If you are the kind of woman who feels like you have more to do than is humanly possible, then I am here to reassure you that you are not alone. You are not even weird! It is often the case that although we can feel truly grateful that God has kindly given us a whole lot of responsibility, we can still be slightly (or vastly) overwhelmed at how we are going to be faithful over it all.
Apparently God wants us to be needy people, because He delights in giving us more grace. He is a bountiful Father, bestowing on and enabling His people to do what He calls them to do. Remembering this helps us keep our perspective when we start to feel overwhelmed and understaffed. Continue reading ‘Two Hands’
A woman will either be a blessing or a curse to her household: she is either building or demolishing according to Proverbs 14:1. The woman who has wisdom is constructing; the foolish woman who has no wisdom is destroying. There doesn’t appear to be a middle road; a woman is doing one thing or the other. The one results in peace and blessing; the other brings confusion and discord. The home will either be growing in beauty or on its way to becoming a heap of rubble.
What is it that makes the difference? The presence or absence of wisdom in the person given the responsibility of managing the home, and that is the woman. So where do we get this indispensable wisdom and what is it exactly? We know that the prerequisite for wisdom is the fear of the Lord. A God-fearing woman is teachable and receptive to godly instruction. Continue reading ‘Building Projects’
Where do we get this notion that being organized is next to godliness? I’m pretty sure we get it from magazines and ads in those magazines. And though they really may be great magazines full of super recipes and ideas that inspire us, they can also set us up to start laying guilt trips on ourselves. Something like this: “If I was really together, my closets would look like those featured in Martha’s Living, where stacks of sheets are tied with color-coded ribbons.” Just a little reminder here: Martha has fleets of housekeepers who wash and iron those sheets and keep them tied up with ribbons. You, on the other hand, do not.
Now I do not begrudge her. My hat’s off to her for all she has done to restore the honor due to the fine arts of domesticity. She obviously has a gift of organization, I really appreciate her creativity, and I read her magazine. But I’m just saying that my closets are not photogenic, and I don’t think I need to feel too crummy about it. Do you? Now, I do regularly try to rearrange them and tidy them up by making a run to Goodwill. But I feel pretty fantastic if all the sheets are washed and back on the beds. Ribbons? Hardly.
Christian women tend to be pretty hard on themselves in these areas of organization. I sometimes slip back into thinking that if only I could be more organized, then I would truly be holy (or rather, I would feel pretty holy). I remember telling my husband something like this years ago, and he replied with profundity: “What makes you think I would want to be married to you if you were more organized?” Now this made me think. Continue reading ‘How Organized Are Your Closets?’
I think sometimes women feel the need to justify their desire to make beautiful things with their hands. So I have a perfect couple of verses for you! Here it is in Exodus 35:25-26: “And all the women that were wise hearted did spin with their hands, and brought that which they had spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine linen. And all the women whose heart stirred them up in wisdom spun goats’ hair.”
The NKJ renders wise hearted as gifted artisans, and I am certainly not able to explain why. But in Exodus 28:3, where it speaks of the gifted artisans also, God refers to them as “whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom.” So I don’t feel I am taking a wild leap to say that women whose hearts have been filled with wisdom (wise-hearted women) are stirred up to make things. And though we no longer are making things for the tabernacle like the women in Exodus, we are making things for our homes, our children, our friends and family. And this is wise and good. Continue reading ‘Wise-Hearted Crafting’
In case you aren’t checking on Lady Kirkbay regularly, I wanted to send you over to see all the inspiring crafts the ladies are producing by the truck load. And Bekah posted a picture of her homemade chore chart which she calls “an attempt at managing the Merkle circus.” Be sure to check it out!
When my dad was a young man, he once went to pick up a young lady for a date, and while he waited for her, her mother hauled out her daughter’s hope chest to show my dad how much loot she had. Far from impressing him, had she been trying her best to scare him off, she could not have done anything that would have worked quite so well.
Though we don’t have the same culture-wide tradition of the hope chest anymore, the principle of a young woman gathering up stuff that will come in handy later is a really wise idea. (It just shouldn’t be used to impress the guys!) When my younger daughter was in college, she began accumulating quite a load of things for her future kitchen. She bought herself a big, beautiful, red kitchen aid mixer with the proceeds of a catering event, and she collected vintage tablecloths and aprons, and lots of kitchen gadgets. At one point I remember her saying something like, “I don’t have a hope chest. I have a presumption chest!” But she enjoyed using her pasta maker and her collection of cookboots, etc. while she was still living with us. Continue reading ‘The Presumption Chest’
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