Last week we did belief work. Everyone listed what they used to believe and what they believe now. There is authority in the audible declaration.
Today we declare over each other and we declare over the future.
The floor is open if you want it. No one is obligated. One hour.
He did not have a system. He had a picture. He held onto it longer than made sense. The kids he raised inside that vision became the engineers he never was. That is not a small thing. Most men with a vision do not get to see it walk into a room and sit down across from them. He does.
He started The League in 2001. He did not finish it then. He is finishing it now. That gap is a man who planted something and then had to wait long enough to find out whether it was real. Every person at this table is the answer to that question.
He sent a Marco Polo. It is time. He offered to fly to wherever any of his kids were to have the hard conversations face to face. A man who did the work inside himself and then asked for the room to show it.
He is a medic who is going to help this family heal. He has seen things and survived things none of us fully know. Insight earned under real weight. Having proof is different from having an opinion.
Bethany gave him permission to leave. She built the sibling structure so the family could survive without him and be ready to receive him back. He is not returning to a family that is still figuring out whether it wants him. He is returning to one that already did that work.
He ran on vision when there was no map. She raised the people who became the map.
He did not engineer this. He inspired it.
She made sure the people he inspired were ready to carry it.
Every person at this table exists because these two chose each other first.
She drove by with water balloons. She loaded a lawnmower into a van so Caleb could do his first jobs. She sent them outside and told them not to come back until the sun went down. She was never a helicopter. She was a launcher. She trusted them to get cut and come back whole. They did.
She made discipline feel like a courtroom. Kids could plead their case. Tape recorder on the table. It was fair. It was consistent. Inside that structure was something most parents never build: a home where children got to be people, not extensions of their mother's expectations.
He brought home his first tattoo. Inappropriate one. He was embarrassed before he walked in. She looked at it and said: that is really pretty. She was not talking about the tattoo. She was saying: whatever you do, I am your teammate. You handle your consequences. I am not going anywhere. Mom is always going to be my teammate.
She said she has been in a rut. Stagnant. Ready. That is the most honest sentence anyone said in the run-up to this table. She said it first. Before the builders. Before the visionaries. Mom went first. That belongs at the top.
He ran on vision when there was no map. She raised the people who became the map.
He did not engineer this. He inspired it.
She made sure the people he inspired were ready to carry it.
Every person at this table exists because these two chose each other first.
Dad brought a computer home. Nobody knew how to make it work. Josh figured it out. Green screens. No manual. No instruction. That was not a one-time thing. It was the first documented instance of a pattern that never stopped. He does not need someone to show him the way in. He finds it.
Caleb handed him the impossible projects. Every time they came back done correctly. Not approximately. Correctly. Caleb said envious. Not admiring. Envious. That is the most honest form of recognition. It means he knew what he was watching and could not look away.
Figured-out guy. Sits in frustration and comes out the other side with something traceable and beautiful. Brilliant mind. The smile that lit everyone up. The guy you hand the impossible project to and it comes back perfect. I was envious of his ability to climb whatever ladder, get whatever grades he wanted, whenever he wanted.
He climbed every ladder fast and then stepped off one by choice. He was producing results. The ladder was working. He stepped off it anyway because he knew where it was going and it was not where he was supposed to be. Most people never find that clarity. He found it and acted on it. That decision is what makes everything else about him significant.
He said two things in the same breath: I love that. And: you are missing a lot. Pastoral and precise at the same time. He will not let this table become something it should not be. That is not obstruction. That is the anchor doing its job.
He builds the structure. She opens the doors inside it.
He sees the problem. She sees the person underneath the problem.
He protects with precision. She emancipates with authority.
Neither one of them was going to change your ceiling alone.
He saw real estate before it moved. He saw Apple. He saw Bitcoin. Not lucky. Wired differently. The same pattern runs everywhere: he names what is coming before the room is ready to hear it and then stays in the room while people catch up. He has been doing this long enough that he no longer needs the room to agree with him before he moves.
COVID. He drove over with a bag. Soup. Airsoft gun. Money at the bottom so it would not feel like charity. He knew what Jeremy needed without being asked. He packed it, drove it over, and did not mention it again. Love as a decision made specific.
He was the tourniquet. He never said anything bad about Dad. Not once. He held space when every reason to walk away was present. He amputated his own wounds and cauterized them so the family could stay intact. What the family received was made possible by what he absorbed alone.
