Seeing the Big Picture
A few months ago someone asked me for my resume for a volunteer position. I had not worried about a resume since leaving the academic scene to become a stay at home mom almost two decades ago! In fact, I had barely written down my various activities. Obviously, this was going to be a colossal job.
Because, you see, I could not remember what I had done. And when I puzzled it all out, I was astonished. The big picture was so different from my daily activities!
And that is the point of this post: we homeschool moms need to treat our homeschooling years as serious work worthy of being documented. Whether or not we will ever need a resume is not even the point. We simply need to keep track of what we have done and learned. We have skills and accomplishments, contributions and achievements, and it is good for us to recognize that. We can use these skills in our homeschools as well as in our churches and communities…but we first have to realize that we have them.
When my recent post ‘Is There Life After Homeschooling’ appeared in our homeschooling newsletter, another mom contributed a companion piece about this very thing. She wrote,
It’s easy to think that in homeschooling our children we are setting aside our opportunities for personal growth and development, and yet though this commitment to guide our children to growth we make our own measureable progress. I’d heartily recommend to any one finishing up a homeschool journey to take the time to prepare an extended resume. It is helpful as part of the consideration of what to do next, to see how the Lord may have used homeschooling to prepare you for further service for Him according to His purposes.
I heartily agree with her, with one reservation. We do not need to leave this until after homeschooling is over. We can begin any time!
On a completely different level, a resume is not only helpful for us homeschooling moms as we sift through all the possibilities competing for our attention. It is also good for our teens to see their mother in a different light. And my husband, for one, is proud of all that I have done.
So now I have a file where I write things down as I do them…just as for my teens’ high school records. I encourage you to do the same thing; you will find it grows to be an amazing record of God’s goodness.
Good reminder!!
Never thought about it that way, good idea.