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’
This is a pep talk I gave somewhere about how God takes the tasks that we do (as we offer them up to Him), no matter how mundane they may seem to us, and He uses them to transform the culture around us.
Women often give themselves a poor job description. This happens all the time. (“I’m just a stay-at-home mom. Excuse me for living.”) But God has given us good work to do and we should realize how much He values it and how effective it really is.
Scripture tells women to adorn themselves in good works (1 Tim. 2:9-10). A couple Continue reading ‘Give Yourself a Good Job Description’
Here is a lovely virtue that women are designed for. It isn’t in found in a list of virtues like some of the others we have discussed, but women are charged to be domestic, to be capable homemakers.
Domestic means simply, home-loving; enjoying household affairs; a devotion to home and family life.
Domesticity encompasses everything that has to do with managing a home.Women need to be trained to be domestic, just like they might be trained for any other job. Though women are designed for this, it does not follow that we know everything instinctively. It is a calling, not a hobby. The older women are to teach the younger women to be homemakers (Titus 2:4). That word maker is an important one. God is our Maker and He has given us the great privilege of making things in imitation of Him, whether it is a poem or a home. Women are given a glorious responsibility in homemaking.
Homekeeping refers to the nuts and bolts of managing a home, and homemaking has Continue reading ‘Home-Loving’
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