We human beings simply can’t get everything right all the time!

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A few years ago, I did something I had never done before. I read the history of the world in two weeks. It was exciting, sad, thought-provoking, amazing, and thrilling. Let me summarize: God created the world. People messed up. Jesus came to fix it. God has it all under control. The best is yet to be.

So, why did I read all of that in two weeks? Because we were sending Ray’s second edition of Exploring World History to the printer and we were behind. Of course, one of the most important last tasks when we are getting a curriculum to our printer is proofreading and correcting. We have learned that a good way to catch mistakes is to proofread in pairs: two people sitting together, each with a review copy in hand. Both look at a printed copy while one person reads aloud. This time I was part of every team of two, which means that I was the only person who got the blessing of reading the whole thing in such a short time. Here we are: two proofreading partners.

EW (as we call it around the office) has 150 lessons and each lesson is about 4 to 6 pages long. With pictures on almost every page that is quite manageable one lesson at a time, but imagine reading 150 high school history lessons in a row. When you add in the introductory pages for each unit, I read well over 800 pages–and most of them aloud.

Now, think with me a minute about what a proofreader is trying to do–make sure that every picture and every word and indeed every letter is exactly right. During that proofreading session, we were reading well over 800 pages. Can you imagine how many words are on that many pages, not to mention how many letters?

We try to proofread perfectly, but we just can’t ever get every single letter exactly right. We keep trying. We proof and proof and proof again. One of my favorite proofreading oops happened when we first published America the Beautiful. Thankfully we just ordered a few hundred of that first printing. I call it the Noble Peach edition.

One day after the books came back, our daughter Bethany called me and said, “Mom, you have to laugh. You can’t get upset. You said that Woodrow Wilson won the Noble Peach Prize.” That’s right. That’s what it said. You see, you only have to mix up one letter in each word to turn Nobel Peace into Noble Peach. We fixed it; now it says “N-o-b-e-l   P-e-a-c-e.” Whew!

One thing that is true about us humans is that we just can’t get everything exactly right. It’s sad really when you think about what it was like when we were in school. Maybe some of you had perfect 100s and A’s on every single paper that you ever turned in. Most of us missed the mark–at least occasionally, right? And, then we had those awful red marks on our papers.

As homeschooling moms, isn’t it tough to know what to do about red marks? Do we rejoice that Seth got most of his problems right this time or do we point out every one that is wrong? What is a homeschooling mother to do? Pray for wisdom. Realize that the answer to that question won’t be the same every time for every child in every situation. Treat our kids the way we want to be treated.

And, by the way, Ray almost always proofreads this blog before it gets posted. He almost always finds mistakes. We human beings simply can’t get everything right all the time!

In everything, therefore, treat people
the same way you want them to treat you,
for this is the Law and the Prophets.
Matthew 7:12

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