2014 is upon us ... a whole new year stretching out with anticipation. Lots of folks are filling Facebook and blogs with New Year's Resolutions. I think goal setting is an admirable and necessary exercise for living life effectively. However (and you knew there was going to be a "however"!), one of my favorite authors talks often about living life in 10,000 little moments. Paul David Tripp recently shared this comment when writing about the coming new year ...
I don't want to discourage you from making a resolution or tell you to throw away what you've already written, but I do want to challenge your way of thinking. You see, the character of your life won't be established in two or three dramatic moments, but in 10,000 little moments. Your legacy will be shaped more by the 10,000 little decisions you make in 2014 rather than the last-minute resolution you're about to make.
(Ringing in the New Year by Paul David Tripp)
I think this view of the new year is especially true (and valuable) for homeschooling moms and dads. Down in the trenches of the daily grind of home education, it can be difficult to set life-altering resolutions when it seems that each day is more of the same. But learning to take each day in small increments of individual moments makes life much more doable.
So I challenge you on the threshold of a brand new year ... learn to rejoice in the small victories found in those 10,000 little moments. When your struggling reader gets through a whole page on their own ... rejoice! When your challenging teenager answers your request with a gracious response ... rejoice! When you successfully wrestle your way through those frustrating fractions with your middle-schooler ... rejoice! Learn to look for and rehearse those small victories at the end of each day ... and realize that the mundane is where character is formed and lives are changed.
Still on the journey ...
~Judy Wnuk
