Since 2009, when Jen and I (JP) married, we’ve tried to live out our Christian faith in genuine ways.

When we began to grow our family, we knew we wanted to homeschool our children because we wanted to be their primary influence. 

When our kids were younger, Jen took the main role as their teacher, but because I ran my own tutoring company, I had the flexibility to be around during the mornings and early afternoons.

I hadn’t thought through my entire philosophy on family and education, but I knew I wanted to spend as much time with my kids before they became adults.

I also desired to serve God in ministry. So at the height of my tutoring business, we packed up and moved from New Jersey to Louisville, Kentucky for me to attend seminary.

While there, I quickly realized if I relied solely on a church to support me and my family, I had a good chance of never serving in full-time ministry, like the majority of seminary grads.

So I decided to rebuild my tutoring business in Louisville. 

This was a lot of work. Our children were with us in the building, but we were too busy running the business that they were oftentimes left to themselves.

About a year or so in, the business began to take off. We hired tutors and could see ourselves pulling back more and reestablishing our time together as a family.

But in the same week in March 2020 that the country went into lockdown, our youngest son Josiah was diagnosed with brain cancer.

We were in the hospital for two months, Jen and I taking turns being with Josiah as he came out of surgery with lots of complications.

I still had to work, and we had already been moving our tutoring services online, so this was a golden opportunity for our business to grow even more.

But as I reflected on the year and how much time we had spent working, and how little we had given of ourselves to our kids, not knowing how much time we’d have with Josiah, or with our other children, quite frankly, I realized that all this work wasn’t worth it.

There had to be a better way.

We closed down our business and moved to Cincinnati so we could be close the children’s hospital there.

For the next year and a half, I worked with Josiah in his rehabilitation. I took him to his therapies and did many more at home.

As much as I wish brain cancer had never happened to Josiah, and as much as I regret the decisions we made that have altered his life forever, I am thankful that the trials drew our family together.

As Josiah improved and with the immediacy of the difficulty in our rear view, we had more room to think about our next steps.

I needed to make a living but I didn’t want to do it like before. I needed to find a way to do it without sacrificing family.

After much thought and prayer, we decided to move to Florida and set up a short-term vacation rental. We thought this would be a way for us to earn an income somewhat passively and still be together.

So we moved to central Florida and bought a home. We spent a good 8 months fixing it up. You can check it out here.

We’re still figuring things out, but we’ve come a long way, and we are more determined than ever to put our family first and to help other families do the same. 

Salty family is our way of not only telling our story but encouraging and equipping other families to do the same.