Influence Over the Limelight

Good morning everyone. My name is Shelly Ahlemeier. I have been married to my husband Michael for 21 years, and we have three teenage boys – Luke 17, Evan 15, and Eli 13.

Life is busy, to say the least, with three teenage boys, and my cart at Costco has made more than one cashier say something to the effect of, “Is this all together?” But, despite their endless appetites, I’ve loved being their mom, chaos and all.

When the boys were little, we lived east of the metroplex. As Luke started nearing school-age, we started processing what school would look like for him. The summer before he started kindergarten, we decided it was time for a change. My husband and I were passionate about our boys not growing up in an environment where they thought the world looked like them, so we began to search for diverse schools in Richardson. Our search brought us to Arapaho Classical Magnet. We searched all summer for a house in the neighborhood to guarantee my kids could attend ACM since we had missed the magnet lottery process the previous year. We moved in the week before started kindergarten started. The first couple of years Luke was in school, I wasn’t really involved on the campus other than helping with holiday parties. It takes me a little while to warm up to new situations, plus I didn’t think dragging Luke’s 1 and 3 yo brothers along would be very conducive to me helping out with Library time. The Lord stirred my heart to connect with people where my kids were spending their time, so once Evan entered school two years later, I found I had a little more margin to be involved within the doors of their school. My first role on the PTA board was the Community Outreach Chair, which is basically a “do whatever you want with the job” kind of position. I felt the Lord prompt me to fashion the committee in a way that would support ACM families experiencing hardships or tragedies. The Lord is sweet in His timing, and His timing is always perfect. Not a month after a committee of like-minded volunteers had been organized, a student’s father rode his bike and was hit by a car and critically injured. Throughout the next several weeks, our committee stocked the family’s pantry, provided meals for them, and cared for them. The wife’s sister had come in town from California to help. As we were talking on the phone one day, she said, “I don’t understand why you all are doing this.” She shared she didn’t understand why complete strangers would spend their time and money caring for her sister’s family. I was able to share with her how God had told me to start the committee and that everything I had done was because of Jesus’s love for me and that He loved her family as well. Fortunately, the father recovered.

For the next few years, I was involved in several other positions. Eventually leading up to the role of PTA President. If you know anything about me, you know that speaking in large crowds is not where I find joy, but I do find joy in biblical hospitality. I made it my goal to not only support the teachers and staff of the school but also to work towards bringing down the walls of division that existed because of the socio-economic differences that were a part of the make-up of our school. I wanted to create an atmosphere of safety and welcome for any parent walking into a PTA meeting or event. The Lord opened doors for me to create a parent committee that gave tours to new families interested in applying for the magnet. We were able to welcome them and encourage them to be a part of the culture of ACM if they attended the school. Through that, I was able to easily get to know new families and invite interested moms to a weekly prayer meeting at my house called Moms in Prayer (which is a separate ministry that seeks to have moms praying for every school around the country). We prayed weekly for our kids, schools, and teachers.

I think my favorite opportunity during my time as president was the monthly newsletter, I got to write to all 600+members of the PTA. Rather than list out all the things we were doing as a PTA, the Lord encouraged me to use it as an opportunity to encourage families and give them hope. There were times when tragedies like the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings brought a shadow of darkness over our little community, but I was able to share where I find hope in the hard moments of life.

More recently, I had the opportunity to serve on Richardson ISD’s newly formed Equity Committee because of my previous role as PTA president. I joined the group not because I supported everything about their agenda but I wanted the chance to be a part of the conversation and make positive changes in our district. I do want all students to feel safe and welcome within the walls of their school. I valued hearing perspectives from other viewpoints, and it was helpful hearing words from their hearts, but also felt the need to kindly speak up when necessary, even when it’s scary and hard. During one meeting, a member was frustrated with events happening at a recent school board meeting. As she was sharing, she used a lot of words like “us” and “them.” With a pounding heart, I tried to gently remind her that using words like “us” and “them” is divisive and doesn’t help bring about the change we were working on trying to work towards.

I never sought out the limelight, but I am grateful for the influence and freedom I had to help bring in speakers like Mary Flo Ridley who trains parents on how to talk with their kids about sex from a biblical worldview and for the opportunities I had through the newsletter and other conversations to share that Jesus was the reason behind all the work. From a small seed of desire to get involved, the Lord has grown and multiplied it into areas of growth for myself and glory for Him. I know He is still at work. He is still working in my heart, teaching me to trust Him when things feel big and scary. He’s also still working in the heart of the sister from California and the woman from the Equity Committee. I don’t know what will happen with the seeds of faith planted along the road during my time on the PTA board, but I do know that if I hadn’t have been faithful to say yes when the Lord was prompting and urging me to get involved and make a difference, I would never have had the opportunity to plant those seeds and I would have missed out on so many opportunities for growth in my life and my heart.