Homemakers

A young woman once told me, “Homemaking is such a brainless task! Dishes, laundry, food preparation, diapers… I would get so bored.” As she talked, memories began to flood my mind, and a very different picture of homemaking forms….

My view of a homemaker starts with my mother. Mothers make and hold the family together, you know. My dad, with his endless ideas and plans, may have given me the spark of life and adventure that runs in my blood, but my mother gave me a picture of what a fulfilling job homemaking can be. My very earliest memories are of my parents together. I remember Mama making breakfast and Daddy singing songs about Mama being the “sweetest one” in the world. Mama would plot and plan to make special things for Daddy, things he would especially like. Once, when Daddy came back from a business trip to Alaska, he brought back a lemon muffin that he particularly enjoyed. Mama said, “Abigail, try this muffin with me and see if you can tell what flavorings are hidden in it.” Mama taught me how to taste something and figure out what ingredients were inside, so we could make the item ourselves. Mama must have saved Daddy thousands of dollars by taking his favorite store-bought items and learning how to make them—usually with better taste—from scratch. When she would succeed, Daddy would crow over her accomplishments like she was a queen.

Mama was always busy and nearly always humming or singing a song. Besides cooking up all those delicacies for Daddy, she homeschooled my sister and me. Mama read us stories, and listened to us read. She had us cut pictures out of magazines for noun and verb books. Her kitchen table was always covered with some project. Mama would see a two-dollar dollhouse at a garage sale as a fantastic project and spend hours with her girls painting it to fix it up. She taught us how to make curtains and bedspreads and provided us with books that showed us how to turn sponges into couches. She oohed and aahhed over the creative things we did and kept a careful eye on everything we learned. Once, working on my dollhouse, I strung “Christmas lights” (it was actually ribbon with little fabric balls) all over my house. Mama was a little quiet when I showed her my latest invention and then she said, “Abigail, don’t you think that looks a little fancy? Would we put that on our real house?” That’s all she said, but I took down those “Christmas lights” and never put them up again. Mama knew the danger of doing things in play that we considered wrong to do in “real life.”

In the summertime, Mama gave us bonnets and buckets and away we went to pick berries. Strawberries came first, then raspberries, cherries, blueberries and peaches, and last, marionberries and blackberries. Some women may consider berry picking brainless, but because of my mother, berry picking is a season I still look forward to each summer. Mama taught us that it took careful planning in the summer to have your pantry and freezer filled all winter. One year my sister and I waxed very enthusiastic about picking peaches, picking nearly 400 lbs. That was two or three times more than the amount our family of four needed for a winter. Mama smiled at our enthusiasm and paid for the peaches. It took the three of us four days straight (with hardly any sleep) to can/freeze/dry the peaches before they rotted in the hot August weather. I think we had enough peaches for at least two years after, but for some reason we picked peaches again the next year.

I do not remember ever going to a baby-sitter while Mama went shopping or had free time. When we were little, she took us with her to do grocery shopping and all her errands. I know we must have tried her patience and the trips would certainly have been less work without us, but mothering was her job, and she never considered leaving us behind. I remember trying to read the labels off the cans, and as we grew older, sometimes she’d have us figure up the total that was in the cart. Although the library was not a place Mama grew up visiting, Daddy thought it was important for us, so our grocery trips often included a trip to the library. Mama taught herself how to use the library and found books on cooking, gardening, sewing, and soap-making that enhanced her homemaking job. Mama was always trying to be a better homemaker. She taught my sister and I that there is so much to learn about homemaking that she had just started to scratch the surface.

I grew up thinking that homemaking was the most wonderful job in the world for a woman. In a homemaker’s day, you might be a secretary taking down business calls for your self-employed husband. You could be a scientist learning what makes the best meringues on a lemon pie that does not “weep” liquid, or a seamstress making tailor-made clothes that look professional. Mother always had a quest for wanting to sew faster. She would talk to professional seamstresses for hints and ideas. You can become a biologist gardener that studies the soil and learns the best nutrients for growing certain plants and vegetables. You can be a professional house cleaner, developing the best system ever invented. You can have that great joy of little arms around your neck, telling you that you are the best mother in the world. Isn’t that worth more than any self-esteem-boosting job anywhere?

Homemaking—a waste of brains? A boring job that buries you at home? That depends on your vision. Is it really that fulfilling to be a secretary at a law office? Is it so very exciting to be a vet that works on sick animals day after day? To bring home a paycheck of considerable size, is that what life is about?

When I was a young teenager, I remember that the example of my mother made me think that making a home for my husband and children was all I ever wanted to be. I loved to cook, tried my best to sew (something that was frustrating for me!), and even enjoyed things like washing windows and learning the laundry. Somewhere along the line though, homemaking became less glamorous. Perhaps it was because I didn’t have a husband, and it seemed like one would never appear. Why learn to keep house for one’s self? Youth is so impatient. I began to think about school—higher schooling. I began to see shortcomings in my parent’s way of home schooling and decided that perhaps private school was a better method of becoming educated. I began tutoring and working my way to become a teacher. There was nothing wrong in this, but perhaps my focus was off in the fact that I contended that being involved in ministerial work was more fulfilling than being a wife and mother. I felt that I did not want to be tied down to “just my family” someday. I wanted to tell the gospel—and there was nothing wrong with this, except that I couldn’t imagine how I was going to minister to others while being a wife and mother, and tried to combine in theory the roles of a single woman and a married woman. I really was pretty rock-hard about still being in ministry after I was married and had children. I said I would only marry a man who was into the same ministry as well and we’d do it together. (Guess I skipped all those passages in the Bible about being his help meet?) God knew that I was sincere in what I believed, and He also knew how to change me.

