At the Right Time
Several years ago while Ray and I were visiting with homeschoolers at The Pilgrim’s Journey homeschool bookstore in Fayetteville, North Carolina, we heard a wonderful story that I thought I would bring to you today.
A homeschooled teenager (I’ll call her Jill) struggled with high school math. After a year of Algebra, her mother decided to quit the struggle. Her daughter graduated from high school without any math beyond Algebra I.
Jill had no interest in college, so she found a job at a local business. In her early twenties, she decided to enroll in a junior college. Her lack of math experience caused her to be placed in a remedial math class. Jill continued her studies at the community college until she graduated with honors. She was then accepted into nursing school and later became a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit of the Mayo Clinic.
There is an appointed time for everything.
And there is a time for every event under heaven.
Ecclesiastes 3:1
A Red Cross Nurse, ca 1899, Courtesy of Library of Congress.
For Jill, there was a time for math. It just wasn’t at the time people expect. We know that children learn at different paces when they are small and would never intentionally make them feel bad because their pace is different from most other children. Are we willing to extend the same grace and understanding to our older children, too?