Dorothy Miller Facebook ad: “If you know a child read this”

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915017891174464

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Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, Messenger and Threads

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Parenting & Kids

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His grandmother's Bible followed him to WAR. A 25-year-old soldier deploying to Afghanistan for his second tour packed the children's Bible storybook his grandmother gave him when he was a little boy. That story HAUNTED me — because I've been giving my grandchildren gifts for a decade and not one of them would survive the drive home, let alone a lifetime. I heard it from my friend Donna at our Wednesday morning Bible study. She told it casually, like it was just a nice anecdote. Her friend's grandson, a young man named Caleb, had enlisted after high school. When he was packing for his second deployment, his mother walked into his room and saw him tucking a beat-up children's Bible into his duffel bag. She asked why he was bringing that. And he said, "Grandma Ruth gave me this when I was seven. I've read it more times than anything else I own." Everyone at the table smiled. I smiled too. But something about that story sat on my chest and didn't move. I drove home and I couldn't stop thinking about it. Not about Caleb. About Grandma Ruth. That woman gave a single gift — probably fifteen, twenty dollars — and it became the thing her grandson reached for when he was heading into the most dangerous season of his life. Her faith was IN that book. And it traveled. It went places she never went. It spoke to him in years she might not even be alive for. That's when the real question hit me. What have I given my grandchildren that would do that? I sat at my kitchen table and I tried to make a list. Ten years of Christmases. Ten years of birthdays. Stuffed animals, board games, craft kits, clothing, a nice journaling Bible for my oldest granddaughter's baptism. I've spent thousands of dollars. I've wrapped hundreds of gifts. And I could not — honestly could not — name a single thing I'd given any of my four grandchildren that they still own, still use, or would think to bring with them anywhere. That realization didn't hit like sadness. It hit like embarrassment. Like I'd been doing something for a decade and completely missing the point. I talked to my husband about it that night and he said what he always says. "They know you love them." And they do. I'm not questioning that. But love isn't the same thing as legacy. My grandchildren know I love them because I show up, because I call, because I remember their favorite things. But if I wasn't here tomorrow — if the Lord called me home next month — what would they have from me that could carry my faith into their twenties? Their thirties? Their own parenting years? Nothing. The honest answer was nothing. And that kept me up at night. I started paying attention after that. I watched what my grandkids actually did with the gifts I gave them. My granddaughter Lily opened a devotional I gave her at Easter, flipped through it, said thank you, and I found it under her bed two weeks later with the bookmark still on page one. My grandson Micah got a beautiful illustrated Bible from me last Christmas. He hasn't touched it. I checked. I'm not angry at them. They're kids. A 10-year-old isn't going to sit down and read a book because Grandma wants her to. That's not how kids work. But for the first time I started asking a different question — not "what's a nice Christian gift?" but "what kind of gift actually becomes THEIRS?" Because that's what Grandma Ruth's gift did. It became Caleb's. Not because she told him to read it. Because something about it made him pick it up on his own, engage with it, come back to it again and again until it was part of who he was. The gifts I'd been giving were passive. Pretty covers, nice illustrations, good intentions. But nothing that asked my grandchild to DO anything. Nothing that required them to invest their own time, their own thinking, their own handwriting. And because the child never put anything INTO the gift, the gift never became part of them. It just sat on a shelf looking lovely and collecting dust. I realized I'd been buying gifts that reflected MY faith. What I wanted for them. What I hoped they'd absorb. But I'd never given them something designed to build THEIR faith. Their own. In their own words. Through their own effort. There's a massive difference and I'd missed it for ten years. A gift a child just receives gets forgotten. A gift a child works through — writes in, answers questions in, wrestles with, puts their own pencil marks on — that becomes personal. That has their fingerprints on it. That's the gift that ends up in a suitcase at 25. Not because Grandma told them to keep it. Because it's THEIRS now. Their handwriting is in it. Their thoughts. Their questions about God answered in their own words. That's what Grandma Ruth's gift did without her even planning it. It made Caleb a participant in his own faith instead of a spectator of hers. Once I understood that, I couldn't unsee it. I looked at every children's Bible resource I'd ever bought and they were all the same — beautiful, passive, designed to be read TO a child or read BY a child and then shelved. None of them asked the child to think. None of them asked the child to respond. None of them engaged the child at the level where real ownership forms. And I thought about what that means long-term. A child who passively receives Bible stories has heard ABOUT God. A child who actively works through what they believe and why — who answers questions like "why can I trust this?" in their own handwriting — that child KNOWS God for themselves. They have a faith that isn't borrowed from Grandma. It grew from something Grandma planted, but it belongs to them. That's the faith that survives the teen years. That's the faith that survives college. That's the faith that gets packed in a bag for whatever war or season or hard road they have to walk. I found something that does this. A year-long workbook — 52 lessons — designed for the exact ages my grandchildren are right now. Not a storybook. Not a coloring book. Not a passive read. It's interactive. It asks them to think, to write, to answer real theological questions at their level. It teaches them the WHY behind what the Bible says, not just the stories. And because the child fills it with their own words and their own handwriting, it becomes a keepsake. It becomes THEIRS. I bought one for Lily three months ago. Last weekend I was at her house and I saw it on her nightstand. Open. Written in. Dog-eared. She looked at me and said, "Grandma, did you know that God doesn't need us but He WANTS us?" I almost lost it right there. That is what legacy looks like. Not a gift she opened and shelved. A gift she opened and made her own. And now my faith — the things I believe about God, the theology I've carried my whole life — is in her handwriting. In her words. On her nightstand. If you've ever asked yourself what you've given your grandchildren that they'd still be carrying at 25 — if the honest answer makes your stomach hurt a little — I want you to see what I found. It's called FaithSteps and it changed how I think about every gift I'll ever give again. Not because it's a perfect product. Because it does the one thing none of my other gifts ever did — it makes the child a participant in their own faith instead of a spectator of mine. Your faith CAN outlast you. But it won't travel in a gift that sits on a shelf. It travels in a gift that has your grandchild's handwriting in it.

Where the ad sends people

faithsteps.store

If you know a child read this 👆

FaithSteps