When HearthKeeping Feels Unimportant
Life can come at us sideways sometimes. Not in a faith-shredding way, but a pounding, relentless, never-ending beating of trials over and over. Health issues, job changes, job loss, huge maintenance issues, natural disasters, loss of friends and family, moves, schedule upheavals, and even the struggles of others can turn our normal on its head. Sometimes things happen that affect how we tend our hearths and homes. Sometimes life gets so big we feel like tending our hearth and homes is not important. How could washing the sheets be important when my life is falling apart? How can cooking a yummy and nourishing meal be important when our families, extended families, and churches are facing great struggles?
2020 and 2021 seem to be the years where all the ordinary struggles are overwhelmed by the flood of our culture as a whole. Our culture constantly trickles down upon us. We’re always balancing being in the world and not of it, balancing between the two kingdoms in which we exist. 2020 flooded our homes. We could no longer just shut our doors and open our umbrellas against feminism, toxic masculinity, all the gender lies, and other issues. Suddenly our tables bore long discussions about masks, social distancing, quarantining. Our lives shifted from out and about, to hardly out at all. It’s not that before we were ignoring the culture’s influence. I think we’ve all been in the fight for what is right and true. But in 2020, our homes were invaded. Families homeschooled whether they liked it or not. You have to wear a mask. You have to social distance. You’re isolated. Don’t visit your elderly. Don’t plan funerals or weddings. Don’t get sick. People lost jobs and other people lost connections. My husband, whose favorite thing was to eat out, hasn’t eaten out in months. (The hard part is we’re growing accustomed to the isolation, which isn’t good.) We’ve all had to deal with how strange our world has gotten. The influence of our culture has stopped trickling. The dams burst and our homes were flooded. We, little HearthKeepers, have had to weigh and decide what is right and what isn’t. Will we comply or not? Do we know why or why not? On top of all that, being an amateur historian right now is severely uncomfortable.
Our faith is 100% firm. We trust wholeheartedly in Christ’s love for us and our churches. We trust that whatever happens will be for the good of the church. Preserving cultures isn’t God’s end all and be all plan. Growing His Church is and He knows what will do that best, even if that is our judgment and not our rescue, culturally speaking.
What makes us doubt the validity of HearthKeeping is the loss of our little lives. I like living a quiet life. I like living a small life that doesn’t impact the world. When we face the loss of income, retirement, dreams, plans, security, or just everyday normalcy, what do we do? Is what we’re doing important in the face of the harsh reality of life in a fallen and failing world? If the world gets harsher, which history teaches us it will, will being a HearthKeeper matter?
What do we, gentle and quiet spirits who aren’t afraid of anything fearful, do when life gets too big and invasive? Is there magic in what we do or not?
There is great, deep, old magic here.
First, we must face our concerns realistically. We live in a world of sinners who are sinning. We live in a broken world. A broken world. This world isn’t our home. But it is our place of pilgrimage. We do have skin in the game. We don’t get to just shut the door on the night. We do need to shine a light. We can’t pretend life is always unicorns and butterflies. Sometimes life is a pile of poo that stinks. Acting like we aren’t discouraged, frightened, concerned, or struggling isn’t being extra Christian-y. Christ himself sweated great drops of blood when He faced the cross. That’s some intense anxiety. Life is hard and then you die. Acting like it isn’t doesn’t make you holy or help anyone. We must be realistic. Being a believer isn’t a head-in-the-clouds belief. Being a believer isn’t a guarantee against suffering. In fact, it’s a promise of suffering.
When your child is sick, your husband is without work, the pipes have burst, or the budget is tight, we aren’t called to stoically face them as if they aren’t affecting us emotionally, nor are we called to say ‘blessed’ every two and a half seconds as if being a believer is a walk through beautiful, thick St. Augustine grass on a spring afternoon. We can be honest, realistic, and brutal. You don’t have to hide your struggles, sufferings, groanings, or tears. What you do have to do is not complain, murmur, give way to anxiety, or gossip.
We don’t live in a Hallmark movie and acting like we do, as women, helps no one. It actually endangers everyone. How can you help your fellow sisters in the fight if you are blissfully pretending there isn’t one because you think that somehow it’s unchristian to feel negative things? How can we pray for each other, bear one another’s burdens if we’re not sharing those burdens? If you think life as a Christian is a promise of ease, you are in for a nasty shock.
Secondly, when the road becomes unbearable, we continue to create beauty and comfort as an act of rebellion. I’m not kidding. We roll up our sleeves and tend our homes. Do you know what our enemies hate? Wise women loving and tending our hearths. This, this work we do of cooking, cleaning, loving, raising, beautifying, serving, and so much more, is an act of defiance and rebellion against the world, her lies, and her darkness. It requires great courage to provide comfort during chaos. It takes great courage to stay at the work when the world is crumbling. We feel just a bit now, the sting that comes with homemaking because the world doesn’t love us. The world says that being a homemaker is a failure. They say that tending your hearth is just an excuse for laziness. They don’t want us here. They don’t want us loving our husbands, raising our children, growing our plants, cooking our food, nesting, creating and holding memories. Why? Because those things produce strong families and strong second generations. Those things bind us together on a deep level and people bound together by food, drink, and shared stories are hard to separate. This is why serving your church is such a mighty thing. Feminists complain that women in the church are relegated to kitchen and nursery duty. Where do you think binding happens? The next generation of faithful laymen and women, deacons and deacons’ wives, pastors and pastors’ wives are raised in our homes. The feeding of people is one of the most gracious and gathering gifts we can enact. Subtle, small, insignificant things like cooking, cleaning, washing, and serving add up to a group of people united together. That’s not insignificant.
