Self-Application: An Important Skill

Books, sermons, catechisms, self-help, DYI, articles, and conversations make up the ebb and flow of our continuing education. From the wonderful, experienced women all around us to the excellent sermon preached by the men serving as the under-shepherds of Christ, we take in helpful suggestions, guidelines, and information. We take in wisdom formed from years of experience and information formed after hours and hours of study. We take it in. But now what do we do with it?

Self-application.

This is an important skill to develop in life. It’s another word for discernment. This is the ability to see the spirit of the law, not just the letter. This is listening to a sermon, hearing the single illustration your pastor makes and applying the lesson to yourself in your specific situation and struggles. This is the skill of being able to understand your life at the stage you’re in and seeing what does and doesn’t apply to you. Wives can make application to themselves during sermons on passages directed towards husbands, even while she sees the parts that obviously don’t apply.

We do this with lots of information sources: meetings, conversations with friends, things we read, school, education in general, social media, etc. We practice wisdom and discernment, the balance between accepting and rejecting.

For example, taking criticism: I’ve had readers give me solid but hard (emotionally) critiques that made me look differently at my stories and rethink them. I’ve also gotten critiques that were pretty much “your writing is bad because I don’t enjoy fantasy, so just take the magic out.” Yeah, okay, I’m ignoring that review. As a writer, you can’t just ignore all negative reviews any more than you can believe all praise to be valid.

We all need to be balanced and discerning.

We have to accept encouragement and correction, all while understanding where we’re at.

Homemaking is the same.

We’ve talked about attitude, not deserving things, and education. Learning is all that information combined with self-application based on knowing yourself and your situation. Going to older women, sharing things in our group, reading and commenting on articles are all ways we learn, grow, and challenge ourselves. Sometimes we have to accept the rebukes and sometimes we have to say, “I’m not in the same place or phase, so that doesn’t apply to me.” Sometimes we need to look past the illustrations and see the spirit of the instruction, spirit over the letter.

You may not decorate the same way I do, but you should decorate on some level. All our lives and talents, skills, time, money, abilities, and desires will be different in diverse and beautiful ways. We have hearthlight streaming out from homes with no kids, grown kids, a ton of kids, homeschoolers, public schoolers, married, unmarried, young and old, city and country, high energy or low, healthy and sick, and so much more. Not everything shared and said will apply to each of us. Or the direct application won’t, but the spirit might. We have to be self-applying, balanced, and discerning in this group like we are in all of life. Even if something doesn’t apply to you, you can learn. I read a ton of HearthKeeping books and many of them discuss child-rearing. I don’t reject those parts even though they’re hard. I use them as a springboard to pray for all the dear moms I know.

You can do that too. Say I share in an article or post something hard for you because you can’t engage in it now, or maybe ever. Your life is different. Don’t ignore it or take it on as a burden. Use it to test yourself and pray for others. Anytime a group of people come together to encourage each other and learn together, especially for such a diverse and wide-open subject and calling as homemaking, there will be things that just don’t work for all of us.

Leslie’s life of adoption and teaching, Rose’s life of kids and gardens, Rachel’s life of three girls, Melissa’s life, Debbie’s life, Angela’s life, Liz’s life, Chelle’s, Rachel’s, Danielle's, Alethia’s, Cindy’s, Deanna’s, Emily’s, Emily’s, Gina’s, Jan’s, Jennifer’s, Joy’s, Kathy’s, Katie’s, Misty’s, Ruth’s, Sarah’s and Yesenia’s life are all different, at different stages, with different husbands and dynamics. We can’t be black and white about everything. Not everything is either good or sinful. We have to make self-application and we have to embrace the spirit, not just the letter of the law.

Rachel’s HearthKeeping education shelf will have more childrearing on it than my shelf, and Rose’s shelf has more things about plants and bees than mine. Deanna’s shelf will have loads of cooking books, both practical and artistic, while my cookbooks are about what I can actually eat. Liz’s life is at a different stage than Alethia’s. Leslie and I both work out-of-the-home jobs but mine doesn’t require me to leave the home.

Each one of us has a unique story being written by the Lord. We must learn to filter information according to what He has chosen for our life. Each one of us has to be open to criticism, self-evaluation, growth, sanctification, while also knowing what things just don’t apply to us, or don’t apply in a direct sense. Each of us can learn about the good and the struggles in each other’s lives and pray for each other.

Being a woman isn’t easy. Being a HearthKeeper isn’t a job for wimps. It is hard work, lots of growth, ever-changing, presenting constant new challenges, and requiring us to constantly renew our love for it and remember why we chose this life. It is a vast field of endeavors often overlooked by everyone. It is mundane and it is magic. Practice discernment. A woman with littles is living a life different than a woman with teens, as different as the life of a single woman compared to a married woman. This means we can all read the same article and yet have to pass on parts, embrace other parts, feel convicted by one thing and not convicted by another. This is not only true here, but in all of life. Life as pilgrims in this world requires wisdom and discernment.

So take self-application seriously. It is neither an acceptance of everything nor a rejection of everything. That would be easy. If you could just accept everything or reject everything life would be clear. But we can’t. We aren’t called to just make laws, laws, laws, laws. We are called to liberty. Liberty requires self-application, self-rule, wisdom, and discernment. If I go on and on about throw pillows, but your whole family hates them, then don’t worry about it, just pass over it. But in that passing, make sure you see the spirit as well as the law, make sure if you pass over it, you ask yourself what is under the desire for so many pillows? If I don’t like throw pillows, what do I like to make my couch inviting? What do I like on my bed that says it’s time to sink deep into sleep? You may freely reject the law of throw pillows! But you may not freely reject the spirit of throw pillows. You’re a homemaker, you need to make your home. Reject how I make my home, but don’t reject making a home.

The wisdom of self-application isn’t just in our little corner group over here, or just when you read or consume media, it is also how you engage in theology and sermons. It’s how you submit to your husband. It’s being mature enough that you don’t need just a black and white rule. You are mature enough to understand the beauty of having liberty with its gray areas. You are mature enough to be told to make your house cozy and to do that how you do that without feeling guilty if that is different than how I do it, or your mom did it, or your best friend does it. The rule is to create a home. That is both law and such freedom!

We must practice mature, discerning, self-applying wisdom when we are working on our education. If we do that, our education will be of great value, sermons will be taken in, our husband’s wisdom will be helpful, and our homes will flourish!