You know…you’re title. When someone asks you what you do, how do you say it? And, why do you say what you say?
I’ve just been wondering…I think it’s interesting that we need a title.
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Posts tagged as:
homemaking
photo by afsilva
When people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word.
If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge [at his work]. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean…. I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it.
How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children [arithmetic], and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.
I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.
G.K. Chesterton
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Lately, I’ve been struggling with feeling that I’m not doing enough. I’ll plan my day and be very productive in the morning, but around one o’clock I begin to question myself.Did I do enough? Did I spend too much time browsing blogs? Should I have organized my sewing mess or baking? Was I productive enough?
And so on…
I’m a very performance-based person. Do things right. Do them on time. Do them perfectly. It’s something God has been working on with me, sometimes more forcefully than others. But as I’m making the transition from part-time teacher/wife/homemaker to full-time wife/homemaker (and mom) I’ve become more aware of how often I question how I spent my day and am seeing the danger in it as I approach this new season of life. If I continue to spend my mornings in productivity and my afternoons doubting if I did anything worthwhile I know I’ll go crazy and dig myself into selfish despair.
But this week I found some encouragement amidst my blogs.
Girl Talk has been doing a series on homemaking and two of their posts really spoke to me: Not Her Best and More Like Christ. Here’s a little tidbit, but definitely read the full posts:
Twentieth century British author G.K. Chesterton has liberating insight for all homemakers who feel pressure to excel in something besides homemaking. In an essay entitled “The Emancipation of Domesticity” he observed that woman is a “general overseer” in the home, and as such, she must be able to do many things well—she shouldn’t have to worry about being “the best” at something. Read here
Quoted from Noel Piper’s Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God:
Perhaps the deepest underlying personal factor in Helen’s tension was the need she felt to do her very best and, if possible, to be the very best. God called her to Africa where that was not possible. There were continuing lessons for her: learning to treat malaria by symptoms rather than with prescribed lab tests, having to operate without having been trained as a surgeon, needing to make bricks rather than spending the day with patients.
Perhaps that is an issue for some of us–struggling with the reality that God has called us to do less than we want to do or less than what we believe is best. [...] When God called Helen to less than she expected, he was helping her become like Christ, rather than like the best doctor or missionary she knew of. Who is it we want to be like?” (p. 172) Read here
And then, Simple Mom had a guest post from Small Notebook, and do you want to guess what it’s about?
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