COVID. He came over with a bag. In the bag he had some cans of soup and an airsoft gun so I could play with it. At the bottom of the bag he had put some money because he knew I wasn't able to work. He risked getting sick. He showed up with a bag full of things he knew I needed. That is who he is. My ride or die. My shovel dragger.
He said it without flinching: we have been settling and getting excited for flickers. A man who has seen enough to know the difference between fire and light. He handed this family a mandate in that sentence. He also handed himself one.
He sees the opportunity. She believes in it before he finishes the sentence.
He moves fast and bold. She holds the ground steady while he does.
He sets the fire. She keeps it burning when he doubts the flame.
He was never going to reach his ceiling without someone who believed in him that completely.
I saw it before it moved and I moved first.
I showed up with what was needed before anyone asked.
I held the door when no one else would.
I absorbed what the family could not carry.
I built something real.
I have done this alone for a long time.
And it has worked.
The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run in and are safe.
The wealth of the rich is their fortified city. They imagine a wall too high to scale.
Before a downfall, the heart is haughty. With humility comes honor.
I am not misunderstood.
I am not unseen.
I am fully known. Fully seen. Fully loved by Daddy.
I am free.
I release and renounce everything and every lie that might come against this truth.
I am a son carrying my father's inheritance.
What was placed in me was placed there before I knew what to do with it.
My sons will carry what I carry.
Their inheritance is his inheritance, passing through me.
The line does not stop here. It starts here.
He is in me and I am in him.
We cannot be separated unless I believe that we are.
My belief is my access.
My rest is the driver seat.
My ambition will help me dream.
My strength is not my own.
I am Samson. I am David. I am Saul.
I have been made into the image of Jesus.
Every part of me has been woven together by the Father.
I am called righteous through sonship.
I carry the glory of God in my face.
I carry the words of God in my mouth.
I am a conduit. Every environment I walk into changes.
Everything up to this moment has been practice.
I am stepping from one ledger into another.
God forged my skills in battle to prepare me for something greater.
More impacting. World changing.
Built to set people free.
I release and renounce everything and every lie that might come against this truth.
The door is open.
I am walking out.
I am Caleb Lopez. I am a son of the greatest power, person, and presence in the universe.
One. Two. Three.
(Thank you Daddy!!!)
Jeremy Lopez has more interpersonal and relational skill than anyone in this family. An accurate read of who he is and what he carries. He walks into a room and understands what is happening between people before anyone says a word. When a situation starts to go sideways, he is already moving. He produces peace. That gift is rare. This family does not have another one like it.
He chooses people and protects them even when they are not good to him. When someone had a problem with Caleb, Jeremy handled it without being asked, without needing credit, without Caleb knowing until later. Loyalty operating the way a foundation operates. Below the surface. Holding everything up. Invisible until you need it.
Caleb calls him the ride or die. Jeremy will bury a body with you. His loyalty can point in the wrong direction. He loves people hard enough that he will stay in places longer than is good for him. Misdirected, it costs him. Aimed correctly, it is one of the most powerful things at this table.
He runs toward what scares him. His body moves before the decision is made. When he saw a man he believed had an assault rifle near his job, his legs were already going. He could not feel them. He could only feel the wind on his face. The umbrella in the man's hand did not rewrite what happened. Jeremy ran toward what he believed was a loaded weapon. The truest data point about who he is under pressure.
Precise under pressure. The Thursday takedown: de-escalated three times before he moved. Told the kid to go to the front. Radioed it in. The kid came back twice, escalated each time. Jeremy moved on the third. When the kid grabbed his fingers and threatened to break them, Jeremy did what the moment required and described it without drama or inflation. He teaches in real time mid-story. Fingernail placement. Chin direction. Why the body stops working when the nose stops pointing forward. Someone who went all the way through it and came out knowing exactly what happened.
Somewhere when Jeremy was young, a lie was planted about who he is. He has been living inside it long enough that it looks like a ceiling. A belief ceiling. The day that lie comes out and the truth of who Jeremy actually is goes in, his life changes. All the way. He does not have to accept that. But it is what I see.
He named his own stagnation without being pushed. He had been calling it consistency. Same job. Same house. Same girl. No forward motion. Then he called it what it actually was.
"The consistency has really just been a mask for complacency."
He did not spiral after saying it. He did not defend it. He replaced it with something more true in the same breath.
"Safety doesn't always equal success. But success will almost always equal safety."
