Keep Your Perspective

by Nancy Carter

I can still remember the day about 10 years ago that I broke down crying in the paint aisle at Wal-Mart when I ran into another homeschool mom, and we started discussing our frustrations with our 6-year-olds not reading. I mumbled things like “He seems to have it one day, and then the next he doesn’t,” and “I’m not even sure he really knows all of his letter sounds,” and then finally, “I could teach a class of 25 children to read. Why can’t I get him to?!”

Teaching him to read was the most important thing to me at the time. It was how I was measuring (and felt like others were, too) my success as a homeschool mom. I had lost perspective.

He, of course, learned all of his letter sounds and how to read a little further down the road. But what was truly most important during all that time was:

• Being obedient to homeschool because God called me to.
• My relationship with my son.
• The seeds I was planting in his heart and mind.
• Encouraging him to have a love of learning and to view “school” as a good thing.

That’s what perspective is all about: keeping the main thing, the main thing. Someone once reminded me, “Never get so busy with the urgent things that you don’t get to the important things.” Perspective is what will help us to truly keep the most important things as priorities without becoming hyper-focused on the things that just seem most important at the time.

May we all ask God for His perspective on our homes and adjust our focus accordingly.

Biographical Information/strong>