As a child growing up in the Christian Reformed Church, my religious education was robust, to say the least—I (reluctantly) went to catechism every week, youth group on Sunday nights, Christian day school, and GEMS (programming geared toward grade-school girls) every other Wednesday.

It’s only as an adult that I’ve started to feel the impact of those windowless hours, listening to the same teachers I had at my Christian school educate me on TULIP and predestination. At the time, the words sounded more like the gibberish of Charlie Brown’s teacher than anything real or meaningful. 

Yet somehow, this catechesis integrated into my worldview like an intravenous infusion. My faith is the most important part of who I am, and when I’m afraid, vulnerable, or trying to answer my five-year-old’s impossible questions, I come back to the Heidelberg Catechism as though it is my mother tongue.

I want my children to love God and love what God loves, and I want them to feel secure, loved, and treasured. We are fortunate that, in our community, Christian education is both common and (generally) accessible for those who want it. Still, there are fewer opportunities for formal spiritual formation for my kids than there were when I was growing up. 

What we do have, however, is a community of trusted friends and fellow parents. We have picnics and camp together, asking one another for prayer, and exchanging texts about sweet stories and hard days. I’m not sure we would have time or space for these moments if our calendars were stacked with formal church activities.

Meredith Miller writes about this shift in her book Woven. Miller wonders if Christian parents have historically parented in a style that looks more like indoctrination than reliance on the Holy Spirit—indundating our children with information rather than creating opportunities for them to learn who God is and respond to God’s invitation to them. Miller’s ideas resonated with me, relieving an unsettledness I had often felt when thinking about filling my kids’ calendars with religious education. After all, it worked for me, right? 

But Miller’s focus on the Holy Spirit resonated with my Reformed upbringing in an even more profound way. Though Reformed Christians are not particularly charismatic or Pentecostal, with whom we often associate Spirit-focused teaching, the Holy Spirit is a significant part of traditional Reformed theology. Miller’s argument reflects John Calvin’s when he writes in the Institutes “faith is the principal work of the Spirit.” 

Shedding some of these formal structures for the spiritual formation of my children has become a radical invitation to trust the Spirit’s guidance in my parenting. It has required me to bring God more intentionally into my everyday moments, so I, in turn, can bring God into my children’s everyday moments, too. I have seen that, as I entrust my children to the Spirit, the Spirit meets me, eager to reach them in partnership with my parenting. 

A couple of weeks ago my husband and I towed our three young kids to Yosemite, packing all five of us into a primitive cabin, trekking almost 1,000 feet of elevation with our baby in a hiking backpack, and unlocking new fears that our newly potty-trained daughter would fall into a pit toilet.

On our last day in the national park, we hiked a short loop in Cook’s Meadow. When we reached the peak of the loop, sitting underneath Lower Yosemite Falls as it roared powerfully with spring snowmelt into the Merced River, Psalm 104 began to run through me like its own river current. 

My husband and I have made a habit of traveling with our kids—both of us love to explore, to hike, to camp, and to be outside. Just like I learn more about a friend when I join them in one of their hobbies, I find I feel closer to God when I fall more in love with what God  loves: creation. I love to think about God delighting in creating a butterfly or stepping back in satisfaction after crafting the Yosemite valley. Miller writes in her book that these very moments are an important part of how we invite our children into the work of God in the world and in their lives. 

I remembered what I’d read the morning we left for our trip—Psalm 104. I couldn’t help but feel it was a nudge from the Holy Spirit, offering me the perfect text to extend to my children, sharing God’s work in my life through the words of Scripture.

So, during one of our many breaks for tired toddler legs, I pulled out my phone and read parts of the psalm out loud. As we listened to its words we stared in awe at the waters of Lower Yosemite Falls as they “flowed over the mountains” (v. 8) and marveled at them giving water to all the “beasts of the field”—including the deer we’d seen almost every morning (v. 11). 

We lifted our eyes to the soaring tops of the falls as we heard the psalmist declare that God “waters the mountains from his upper chambers” (v. 13). We stood amongst the sequoias where “the birds make their nests” (vv. 16-17). By the end, my eyes watered, “Praise the Lord, my soul. Praise the Lord” (v. 35). My husband offered a simple prayer, and we kept walking. 

A couple of hours later my son said to me, “Mom, I love this earth.” I thanked God for his eager heart beginning to understand the goodness of God’s creation, long before he could read or understand the language of the Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 26. 

I am not the facilitator of my son’s faith, but I’m an eager partner. I trust the Spirit is working out his salvation—he can do it in a classroom, and he can also do it in Cook’s Meadow.