Gaining new perspective....preferably with dessert!

Teacher moms and homeschool moms rarely get the opportunity to "run out for lunch" with a girlfriend. Today, however, this mom is going to! A unexpectedly met new friend, a chance to have adult conversation, and followed up with a Madison and Mom field trip to the Huntsville Botanical Gardens....well, its just going to be a nice day. At twelve, Madison is able to stay by herself for an hour or so, with our neighbor next door on standby, so when the opportunity to go to lunch came with the new friend came, I said "yes!"
Perspective is often the issue for me when I begin to feel my world is getting smaller and smaller. Between the inside of the washer, the kitchen sink,the inside of the four walls of this house, and the inside of the oven, it seems I see alot of closed spaces regularly.....when I am really frustrated I will tell my husband that I feel like I've been assigned to endless work in solitary confinement with a twelve year old. (Pitiful aren't I....a bit lacking on the "Thank you for bringing me home...I so love my life side" ) As delightful as she is, and as much as I have endlessly to do between work and home, well a little perspective is what is called for. Sometimes that perspective is to work with a single mom and hear her issues (I remember them oh so well) sometimes its to visit hospice and to remember what isn't my issue (and be thankful for it) but mostly and on most days, if I simply get out a bit with someone every few weeks or so....I'm good to go.
We all get so used to our own perspective and often forget to realize its not the ONLY one. My son tells me regularly that my perspective is like a sit com from the sixties.....that children should be beyond good....the house tidy(well if that's my perspective I daily face failure!)....and everyone dressed for dinner.....what he doesn't realize is that WAS my childhood....and somehow my mother managed to rear us to believe life would end if we talked back or behaved disrespectfully....I would have never dreamed of crossing many of the lines he challenges me with! Yet, my children are all "good children" ...they are kind, thoughtful, and caring of others, good students and worthwhile people. A few rough spots here and there that go with being children and teens, but that's the whole point isn't it? We aren't meant to be perfect or to be born with wisdom of an adult....that's what childhood, teenage years are for.....to learn and experience as they become older.
Perspective......one has to be careful that we don't long for a view that is not truly our desired one. For years I thought if only I had this or that vehicle, the family activities I longed for would be so much easier to deal with. If this or that wall was such and such a color I'd so be more willing to be in the room and keep it spotless.....I'm the queen of "if onlys"....but this past year, God is helping me gain new perspectives....to learn to be more content in whatever situation I am facing.....to trust that whatever is before me, happening to me, He has covered and is part of a plan for my life.(its a bumpy flight this new flight plan, remember Blissdom Blues.... Its a tough thing to digest, that God knows each and everything long before it happens, good, bad, and beautiful....but this perspective has indeed allowed me to find a peace I have never known before....and most days, enjoy my life just as God is currently designing it!
God is good to us, I am only beginning to fathom his deep love for me.