Layers, Part 2
The house rests in the early morning, waiting. Frost on the roofs, sunlight slanting across the wood floor, Christmas music softly fills the air. The lady of the house, the homemaker, the HearthKeeper, runs her fingers along the counter. She dons an apron and pours the coffee. She breathes, listens, and contemplates her home, this place of quiet, ordinary magic. This place of wonder and delight or rack and ruin. This place is the fruit of her heart. Everything here, the food, the clothes, the furniture, the smells, the sounds, the tactile textures are all extensions of her. Her love for her Christ. Her love for his Bride, of which she is part. Her love for her husband. Her children. The stranger.
Not all HearthKeepers are morning people, coffee people, apron people, or Christmas music people. Not all HearthKeepers are mothers. Some HearthKeepers are HearthKeepers in training or once were HearthKeepers. For some women, it’s the night that calls to them with songs of quiet after the house has settled. Maybe, it’s loud music, tattoos, and whiskey to close out the day. For others, mid-day projects when littles are napping is the time to breathe. Some are struggling to find their footing, they don’t know what kind of homemaker they are. Others are burdened by the world’s teachings that pull them far from home. Some are overwhelmed. Some are hurting. Some struggle to even stay in the fight. No matter our current position in our temporary calling, we are all part of the Bride of Christ, sibling-saints in our local churches. This position doesn’t change. While we are married we reflect the Church to our husband’s reflection of Christ. Before we’re married, we can learn, train, and support. If we have found ourselves at a time when our marriage is over, we can teach, train, and support. Our ‘Root and Water’ is found in the covering of sin and our thoughts should start with Christ, then the Church, then our homes.
Following our great Captain and King isn’t walking down a beach on a beautiful tropical night with a full moon glistening on the waves. It is the front line of a great war. It is mud, guts, blood, and death. It is a fight. A battle. Our souls are the front line, and our great enemy is ourselves, our old man. If we hold onto this perspective we won’t be caught off guard by suffering and our sin.
But, kitchens, decorating, aprons. What do these have to do with the great spiritual war we find ourselves in? How can I think of things so gruesomely while creating beauty and order?
Our Christian walk is a constant fight internally—mind, soul, heart, attitude—with balance.
It’s internal.
It’s a balance.
It’s a fight.
These three things, always.
As homemakers here for the long-haul, not the weekend gig, layering our learning and being inspired, not burdened by the ideal, understanding we’re not there yet, that destinations require journeys, we must give ourselves grace.
We will fail.
We will decide our one layer to work on is getting the dishes caught up and then we won’t be able to do that. Or, we’ll tweak one system and create a family-wide meltdown. Or, we’ll allow the ideal to become our unforgiving standard instead of happy inspiration.
Remember, Christ has covered our sins. We are justified, adopted, and being sanctified. Remember this world is fallen and will burn. Christ isn’t working to save this world, but to save us out of it. Remember, we are finite beings. We can’t do it all. We have to eat, sleep, shower, and rest. We are finite. We need to re-center ourselves in all these things when we have failed, and then we keep going.
This is the truth behind the idea of ‘giving yourself grace.’ It means recognizing our need for our Savior’s covering of our sin and recognize our finiteness. We don’t beat ourselves up as some sort of self-flagellation for being finite beings. We root ourselves in trust, faith, and hope in Christ’s work and keep going.
On the other hand, we don’t spend so much time giving ourselves grace that we become lazy. Oh look, the dishes are piled up, but grace! And then we never learn, grow, or demand of ourselves that we improve because, you know, grace. Grace isn’t an excuse to stop striving. It is how we keep going without breaking.
We have to balance between grace and striving. Laziness is not an option. We have to see when we’re giving ourselves too much grace or when we’re not giving ourselves enough. This is a never-ending fight. We may reach the end of the week and realize that we failed to give ourselves grace.
Instead, we rebelled against our finiteness constantly belittling ourselves for all our failures until it spilled out into our homes, creating not a loving, warm environment, but one of bitter complaining and grumpiness. We drove our husbands to the corner of the attic with our harsh standards. We drove our children away with our lack of grace. Or maybe we gave ourselves all the grace in the world. We gave ourselves so much grace that our husband fled to the corner of the house because we didn’t strive enough to get the house clean or the laundry done.
The hard part? Only you can see if you’ve fallen into either ditch. This is an internal fight. Only you, and the Lord, can judge this. Getting the dishes done may be pride or it may be service or a mixture of both. Sitting on the couch may be avoiding your work, or honestly acknowledging that you are a finite creature who has to take breaks. You have to examine yourself. The outside ramifications may be the same, but the heart may be totally different. And, it may be in the right place today and way off in sin tomorrow. This is a Fight!
This constant battle is why we are so careful not to judge each other. We may see a woman who has a ‘perfect’ home and envy her while feeling like we have so far to go. What we can’t see is the ugly pride consuming her. We can’t see her making her family’s life a living hell as she demands they meet her standard of righteousness. We may see a woman with a sink full of dishes and smirk. Look how lazy she is! But we can’t see that her husband needed her help all day with a huge project, her kids were in a growth spurt that demanded so much food, and her energy levels are at an all-time low. She may not be being lazy by leaving the dishes for tomorrow. She may be trusting the Lord and following His example of resting. And the opposite can be said of both. The ‘perfect’ home may be an outflow of a woman who has her heart safely trusting the Lord giving her an air of calm and comfort. The woman who hasn’t done the dishes may just be thinking of herself and the couch.
We’re all in a fight against sin and what may outwardly appear all the same, may inwardly be sinful or may not. Stay in the fight. Dishes have to be done, but they can be done with grace, love, and humility or pride, complaining, and laziness. Only you and the Lord know where your heart is.
Layers, learning, growing, becoming better HearthKeepers one step at a time requires us to understand the balance between grace and striving. We have to remember we are in a war. We’re in a fight. But that fight is 90% internal. Internal with external ramifications. So the very first layer that we all need to work on is our attitudes. Watch yourself. Pay attention to how you think about your home. Root yourself in the truth of the gospel. From that will flow warmth, delight, and enjoyment of the temporary gifts we’ve been so graciously given.
