From kindergarten to 12th grade, I attended 14 different schools on two continents. We were not a military family. The constant moving and school changing was due primarily to financial insecurity. I’m sure there is a person out there with data on expected outcomes for a learner who experiences that level of interruption throughout their education. All I know is that, in spite of the many challenges I faced, and due in no small part to my mother’s prayers and love of learning, I achieved academic success. Neither she nor my father got to finish their education, so I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. As many who experience poverty do, I promised myself I would make a better life for my future children, so I attended Houston Baptist University on an academic scholarship, graduated with honors, and got accepted to a competitive program in Austin to obtain my Texas teaching certificate. I became a public high school teacher.

Many years later, the time arrived to look into options for our own kids’ education. My dear friend, Katie Garcia, would not stop talking about this school they had discovered. “Erika. This is the place for you. For your kids, for you to teach again, this is it.” Full disclosure: I shrugged her off. We were not private school people—I just assumed it was expensive and meant for the elite, not a youth minister and a public-school teacher turned stay-at-home-mom. I decided to homeschool, as our family transitioned to missionary life and our location assignment was uncertain.

Looking back, I see how God offered grace for my timid, unsure steps in educating my children. My own attempts to homeschool were fraught and became a source of conflict rather than joy. So one day, a year after Katie had made her transition to heaven, I sat in a red Adirondack chair expressing my stress about schooling to my other dear friend, David Garcia. David echoed Katie by once again mentioning The Saint Constantine School, and he offered to put us in touch with Cate Gilbert and Lily Yee.

From the moment our family met with Cate and toured the campus, I felt like we had come home. Empowered by generous financial aid, the Donatto girls donned their uniforms and promptly climbed up the nearest tree. That was 7 years ago. In the intervening time, my daughters have flourished in ways I never experienced myself but that I’d hoped and prayed they would. Elanor started first grade with Mrs. Shadid, and in one school year went from barely reading to devouring 450-page novels. Adeline found a place for her curiosity, love of art and animals, and making friends. Most importantly I felt like we’d found an actual, proper school—a place passionate about educating, nurturing, and forming souls rather than just churning out identical cogs.

This past year has been incredibly challenging for our school—that is no secret. Amid the loss, change, and feeling of uncertainty, the Lord is still at work here. I have no doubt of that. As I walk the sun-dappled common area of Mays, pick up one of the Icons my 7th graders are painting, and step out into what used to be a parking lot but is now a veritable oasis, I see Katie’s face everywhere. My beautiful friend, who knew what my life had been like and insisted I make space for God to show me His goodness in the land of the living.

As I reflect on my family’s time here, I see how God has healed so many of my own wounds through the community of The Saint Constantine School. Both as a parent and, as of 4 years ago, a faculty member, I am constantly blown away by the quality of educators we have. I don’t mean that as a reference to their qualifications or intelligence (though that alone is impressive). I mean that we have gathered an extraordinarily faithful, loving, generous, and selfless group of people here. This place is still an oasis. A treasure worth protecting; a good worth fighting for.

To conclude, I offer this quote from one of our great texts. It is a meditation on the nature of beauty as belonging to the creator and a reminder that all good things are ultimately beyond the reach of darkness.

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”

—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King