House of Healing
“Frodo was now safe in the Last Homely House east of the Sea. That house was, as Bilbo had long ago reported, ‘a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep, or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all.’ Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear and sadness.” – JRR Tolkien
Living in a fallen world is full of dangers. As much as we like to think of the earth as fragile and in need of rescue, she’s no damsel in distress. Nature will end any of us without a thought and within a few minutes drive from our comfortable homes. What damage nature can do is nothing compared to the damage other humans can do to us, or that we can inflict on ourselves. Living in a fallen world is living a life full of hurt.
What are the two ditches we must avoid? Thinking we can save the world or thinking nothing matters. It’s easy to see the wounds of the world and want to do all in our power to save them as if we can bring heaven in all its purity down into our muck and somehow remain clean. Realizing that is impossible until we ourselves are made clean, it’s easy to throw up our hands and think, “What’s the point?” Why make an effort if it’s all just going to burn?
These are the two bogs that we must avoid. We must stay on the path that says, yes the world is going to burn, but my God—He’s so good—God has called me to a life of good works and sanctification. He’s called me, a homemaker, to manage my home, love my husband and children, and wash the feet of the saints. My good God, by example, filled our huge broken world with great beauty. He could have rightly left our lives here dank, dark, and hopeless post-flood. But He didn’t, He gave us the Noahic covenant. He filled this post-apocalypse world with beauty. He said children are a blessing. He gave us stories, trees, flowers, mountains, homes, friends, and so much more.
Avoid the bog of saving this world, hold it loosely, and avoid the bog of fatalism that thinks nothing matters if it’s all going to burn. Remember that even though everything around us has an expiration date, the human soul is eternal. Oh, ladies, our souls, and the souls of our people are eternal. That should inspire us to great acts of beauty, love, and healing. Our houses, plants, gardens, animals, throw pillows, and all the labor we pour into making beauty are going to be destroyed someday, but the souls we do it for will not. If that doesn’t elevate our labors, I don’t know what will. We are caretakers of souls and our homes are the hospitals.
Side Note: Really really chew on the idea that the people, the people, in our homes, all the friends, families, children, husbands, strangers, and church members are eternal beings. Let this drive you to prayer. Pray for great wisdom in tending to them because we can make wounds or we can bind them. And please know, I know you pray for your children, that the Lord would save them, please know, I do too. I pray for all of you in your work and I pray you will see the salvation of your children.
We often think, or maybe it’s just me, that healing happens in hospitals and is the purview of doctors and nurses. They’re the ones out saving lives with medicine and knowledge. For many, many years, I struggled with a fatalistic, Que Sera, Sera attitude toward health. I was terrified of the medical community. I loathed hospitals. I wanted nothing to do with them. Instead of taking responsibility for my health, I just kind of ignored it. I knew I didn’t want to be in a hospital getting things cut out of me, and I didn’t want a whole cabinet of drugs to get me through the day. But I didn’t replace it with anything…until my health took a drastic turn and I had to get help. Thankfully, the Lord put people in my life who opened different doors I didn’t even know existed, and down the rabbit hole I fell into alternative health.
Fast-forward over ten years, and my husband notes that if it wasn’t for me, he would be a bachelor living on Taco Bell and microwave dinners, overweight, feeling bad, on medication, and not knowing what he could do about it. Or, if I was working full-time outside the home, we would both be living that way, with maybe a home-cooked meal now and then, but not enough to counteract all the bad things we had to put in our bodies because we had no time.
One of the greatest intangible benefits we can bring our people is to make our homes places of healing. Healing doesn’t start in hospitals with doctors and nurses. Healing starts in the home in the hands of homemakers.
Homemaking allows a woman to build her knowledge of health maintenance, always spiraling up into better and better choices for her people, building on past knowledge and experience.
Generational homemaking allows for that experience to be passed from crone to matron to maid again and again and again. I’ve been reading herbalist books and many of them talk about how they learned from their grandmothers and mothers. Generations of healing.
Now look at your world. Chronic health issues, mental health issues, a world filled with weak and hurting people. Look at what happened. Women abandoned the post. From generation to generation we left our homes. We left them unguarded and ungardened. We kept having kids but we abandoned them to government institutions and microwave dinners and we can’t figure out why they have health issues and mental issues.
I know it is more complicated than that, that there is a lot of government regulation in our food industries that are a big problem, and so forth and so on. I’m not saying it’s the only factor, but it is one of the factors. Being a dedicated, intentional homemaker is to actually tend to the actual people who live within our walls as eternal souls and finite bodies. You can’t tell me that abandoning that job did not affect the lives of the next generation and the next generation.
Healing begins in the home and rests in the hands of the homemaker.
If we are doing our work of preparing good and nourishing meals as best we can within the bounds of our locations and budgets, if we are filling our homes with good stories, good music, and good conversation, if we are praying, praising, and training ourselves in truth and sharing it with our people, think about how much more healthy our people will be.
Are our homes cures for weariness? Do we rest and encourage rest? Do we mentally, emotionally, and spiritually rest? Do we create environments of rest? Do we create real and wholesome safe spaces for our husbands? For our children? For our friends? Are our homes remedies for sadness? Do we lift those bowed down? Do we have smiles, hugs, laughter, and play? Do we have quiet, tenderness, and hope for those who are burdened?
How my heart longs to have my home be just such a place, and yet how inadequate do I feel to do this work. Two things are needed. One, understand that this work starts in our hearts. We can’t be the hands that heal if we aren’t working on ourselves first. We have to work on our attitudes first. We have to buy into this work. We have to value the tending of these few souls. Second, we pray. We beat down the door of the King who does have healing hands and plead for help to follow His example. We pray for the terrible gift of seeing all the ways we’re not doing this, for the ways we make our to-do list more important than our people, for the ways we kick against the work and are discontent, for the lies we’ve believed that say it doesn’t matter or we can save the world if we abandon our homes, for our fears, our unbelief, our laziness, our lack of self-control, and our ever-destructive pride.
Ladies, don’t let anyone tell you that our work isn’t important. It may be a very slow boil, it may be a lifelong endeavor, it may be stained with more sin than we can ever see, but it is important. Our people aren’t going to find healing and help in sterile hospitals. They’re going to find help and healing, Lord willing, playing in our yards, eating our food, drinking our cups of cool water, and sitting at our tables. All the therapists in the world cannot make up for one dedicated homemaker determined to help her people. All the doctors and nurses in the world can’t make up for one homemaker loving her people.
Whether we’re full-blown herbalists, crunchy hippies, students of Western medicine, or a mix of both, we are in a much better position to actually put to good use the rich knowledge man has accumulated about our bodies and our minds for our small hordes than anyone else. Yes, we need help from our doctors and chiropractors, absolutely, but we are still the ones who take that information and apply it to the specific needs of our people.
Finally ladies, lest we be overcome with pride, or burdened by this weight, hold fast to the fact that we are but weak reflections of the true Houses of Healing: local churches. Hold tightly to the fact that the great Physician isn't us, but our King Jesus Christ, who has healing hands. Homemaking carries great weight, and yet, it is only a faded picture of Christ's great work. From that truth, we can courageously do our earthly tending of souls.
Look at this, ladies, look at this work. There is so much more to homemaking than just being the maid and the nurse if we simply buy into it and dedicate ourselves to it.