He found that reversal while talking. Unrehearsed. Someone who has been processing this for a long time and finally had a room to say it out loud in.
On what he sees in this family compared to every other family he has watched:
"We want to see each other win so bad. And that's what makes us special."
He has looked at other families. He does not see this elsewhere. A comparison made by someone paying attention.
On watching Josiah build:
"I am a really optimistic person that is also realistic. I'm stuck where I'm stuck. But the more I talk with you guys, the more I listen to you guys, the more I try to get on your level. Iron sharpens iron. I guess this is me putting my toes into the water and saying here's what I'm used to, but we're ready for something different."
He never got to be the favorite. And the people who do not get what they want when they are young spend their lives becoming the best at the thing they were chasing. Jeremy wanted to be chosen. So he became the person who is impossible not to choose. Every bit of it earned. Earned things do not disappear.
Caleb watched Jeremy dancing with a chair in Mexico City. Said that was his favorite part of the whole trip. Not the city, not the business conversations, not the food. His brother dancing with a chair. That is what Jeremy produces in people who love him. He makes being alive look worth it.
He builds the bridge to every person in the room. She holds the bridge steady.
He moves fast on instinct. She thinks through what none of them have considered.
His brain plus her brain changes what this team can see.
He was never going to reach his ceiling without a foundation this steady underneath him.
She could not hear as a child. She navigated everything anyway. Gifted school. All the boys' skills and everything they could not access. She did not trade one for the other. She holds both simultaneously. That combination is rare at any table.
She threw Caleb into the water when everyone else was still deliberating. She applied for the job already promised to someone else and walked in feeling good. Caleb almost warned her and then stopped himself. He realized he was watching something he wanted and did not have.
Two kids. College. Constantly applying for new jobs. Always chasing something more. Caleb said it directly: of all of them, he has seen more ambition in her than anyone. She is not waiting for permission to want more.
"She had all the skills of all the boys, but was a brilliant girl. She could be or do anything she set her mind to. And she had blind confidence. This job is already promised to someone else, but I'm feeling really good about it. You almost want to warn her. But the other side of you is wishing you had that."
She said her imagination broke in her twenties. Aphantasia. She cannot form mental images the way most people can. She came to this table saying she wants to see color through her own eyes again. She said she is asking permission to wonder. That is the bravest sentence anyone has said in this entire process. She knows exactly what she lost. She showed up anyway. Her ceiling is not ability. It is permission she has not yet fully given herself.
She moves before the plan is ready. He makes sure the plan holds when she does.
She has blind confidence. He has quiet certainty.
Together that is unstoppable and sustainable.
She was the one who threw everyone into the water.
He is the one who made sure nobody drowned.
Evan is our brother. That is the declaration and it belongs at the top. Not honorary. Not conditional. Our brother. That was true before this table existed and it is truer now that there is a room to say it in out loud.
He came in timid. He had a life before this family that was intense, adult, and frightening for a child to navigate. He did not know who he was yet. Then came the two-on-one in the front yard at Garden Farms. Caleb and Jeremy went after him full power. He held up. Something turned on. Caleb said it plainly: after that day, he never remembered Evan being the same.
Once this guy figures out who he is, he's going to beat the crap out of all of us. His intensity was hidden behind the smile. Rubik's cube in minutes. I thought I had him on the sprint. He ran away from me like I was standing still. He was just stronger than all of us at everything he tried. He was always my older brother who was bigger than me.
Rubik's cube in minutes. Ran from Caleb like Caleb was standing still. Management positions out of high school almost immediately. Caleb said: I thought I had him on this one. He was always just better. That stopped being a surprise. It became a fact Caleb was proud of because he was part of what produced it.
His reconciliation with this family is proof that the table works. He is not just a member here. He is evidence. Every person who had a reason not to show up and showed up anyway needs to see what reconciliation looks like when it is real. Evan is it.
He sees the resource in every situation. She builds the environment where those resources can grow.
He moves with fast intensity. She holds the ground with steady grace.
He was the proof that reconciliation works. She is the reason the home it produced is safe enough for everyone to enter.
Lawnmower at 10. Company at 16. A client needed a job he had never done before. He bid $670. The client handed over a credit card. He went to a nursery, asked the staff how to do the work, did it, got paid. That sequence has repeated across every major move in his life. The theater keeps getting bigger. The pattern has never changed.
