Indispensable

Back in our 20s, my hubby and I owned a set of designer-consignment boutiques. We successfully managed our business for just over ten years and they’re both still successful today.

One of the things we quickly learned was that all employees had to be viewed as dispensable. We loved our employees, always sought to encourage, grow, and appreciate them, but we couldn’t see them as indispensable or our business would fail the minute they couldn’t be there, had to be let go, or decided to leave.

The only indispensable person on the team was me and it was awful. I hated that customers wouldn’t shop if I wasn’t there. It was unbearable pressure. The reason we finally sold was that we couldn’t disengage me from the business and still own it. We had to make a clean break and walk away.

Here is the takeaway: no matter how successful or how much you love your career, you are dispensable. This is especially true the lower down on the totem pole you are. If you are a minimum wage employee or just above that, you can be replaced quite easily. You have to be, or the company would fail. It’s not personal; it’s just good business sense. Even if you’re in upper management you’re still replaceable. You may have accolades, bonuses, benefits, and awards, but if you quit, got sick, or were in an accident, they’d fill your shoes in short order, and possibly with someone better. This is the real world. It’s not a lack of appreciation on the part of the company. The company must be able to continue regardless of who is doing the work with as little upset as possible. This is the real world.

We’re told the only fulfillment and happiness we can achieve is in our careers, but how often are we told how replaceable we are in that career?

Do you want to be irreplaceable? Do you want to work someplace with lasting benefits, constant room for growth, and where you can truly change the course of history and be, for good or ill, an influence on our world?

Go home!

Home and family are the only work we can engage in where we’re irreplaceable without it being a crushing burden. Even if you die and your husband re-marries, it won’t be the same because it will be a different soul, a different woman, managing the home, not you.

Seriously, visit three different homes and they’ll be different because a different woman lives there and creates that dwelling.

Homemaking is a work commanded by God and it is here that He has made us indispensable. Don’t believe me? Leave for two or three days. Check out. Take a hike. Shoo. You’ll come home to a grumpy place. Even if your family can’t put their love and gratitude into words, their grumpy state of being should show you how irreplaceable you are.

This should give us confidence, HearthKeepers, even in the face of screaming feminists and manipulative communists. We have been given our orders by our King and though the world assails us, we must not desert our post because this is where He wants us. This is the best place for us.

Our irreplaceableness in the home shouldn’t make us proud, petty, or tyrannical. It should infuse us like herbs in hot water with humble confidence. Confidence, because we’re where we belong, doing what we’re made to do, each in our unique way. Humility, because if we’re not dispensable we bear the burden of need.

If replacing us would end our work and start something different that’s, on a certain level, an inescapable burden. If our home falls apart if we get sick or even leave, that can make us feel trapped and it can make us feel the weight of our work. No one will tend and love your people and your place like you do. They can’t and they won’t.

Humility is seeing this and begging our good God for help every step of the way. If being the indispensable heart of your home turns to pride, you’re not understanding the true weight of sheltering and nurturing souls. That should scare you a bit. I know it does me and I don’t have children. It’s just me and my husband, but I’m profoundly aware of how my tending can affect his whole being, and how that can trickle out into the church. But because the Lord, the very King of heaven and earth has said this is the perfect role for us and the perfect place for us, then we can set aside the fear that might paralyze us and change it into a healthy respect for our work. From there we can confidently engage in managing our homes because we’re indispensable in them.

Side Note: Husbands and fathers are also indispensable in the home, so don’t, again, let yourself become arrogant as if the man in your life doesn’t matter, is only an accessory, or even unnecessary. You’re both called to different roles, but both are necessary and good.

Now, does this mean you’re sinning if you work a job that isn’t homemaking? Absolutely not.

What I’m driving at is to remind you that your ‘paid’ job is one where you can be replaced, while your home, your ‘unpaid’ job, is the one where you are indispensable. It should always have priority. And for you ladies who are solely homemakers, you are not missing out, you are doing the indispensable work!

Side Note: Use your brain when you see complaints about unequal pay or under-representation of women in the workforce. Most women will not sacrifice the final well-being of their children/families on the altar of their careers. We’re just not created to be that way. (Neither are men.) Many women have bought into the lie that they’ll be more “fulfilled” with a job, but they’re forced into part-time or lower-paying jobs because they want their kids to come first. Evolution tells us we don’t have souls, and communism tells us family doesn’t matter, only work. These two lies have been dressed up and spoon-fed to women to make them think raising the next generation of souls and tending our homes is the doldrums and a waste of ourselves. See the Emperor for what he is: naked.

Also, we’re simply not as strong as men in general. We’re designed to go slower so we can tend and nurture. There is strength there, but it isn’t one often valued by a career-centric culture just like fatherhood isn’t valued in a career-centric culture.

Home, ladies, is where you can find satisfaction if you will simply try. If you will pour yourselves into seeking the good of your family, of teaming up with your husband, of nurturing the people who live in your place and come and go, if you will explore all the domestic arts, if you will love, delight, educate, and challenge yourself to truly manage your home, you will find it to be rich, rewarding, and ultimately more powerful than any job you could hold.

Home is where we’re indispensable.