Early one spring, I became the mother to a newborn baby girl. I was appointed guardian with the intention of adoption, bringing her straight home from the hospital. I was still teaching school. I spent a week with my new daughter after she was born, but because it was still the middle spring term of school, I had to go back. My daughter was seven days old the morning I took her to my parents’ house to be cared for by my sister while I was at school. I’ll never forget that morning. I laid my sleeping newborn daughter into my sister’s arms and kissed her goodbye. Near panic welled up into my heart as I thought of the eight hours I would be gone from her. I cried all the way to school that morning and every day after that for at least a week. I prayed that God would help me do the “job of my dreams” because it was still my job.

I’ve got a stubborn personality, but God completely changed my heart and helped me to realize that the job of being a keeper at home, is the only happy one for a woman, because in God’s word that is the work He has outlined for us. It is the enemy that tells us we are wasting our brains. The devil knows what a wonderful plan God has designed in having the women be keepers at home. It is the most fulfilling, self-esteem-boosting, interesting, and creative job out there for a woman. The enemy wants to rob mothers of their joy, telling them they are wasting their lives on the husband and children. A woman’s ministry is loving her husband and training her children about the real virtues in life. A woman’s ministry is being a living example of a stay-at-home wife and mother to all her neighbors and those she comes in contact with. My mother had countless women visit her. Most of them envied my mom. She was happy and they envied her marriage, because most of the time, theirs were falling apart. I remember mom teaching other women how to can fruit, and we weren’t always alone when we went to pick berries. Some women wanted to learn how to sew, and Mama was always happy to share her expertise. Most of the time, though, they just wanted to talk, and take Mama’s time. She always took time to listen to other women (although the phone did go off the hook during school time). Mama would do daycare and counsel the mothers to quit their jobs to take care of their children themselves. Very rarely would this happen, but she always told them if they cared to listen. Now that my sister and I are grown and away from home, Mama’s time is even more taken up with counseling women. Sometimes mothers of my dad’s tutoring or piano students come to talk to Mama. Recently, a broken woman, deep in sin, called my mom and asked her why life was so hard. Mama has a ministry, right there in her home. Her ministry springs out of being a stay-at-home wife and mother.

If you are standing on the brink of life, with all the decisions that come with being a youth, choose God’s way. The beauty of a career is painted in bold colors by the world, but you will find that when you choose that way, the beautiful colors disappear, and reality is not what it was painted to be. You can never find happiness in the job of your dreams.

Dear mother, are you discouraged with the challenges of being a stay-at-home mom? Does leaving your child with a baby-sitter seem a small price for a few hours of quietness? Embrace your calling. If your mother did not stay at home with you, think of all the memories you want to make with your children that you missed. Seek to please your husband. Treat him like a king. Fix the foods that he likes. Dress the way he wants you to dress (if it is modest and pleasing to God). Arrange the house the way he likes it and finds it comfortable. Don’t think about yourself and how to make you happy, focus on your husband and your children. Mama says that making your husband happy will make you happy. Establish a story time with the children and talk to them throughout the day. I knew I could always talk to my mother, anytime, and she would listen. You don’t have to be a super woman. Enjoy quiet moments with the children—braiding your daughter’s hair, telling a Bible story, admiring your son’s dirt city, and tasting a bit of that mud pie. There is no greater job than training the hearts and minds of little eternal beings. Stop wishing you were a missionary. Did the mother of Betty Stam spend her days wishing she could be someone great, or did she train her daughter to love God? God wants to use you, right there in your home, caring for your fussy baby. Someday your baby girl is going to be a woman. What image of womanhood will you have portrayed to her?

For those of you young women who are out there saying, “But I don’t have a husband. I don’t have a family. Why should I learn to be a keeper at home? Why can’t I pursue a career while I’m waiting?”

I want you to listen to this scripture. “I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house.”* (1 Timothy 5:14) God has said in His word that it is His will for us, as young ladies, to marry, bear children and guide our homes. For those of us who are not married, perhaps it would be well for us to seek God to prepare us for our calling. God will not give us husbands if our hearts are not at home. I am aware that God does not call every person to marriage, but certainly He intends the majority to be married. Seek God’s way and follow His path. It is certainly not wrong to be a teacher, florist, baker, cake decorator, house cleaner, work in a greenhouse or sewing shop, but it is the attitude of the heart that is important. Are we learning these skills to better prepare ourselves for our future homes? Or are we selfishly pursuing a career and seeking fulfillment in a paycheck? We are only given so much preparation time. It is difficult to learn to shop with a baby and a couple of toddlers hanging on your skirts. Yes, you can take a cooking class at 55 years old, but how much are you going to have to give to others if you have to spend your later life learning the skills you should already know?

So many young people I meet in life just seem to sort of “fall in” to being wives and husbands and parents. They waste their youth, but then life “happens” to them and they find themselves married. This is not God’s way. He has a plan for your life, a future designed, and a path to get you to the place He wants you to be. But God only does the planning. It is us up to us to do the choosing.

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God has a plan for every man and nation;
God has a plan for every lost creation;
Often that plan I cannot always see,
But, if I trust Him, He’ll make it clear to me.

I want my life to magnify the precious Son of God,
I want my life to glorify the path that I have trod,
I want to walk so all the world can see
Christ only, always, living each day in me.