He connects dots across domains that other people keep in separate rooms. Theology, psychology, sales, construction, acquisition strategy. He does not switch between them. He runs them simultaneously and finds the intersections others miss. The League, the acquisition thesis, the Josiah OS. They are the same mind working on the same problem from different angles.
I am inspired and motivated by Josiah's confidence level and his ability to pivot and problem solve on the go. He is a fixer. Josiah fixes life things. His brilliance has developed itself into productivity. That is super inspiring.
I am not trying to build a badass girl. I am trying to teach a little girl that she is safe to win, lose, fail, cry, laugh, run, fall, love, and be disappointed. I do not want to make a machine out of my daughter. I want to be a picture of Jesus and the grace he brings.
He heard something on a gym floor in October 2022 and signed up for a $2,400 class before he stood up. Responsiveness is not strategy. It is sonship in motion. He has been responding to a voice his entire life. This table is what it produced.
"I lie in bed at night all the time, for twenty years, thinking I'm bigger than this. And I think in the times when I was deepest, I almost tried to silence that because it made me unhappy with where I was. But that voice was actually the truest voice that lives inside of me."
He builds the systems. She dismantles the walls those systems have to move through.
He sees the strategy. She sees the person underneath the strategy.
He has been telling her she will change the world since before she could understand what he was saying.
Our opportunity is to join her.
He fought with one lung to live. The family was terrified. The doctors were scared. Edin decided he was not done yet. That decision has never changed. It is still running.
There is a ten-year gap between Edin and Jacoby. He closes it every day. He made a decision at some point that he was going to lead his little brother well. You can see it in how he makes space, how he shows up, the affection he brings to that relationship. Strength of a boy becoming a man and still letting his tenderness show.
He has been through real pain already. He lost his father. He carried things no teenager should carry. He is still standing. The same fighter who came in on one lung deciding again that he is not done yet.
When he lost his father, the Lopez boys made a commitment to step up. To be strong. To lead him well. Today is part of that commitment. He is family. He is on the team. This table exists to see this young man become everything he was built to be.
Ben Lowe showed up on Cavalier Drive and never left. Not the address. The family. Caleb named it plainly: Ben became the extra sibling the family needed. Not wanted. Needed.
He is the most consistent person in Josiah's life. Not one of the most. The most. Across the hardest moments. That distinction belongs to Ben alone.
Jeremy watched him shoot hoops alone in the street until it was almost dark. Many times. No older sibling pushing him. No system producing it. Ben built the discipline himself, from the inside, before anyone was paying attention. Jeremy names this as something foreign to what the Lopez brothers had with each other. The synergy that drove them did not apply to Ben. He generated his own fuel.
Bethany saw the same thing. Ben was not a natural. Nothing came easy. He showed up every day anyway. She calls it consistency. She names it as something she and her siblings were unfamiliar with. Ben demonstrated something to them they did not have a name for yet.
He came back from college transformed. Not gradually different. Unrelateably disciplined. Bethany's word. He had gone somewhere the family could not follow and built something they did not expect. Then he announced he was studying to become an orthopedic surgeon. Nobody had thought to ask what he wanted. He had been building toward it the entire time.
He did not become a surgeon. He pivoted. Then pivoted again. C-suite title at twenty-something. Territory manager. Key account manager. The ambition that ran underneath the surface in the boy shooting hoops alone kept running. It just changed direction.
He was the best man at my wedding. He has been my best friend since I was eight or nine years old. I always kind of knew he could do more than me. He just needed the confidence I had. And then this kid just became wild. At some point I was like, I think he has become wilder than me.
Josiah made Ben family. I was pretty envious of the bond they had. Having a little tall skinny white brother was pretty cool. Ben became the extra sibling we needed there on Cavalier.
Caleb watched Ben and Josiah from the outside and felt something he wanted. He was already tight with Josh and Jeremy. Still named the Ben-Josiah dynamic as something he wanted access to. When Ben moved into real estate, Caleb saw it, told him what he was doing, watched Ben go do it. He calls that closing a loop. The brotherhood reaching Ben and Ben running with it on his own terms.
Ben didn't wonder if he was going to be successful. Ben knew. And so he walked around with the confidence of a kid that knew he was going to be successful. Ben, from the time he was young, was participating in disciplined activities.
Jeremy watched a kid who did not need external validation to carry himself with certainty. Jeremy names that as something different. Something he did not have in himself at the same age. A quiet confidence. A humility that existed at the same time without canceling it.
