Speaking to Ourselves

My mom says being an adult is when you parent yourself. Put things away when you’re done with them. Finish a job before you play. Be nice to your sister. Get a drink of water. If you can’t talk and work at the same time, stop talking.

Being a grown-up is owning your responsibilities, strengths, weaknesses, and making yourself do what a parent would make you do—everything from eating a snack to taking time to play to doing your chores.

A big part of this is how we talk to ourselves in our own heads and hearts. Some of us have very loud inner monologues. Some of us have none. Some of us are somewhere in between, but we should all be parenting ourselves. What kind of things do we tell ourselves? Do we tell ourselves the truth or lies? What kind of tone do we use? What words do we choose? How do we narrate our own stories? Do we browbeat ourselves? Do we constantly let ourselves off the hook? Are we harsh, snappy, mean, or frantic? Are we excuse-making, lazy, and filled with complaints? How we talk to ourselves and about our day, our work, our people, our productivity, and ourselves will be what pours out of our hearts and mouths to fill our homes.

I think we should consider two ways we should talk to ourselves:

First, with firmness. It is of paramount importance that we control our thought life. We love to think that sin is out there, and it is, but it is not often the thing that is sinful, it’s us. We are corrupt in our hearts and minds. Thus, we need to make our inner thought life our battleground. This is where complaining starts. This is where marriages are ruined. This is where rebellion lives. Adultery and murder both start in the mind long before any acts are committed. But even beyond these horrible sins, this is where we start making a home. Home starts in our heads and hearts. When we find ourselves wanting to avoid the housekeeping, we probably need to have a firm talk with ourselves. We may just grit our teeth and go clean that bathroom, but we should, like a parent, cup our own faces in our own hands, get down on eye level, and remind ourselves that clean bathrooms are a good thing. It’s not enough to merely go through the motions. A good parent helps their child to obey with a cheerful heart. We are in charge of our attitudes. We’re in charge of our minds. Be firm with yourself. We must not tolerate temper tantrums, hatred, lust, or complaining in our own minds.

If you wash the dishes while internally loathing every dish, every bubble of soap, every scrap of food, and every person who might dare to drink another drink from a new glass, your heart will become an ugly place overgrown with thorns, thistles, and bogs. No one is denying that doing the dishes all the time wears on a person a bit. We are dust, we return to dust, and our bread is earned through sweat and tears. It’s not glamorous to do the dishes meal in and meal out, mug after mug after mug. But we must take ourselves firmly by the hand and speak the truth in our minds. We’re doing the dishes because we love. We love warm drinks, tea parties, taco Tuesdays, and birthday cakes. We’re doing the dishes because God gave us food and the ingenuity to design plates, silverware, and glasses. Look at the glass. Really look at that glass in your hand. Now, firmly practice thankfulness for having glasses and not being forced to drink out of some half-carved block of wood or your hands.

We want to be resolute in our mental stance against complaints, rebellion, hate, and lust. Plant your feet. Aim. Fire. This takes practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. It’s like weeding. We never just pull one weed. It always needs to be done. Weed after weed after weed. Correcting thoughts and sinful mental habits takes observation, awareness, and practice. Each time a thought of the unfairness of having to do the dishes again pops up, pull it out, and replace it with love. Parent yourself. No parent corrects something one time. You are training a person, not programming a computer. The dear child must be addressed over and over and over. Trained. Reminded. Corrected. We must do the same in our own heads.

Start looking for the weeds in your mind. We all must force ourselves to take note of our corrupted thought life, pull up those weeds, and plant some truth and goodness in their place. This is us making home in our hearts first. This is us knowing that we have a lot of work to do, but we do it with the hope that home will steadily, by God’s grace, become a better and better place as we weed and plant, weed and plant.

The other side of firmness is to staunchly direct ourselves to play, rest, recreate, and learn. Parents, do you send your kids outside to play? Make them fun snacks? Have them take a shower? Get them crafts and kits to learn new things? Ladies, do we do this for ourselves? Life is so much more than weeds. The weeds are there in our minds, yes, but we’re not one-dimensional creatures. We are also filled with song, creativity, poetry, and stories. Learn new skills. Read fun books. Play video games, board games, or sports. Mother yourself with fun and refreshment as well as work.

Side Note: I loathe the term self-care. It has taken a basic concept of human existence—we must tend ourselves—and turned it into an excuse for all sorts of selfishness and excess. It often looks at the problem—chronic franticness and a lack of practical education—but refuses to provide a long-term solution, like mothers being engaged in raising children and the communistic tendencies of our culture. I am reading a book that praises self-care and complains about how women are expected to do and be it all. It never once suggests we stop trying to do it and be it all. I digress.

