take long to adjust. Before long, this new school life came to feel pretty normal.

What I didn’t recognize then, but came to recognize more and more as time has elapsed, is how abnormal something like my experience actually was. Christ was truly at the center of everything. The curriculum in every class was centered on timeless, biblical truths. The teachers I had loved the Lord and completely honored him through their tireless and passionate teaching. With joy and vigor, I was regularly challenged to think, work and act in ways that are God-honoring.

What felt at the time like just “school” was something much larger. CDA faithfully helped instill a Christ centered worldview in me that forever changed my life, and the life of my family to come. Proverbs 22:6 says, “train up your child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” This verse sums up what my experience at CDA has also proven to be true; a truly Christ-centered education lays a strong foundation that will withstand the pitfalls of the modern fallen world. This verse also characterizes the impetus we have for the next generation of our family.

This past year my wife and I decided to attend a Flower Mound campus preview. Our hope was that after almost 20 years, the CDA that I graduated from was still the same CDA, and that our 7-yearold daughter might transition from homeschool to something more. As we walked from classroom to classroom with our daughter, the emotion began to swell. Young students dressed in the same uniforms I wore were conjugating verbs, delivering speeches, and reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Latin. Teachers and staff beamed with excitement. Coaches and young athletes wearing Lions garb hustled about, reminding me that despite how quickly many things change, some things can stay the same.

Our daughter is wrapping up her first year at Coram Deo Academy, and it is hard to find the words to describe the impact we have already seen and felt. Spiritually, educationally, intellectually—our daughter is thriving. She absolutely loves going to school, and she loves telling everyone about it. Her teacher, Mrs. Arthur, is about the sweetest, most caring, most gifted teacher we could imagine. She has already planted seeds of lifelong truth, love, joy and confidence that we will never take for granted.

We could not be more thankful that God has given us the privilege to continue the legacy of living coram Deo through the next generation of our family.