I think of Ben as being loyal. That is how he struck me.
Josh lands on one word and stays there. Loyal. That is what remained after everything else.
Ben never talked about his big dreams. And then he went to college and came back and said I'm studying to be an orthopedic surgeon. His ambition had gotten a lot in our family. I don't think we'd ever asked him what he wanted to do with his life.
Bethany names the failure plainly. The family accepted Ben and moved forward. They never stopped to ask. Ben kept building without the question. The ambition was never hidden. Nobody looked.
Josiah heard Ben describe processes that would save a massive company millions of dollars per year. Decisions a CEO and CFO might not even have the vision for. Ben articulated them clearly. Josiah's read: this is an entrepreneur.
Ben does not need to be a lone soldier to innovate. He has figured out how to build inside community, inside structure, inside hierarchy. The entrepreneurial brain does not turn off. It operates from the inside.
Ben has led from the second seat in a lot of ways for a long time. The personality type required to lead second is someone who is not addicted to the credit and not addicted to recognition, but they are addicted to making the process better. They are committed to making the team better even if they do not get all the credit. That is who Ben has been.
His superpower named plainly: the ability to obsess and synthesize over metrics and numbers in a way none of the brothers can and all of them wish they could.
Noe is gold. She worked beside Ben building his businesses and saw him at his lowest. She never flinched. Steady and consistent in a way that made everything else possible.
The family unit she has created is a place of peace. The way she comes beside Ben and loves him is what the whole family hoped for. Ben has already won at life with his family. That is not a future statement. That is the present tense.
Every year he gathers friends, wives, and kids together and his place becomes a sanctuary for what family looks like. Culture and connection. That does not happen by accident. That happens because Noe built the environment where it could.
She is an athlete. A hard worker. A force as a wife. She did not marry into something easy and she did not ask for easy. She asked for Ben. And then she helped him become the version of himself the family is watching now.
Josiah saw Ben walking out of an arcade and said: look at God, gathering the brothers together. We missed another brother. God did not miss him.
Ben went somewhere and built something without the family. Josiah watched. It was painful. Not because Ben did anything wrong. Because the family was not part of it.
The tab is not a summary. It is a door left open.
Guys, we didn't even think about Ben. We missed another brother. But God didn't miss him. We were supposed to walk back at the right time and run into our other brother.
Ben has always been the sixth brother. The count was just off.
The first memories always go back to Hidalgo. Cute little tinted blonde girl who really just wanted to be a part of the Lopez family. In the years that followed, she proved she could keep up. She did not just keep up. She set the pace nobody noticed.
She was a Lopez before anyone handed her the name. Crawdad-at-the-creek. That far back. They were at the creek in Hawthorne and there were these wild kids — neighborhood kids — and Josiah remembers thinking, wait, these people are not from here but they are the same vibe. Kelly was out there grabbing crawdads. She and the girls were girl versions of the Lopez brothers. The same energy. The same grit. That far back.
Kelly is the person who has been in Josiah's life the longest outside of blood family. Not one of the longest. The longest. That distinction belongs to her alone.
Kelly, your first memories are always back at Hidalgo. Cute little tinted blonde girl who really just wanted to be a part of the Lopez family. And in the coming years she proved that she could keep up. In the good old fight club she was just willing to take on anybody and always taking them out. She was so tough and she was so resilient and she would always just kind of laugh afterwards and dip her head. She was always so humble about being so tough. And also super smart. Really smart girl. Did well in school. And being Jeremy's super teammate too. Kelly's ability to cook or take on any task whether it's physical or takes a lot of brains — Kelly made herself a part of the Lopez family in a super strong way so early. She's just total smile and always being a part of everything. She proved that she was Lopez since — gosh, she was very young. And she's always been really consistent.
She took on anybody and won. Then laughed about it, dipped her head, and moved on. She does not make strength a performance. She carries it quietly. Caleb watched it from the fight club days forward. Tough, resilient, humble. The same girl every time.
I think Kelly and Denny are the people that I've been around the longest in my life consistently that are not my family. Actually it would be Kelly. It would be 100% Kelly. She's the person that's been the longest in my life that's not family. I don't know her that well. I think she's done such a good job at a supportive role that she makes it easy to just rest and not have to entertain her. She's made it so easy that it's been easy not to. And I think I haven't been as intentional about it as I want. But I wanna see her brain in action. There's things that she can do and think of that none of us can and we've just never asked her before.