We have a responsibility to engage in the good the Lord has provided for us. Just like a good Mom wants her children to enjoy life, our Good Lord has gifted us with many beautiful things He wants us to enjoy. Are you enjoying them? Simple example: fight the discontent in your heart for doing the dishes, but also put on some great music. We’re not here to power through sanctification, or to power through homemaking. We’re here to enjoy God and what He has given us. We’re here to make a home that includes music, smells, sounds, and more. It is no small thing to fill our heads and hearts with laughter.

Second, romanticize life. G.K. Chesterton said, “But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable.” If we view our homes as this wonderland, our goal is to create safety and happiness. Creating something strange that is secure is a delightful goal! We do this externally when we don’t box ourselves into one decorating scheme, but blend things like herbs in a cauldron. We do this internally when we think about things with an eye to romanticizing them. For instance, planning a break in the afternoon. Ladies, we’re not employees or maids. We’re the matrons, the queens of our homes. We don’t take breaks. We take tea. Romanticize your life!

God gave us imagination. Use it for good. Use it to turn laundry from mundane to enchanting. Think about all the women before you who have done laundry, the women right now engaged in the work, and see that you’re doing something needed. There is glory in doing the same work generation after generation. Let your mind wander over how we have turned plants and fur into things to wear. Think about updating your wardrobe, or your family's wardrobe. Get a clothesline if that makes you feel all the happy feels. Romanticizing life starts in our hearts and heads. It’s when we allow the ordinary to surprise us. It’s when we find beauty in the everyday. It’s when we are steadfast in our refusal to take our eyes off our good God. It’s not a denial that sin, hopelessness, and evil exist. It’s an unwillingness to let them win.

If we are to parent ourselves, we not only need to firmly weed but hopefully plant. And we don’t just plant veggies. We also plant flowers. Look at how you label things in your mind. How you separate out the day, the chores, the work you’re tackling, and rename it with something funny or beautiful or cute. What we name things is important. Look at your appearance. Beautify yourself. If you want a beautiful home, be beautiful in it. Or be ridiculous. Ridiculous is equally as fun. Maybe you have a slouchy sweater day and maybe you have an evening wear breakfast. Maybe you simply make sure the leggings and t-shirt and messy bun are the cutest you can afford…and are clean. How you dress directly influences how you think and feel about yourself and life.

If you want to be a homemaker, dress like one (whatever that means to you). If you want to think like a homemaker, then think like a homemaker. What is it that you delight in doing? Do that! When you read books or watch movies and a vibe grabs you, let it grab you. Figure out how to incorporate that into your home. Parents, do you love to watch your children play? Do you enjoy seeing them wildly use their imagination? Do you listen to the stories they make up while they're playing? Do this for yourself. Do the dishes and pretend to be a woman on the prairie. Put on that apron and bake bread. The prairie woman, cowgirl, homesteader vibe fills me with all sorts of delight, but it might horrify you. Find something, anything, that sparks your imagination. Do you love Regency history? Maybe Jane Austen is your jam? Maybe you love Star Trek, Dr Who, or cooking shows? Whatever captures your heart, let your imagination run wild in it. Take that love and let it fill your home with a romantic view of life that creates this happy, secure strangeness.

“Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical; there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue.”
– “Bleak House,” Appreciations and Criticisms

I stumbled on this quote and found it suited our subject here perfectly. I do hate ugliness and waste. I do long for order and beauty. We start this work in our hearts and minds by being the parents we need to be in our own heads. We remind ourselves of truth, weed out the bad, and plant the good. We set a standard of diligence and delight. Not one or the other. Both. We work and rest. We do our duty and we play. To limit ourselves as human beings and as homemakers to only work, duty, and diligence is harmful, shallow, vain, and…boring. Who wants to live life that way? So yes, firmly demand, like a good mother, diligence and hard work. We do the hard things. But, like a good mother, also play games, use your imagination, learn new things, and have fun. This will fill our lives and our homes with a good balance and a pleasing aroma.

HearthKeepers, we live here 24/7. We are here every moment of every day for our whole lives. If we don’t play, romanticize, find the wonder and strangeness, while also creating safety, we will burn out, give up, and leave. This is not a job that we clock in and clock out of. This is a life work. It is a work that starts in our heads and in our hearts. It’s not serendipitous. It happens when we feed, water, weed, and plant. Don’t try to do this work through sheer willpower, and don’t suck the life out of it by hating it. Embrace the duties and the magic day in and day out, week in and week out.