Gatekeepers
Be ever so extra careful what you whisper to a writer. Take care of how you behave. You may strike a chord and off she’ll run. It’s as dangerous as giving your real name to the fey. Just take care. You’ve been warned.
Sarah Gabriel mentioned to me the other day that a podcast, The Homemaker’s Club, said women are the gatekeepers of their homes and so now I’m chewing, masticating, ruminating on that idea.
Side Note: Yes, Sarah and I spend a huge amount of time talking about homemaking, researching homemaking, reading and listening to things about homemaking, and talking about our homes. I highly recommend you incorporate some sort of homemaking education into your life. It will help you stay encouraged, give us all things to discuss, and might prompt me to write more articles. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, get you a knitting circle, homemakers, and talk about the work we do with each other!
Gatekeeping has fallen on hard times just like common sense, discernment, independent thought, and self-control. We have truly become so open-minded our brains have fallen out. Gatekeeping not only preserves the purity of what is being protected, but it also protects the outside from the inside. We’re not meant to all be included in everything. It’s wonderful for men and women to work together, but it’s also good for both sexes to do things with their own sex. It’s good for a family to be ‘only us’ at times. It’s good to have spaces where things can be discussed civilly because a gatekeeper is keeping an eye on things, and it’s good to have it clearly communicated to us what something is about so we can decide if it’s for us or not.
It is wise for the military to have intense basic training. It not only makes sure our military is strong and ready to go, that we’re the best of the best, sir, with honors, but it also keeps out those who would be a danger to themselves and the rest of the team. If someone can’t make it through training, that’s exactly what they are: a danger to everyone. They will get people killed, possibly a lot of people. If they make it through basic, through the gatekeeping, then it is safer for them and everyone else. A high standard of gatekeeping isn’t mean, it’s safe.
Both husbands and wives function as gatekeepers in their homes. Because we women tend to be physically in the home more, and more focused on the micro-management of the home, we’re often the gate by which things enter the home. Food, clothing, cleaning products, music, décor, and the mood of the home are under our administration. We’re the ones with a pulse on the ‘aroma’ of the home, as another podcaster put it.
As Sarah and I talked about this idea, she mentioned, “A wall with no gate is a prison. A gate with no wall is useless.”
A gate is welcoming but also denotes a certain seriousness to those who wish to enter. A gate says come in, but understand we expect you to respect this place.
We tend the fires. We keep the gate. We should be welcoming yet protective. Our homes are a safe refuge for our families first. If our people don’t feel safe, loved, seen, and valued, if they’re being fed false stories and seeing ugliness, then we’re not gatekeeping properly. And yes, this means we have to exclude. We may have to decide our homes don’t need XYZ because it’s creating unhealthy fumes in our homes. Close the gate.
But a keeper is wise and welcoming. Homes should be strong enough to endure hard times and hard people. We should be opening and closing. If our gate is always closed, we have created a prison. But, if the gate is set with no guarding wall and no locks, the gate is pointless. We must be both.
The catch?
We must practice discernment and there are only 10 hard and fast rules.
The rub?
We’re going to make mistakes. We’re going to let in what we shouldn’t and endanger our homes, or we’ll shut out what we shouldn’t and hurt our homes and others. We only learn discernment through failing to be discerning.
The rub rub?
People. Sinful people. Sometimes the people in the home are the biggest danger to our homes. From grumpy mornings to sickness to broken relationships, these are the muddy, muddy waters that we gatekeep in, ladies. They require strength, courage, resilience, forgiveness, wisdom, and an almost unearthly love. It’s not very often we get to just kick ‘toxic’ people out of our lives. We will have to repent, forgive, aid, guard, and garden our hearts so that we don’t react sinfully to sin.
Practically speaking, what are some ways we gatekeep?
Healthcare: This is a subject everyone seems to care about, but rarely is it pointed out that healthcare starts in the home, not the hospital, and is often the task of the HearthKeeper.
Whether we buy drugs off the shelf or cultivate herbs, feed our families McDonald's, or buy only raw milk and organic vegetables (hopefully doing whatever we do with temperance and prudence) we’re often the gatekeepers of our family’s health because we keep a pulse on everyone: husbands, kids, and even friends. We are the ones who check fevers and try to relieve pain or discomfort. This has, for good reason, been a hallmark of true femininity for generations: healing. We mustn’t push it away because it’s a stereotype or misjudge it because we have no interest in the medical field. There is a world of difference between managing the health of our people and getting a nursing degree. Gatekeeping our health and our people’s health is rewarding work that will stretch our abilities and teach us lots of new things.
Media: If our homes work even moderately close to what is considered average, we will be the media gatekeepers for ourselves and our children for at least part of the day. This is guided and guarded by our husband’s standards, but there are unmarried women, women with lots of delegated authority, and single moms out there seeking to make their homes. Because we’re the home managers we’re often the media managers. We need to keep a pulse on the media we consume and the effect it has on us and the people in our homes. Gatekeep, guarded but welcoming, your media. Music, podcasts, books, shows, games, movies, social media, and news all set an ambiance in your home. They all impact our souls and the souls around us. Gatekeeping doesn’t see potential danger and deny everyone entrance, but it is careful about who and what it lets in. Gatekeeping doesn’t only let in what it agrees with. The conversations media produces are educational, worthwhile, and uniting. Again, gatekeeping is using discernment about when to be open and when to close.
Time: We must gatekeep our time. Are we using the gift of time well? Do we work, recreate, and rest? Do we appropriately hibernate and socialize? Do we overwhelm ourselves with unrealistic goals? Are we lazy with no goals at all? Is our home wound tight as a drum and run like a military boot camp? Or are we so loosey-goosey no one has seen the 3-year-old in hours? We’re the managers of our homes, we should manage our time. How we do that directly affects the feel, mood, and aroma of our home.
Rest: One of the greatest things we can gatekeep in our homes is rest. The whole world is frantic with too much to do and too much stimulation. Be the gatekeeper. Open and close. Don’t simply open up until the whole family is so fatigued they can’t think straight or be civil or even recognize that they’re a family. Don’t be so closed that people mistake you for a hermitage or a cult or something weird. It is our job to know what we and our people can handle. We must guard and garden rest. Do our homes feel off? Go outside! Declare a day of nothing or an afternoon or an hour, and lay out some quilts and get some sun. Are our homes a mess? Blitz clean with the whole crew so everyone can relax.
Once we start to think about it, we women gatekeep almost every aspect of our homes. Not as the King and Lord, but as the Queen and Lady. We measure and weigh out, sample and simmer all of the home. Are we doing a good job? Do we need to polish anything that has grown dim or refresh what has grown stuffy? Have things changed in our home dynamic that requires routine changes? Are we failing to see those needed updates? Are we gatekeeping proactively? Have we reached a new phase of life that opens some things up and closes others? Do we have the courage to not be an all-inclusive home? Can we close our gates when needed? Do we have the courage to open our gates and not become a prison?
If we ever need something to elevate what we do, to show us how important what we do is, we should think of ourselves as the gatekeepers. We’re preserving the purity and setting the expectations of the world for what they’ll find if they pass through our gates. Guarding but also letting in. A gate, unlike a shield wall, will open.