Josiah names the missed opportunity plainly. She has been so good at support that nobody stopped to ask what she could build on her own. She made it easy to rest. So easy that the family rested without realizing they had never asked her what she sees. That changes now.
She has been the same person from Hidalgo to now. Same loyalty. Same humor. Same presence. In a family that moves fast and loud, that consistency is the foundation everything else stands on.
Super smart. Did well in school. Jeremy's teammate. She can cook. She can take on any task — physical or intellectual. Kelly did not specialize. She made herself useful everywhere, and because she did it without asking for credit, the family absorbed her contribution without measuring it.
There are things she can see that none of them can. They have just never asked her. This table is asking. Her brain in full operation changes what this team can see.
Josiah said it plainly: in some ways there has been a missed opportunity. He does not want to miss it anymore. Whatever this looks like in the future — even if it is just loving her better — the intention is being declared now.
Kelly has been the person in Josiah's life the longest who is still in his life. Nobody else holds that position. Not a friend. Not a teammate. Kelly.
He remembers her brilliant mind even as a kid. He was amazed by Kelly. She fit in with the Lopezes somehow immediately. She was tough and she was rugged, but she was sweet, and Josiah felt like she was to be protected.
Kelly was so small and quiet. But at the right moment, Kelly would say the right thing and it would shift the room. That is not a loud gift. That is a precise one. The kind of intelligence that waits for the moment that matters and then lands it.
Some of Josiah's craziest childhood memories and so much joy — Kelly was always there. Always present. Always part of it.
This year is going to be a time where the family gets to see who Kelly has always been. Maybe they have been so loud and distracted by their own things that they missed the genius in front of them. Or maybe Kelly just needed an avenue to be fully her.
I love you so much Auntie Kelly and you mean so much to me. You are the greatest and so precious. I love you.
The one consistent thing that has always been said about Kelly is that Kelly is smart. She sees the world differently. She sees it in numbers. There is a precision to her method that is unfamiliar to the people around her. Her strengths have not been recognized as easily because of how quiet she is.
Most problems that require solving would be easily solved by Kelly. If anybody asked her. That is the thing — you have to ask. Kelly requires an invitation to the table because she has never given herself permission to take up space. She waits for the invitation.
Kelly raised herself. She has never been loved by her mother. She has been neglected by anyone who was supposed to love her past a certain point. That matters because it taught her that taking up space is not something she can do. If you are begging for love, you will not take up the space you need because you do not want to impose. Kelly does not want to impose on anyone. Ever.
It is easy to see Kelly as cynical. Easy to see her as someone who raises all of the problems but none of the solutions. But what that veneer has masked is a disappointment that life has been so small. That her abilities to problem-solve have not been recognized. That her voice has not been championed.
She wonders how big life could get. Or maybe she has wondered. She is disappointed in how life has been small given how big her brain is and how much she could do if given a problem to solve.
What will it be like when Kelly feels as empowered and as loved as she needs to step out and be as big as she wants to? To solve the problems the rest of them cannot see, in a language they do not understand, and only she does? Because Kelly sees the world in a way that they do not.
Before she could talk, she could find the person in the room who was hurting and go to them. Before she had words, she prophesied with her toys and people had dropped jaws watching her. She has always been this. She did not grow into it. She was born carrying it. God is not building something new in her. He is teaching her how to walk in what she already is.
She hugs strangers in elevators. She compliments the homeless man on the street. She gives her love so freely that the scabs of protection people have built around themselves fall off before they know what is happening. She is not trying to do that. She just does it. Grace operating without self-consciousness, the way it is supposed to operate.
She cries when she sees people in pain. She wanted to give away all of her Christmas presents. She asked her parents to put limits on her iPad because she wanted to be more present with the people around her. She was not performing. She was not coached. She is just built that way. The world is going to feel her presence before she understands what it is.
I am not trying to build a badass girl. I am trying to teach a little girl that she is safe to win, lose, fail, cry, laugh, run, fall, love, and be disappointed. I do not want to make a machine out of my daughter. I want to be a picture of Jesus and the grace he brings.
She talks about her cousins. She dreams about vacations with the family. She has always been oriented toward the people she belongs to. That loyalty is already in her at full strength. It was never taught. It is just what she is. Edin is her oldest cousin. She is going to learn how to stand in her strength by watching how he leads. They will become business partners. This family already sees it even if they cannot yet.