Third, tending our hearths even when life is everyday-difficult or a burden that seems unbearable, when schedules change or when the world changes, is supporting the fighters. They need hot food, too. Our frontline men and women need hot food, warm homes, places of healing, and solitude. When you’re on the front line it’s easy to lose the big picture. Coming off it, even for a few hours refreshes that perspective. It reminds the front line of why they fight. The people on the front lines are bearing with soul-breaking exhaustion, whether that’s a pastor, deacon, law enforcement, grass-roots politics, husbands, or fellow homemakers in the middle of great suffering. HearthKeepers, difficult times are our time to shine. We are the candle flaming up in the darkness, hearth to hearth to hearth. We are here so that when our front line steps back they have hot showers, a hot meal, clean clothes, laughter, hugs and kisses, beauty, and quiet endurance. If your husband loses his job, you can help him stay in the fight. If your kids have been at school all day, you can remind them of the truth with good stories. If you have a man engaged in a bigger fight, like law enforcement or serving the church, you can provide nourishment. If you have friends suffering from health issues, mental issues, loss, or other deep trials, you can provide a refuge with a hot meal dropped off on their doorstep, no bra required. ☺
Flowers, clean laundry, candles, a handwritten note, soup, bread, cookies: these are our weapons. These and so much more, because our weapons are unique to each of us, but homey, ordinary things are our weapons.
I don’t know about your church situation, but we have members who have been isolated due to health or Covid-fear for months now. Months. Almost a year. We’re the homemakers. Are we reaching out to them, easing their isolation? We have men and women fighting for our country. You may not be into politics. That’s fine. You may not have a clue what is going on right now. That’s fine. But, you’re still a homemaker armed with many weapons that can be used to support, however small, those who are fighting. Single ladies, you are in an enviable situation because you have time and flexibility those with children and husbands don’t. You can pray. You can find ways to reach out. You can be a holder. You can hold those around you even if you’re isolated yourself. You can sacrifice your time, money, and abilities in ways a married homemaker can’t. You can help in a way women with children can’t. Think about how you’re using your love of hearth and home to serve others because all these things are helpful. Do you keep up with people in your family, community, and church? Do you know what they’re enduring right now? Do you try to help how and where you can? Do you pray?
Let’s not be caught off guard by hard times. It’s not radical or extreme to think about what you would do in a bad situation. What will you do if the mildest to worst thing happens? Do you have a support network? I listen to a lot of true crime; shocking, I know. One of the things I hear over and over is about people who are vulnerable because they have no support network. A support network takes work. You have to invest yourself in people, not just wait to be invested in. Do you know who is in a unique position to develop rigorous, lively, strong support networks?
We are. We women. HearthKeepers.
On the side, we need to take care to not allow our fears to emasculate our men.
Do you hush them, ignore them, wish they weren’t so prone to loud, strong words? Do we understand that our culture doesn’t understand lawful violence because we’ve decided all violence is wrong, always? Do we understand that our culture equates masculine strength with abuse, always? A strong man isn’t abusive when he stands up. A strong man isn’t abusive when he disciplines. A strong man isn’t abusive when he takes down a bully. He’s being a man. Do we embrace and encourage manliness or do we demand that men kowtow to our fears?
We’re nurturers. We’re the see-ers and holders. We’re the beautifiers. Sometimes manliness seems like it doesn’t see, nurture, or do anything but destroy. Do we see that that isn’t always wrong? Do we encourage our men to lead or nag them into sitting quietly? This is a hard thing to understand and act on. Our fears and our nagging can be so passive aggressive, so subtle. We want everyone to be safe, happy, and fed. If we don’t control our fear, we will put manliness in a corner and call it abuse. We will become abusers.
Our homes need masculine courage. Their courage is different than ours. It’s scary. It’s not flowers but the sword. Their weapons are different than ours. Their jobs are different than ours. Their minds work differently than ours. Do we women give our men room to stand up and fight whether that’s not abiding by a mask mandate or teaching our sons to punch a bully in the nose? Do we love our standing men even if it is terrifying to think that they might attract unwanted attention or offend someone?
We need to make sure our men know we love them in their strength, even and especially, when that strength is a little bit scary.
(This is not saying it’s okay for a man to be out of control. This is saying that a good man is one who has his strength under control, who knows when to be gentle and knows when to fight. Aslan is scary. Captain America is intimidating. Even Christ attacked the men selling in the temple. True masculinity has an appropriate intensity about it.)
Life is a fight. But that fight isn’t always obvious, bloody, or even physical. When HearthKeeping feels unimportant, it’s time to remind ourselves of the magic and power we wield as women in our homes. This is our battle. Let’s be brave!
