Homemaking isn’t so much the work we do as it is the heart with which we do it.

You have poured all this labor into this glorious food. Enjoy it! Let the tastes and textures thrill you. Rehearse those well-trod paths of old stories and memories. Get loud. Sit for five minutes. Observe your happy, content people and be thrilled, oh tenders, at the feast, all the feast. From start to end, planning, cooking, consuming. Enjoy the feast!

Ladies, attitude is everything as homemakers. We can make poverty an adventure, water into broth, cold nights cozy, husbands into courageous warriors, and children into men and women. We do this. Us. The homemakers. But we can’t do this if we’re not thankful.

With my fists slowly opening, I find myself saying yes! Use it! So what if it breaks, or wears out? Better that than not enjoying it at all!

This too is part of delighting in our homes with a heart of merry durability.

I get to be here for the long haul, not just the weekend. I get to pour myself out without frantic adrenaline, dog-eat-dog, stay relevant, exhausting passion. I get to pour slowly, learn, test, and take my time as an eternal being, not a one-shot life.

Marriage is hard, but it is also beautiful. It is beautiful in its teamwork of men and women in a long dance of support, help, leading, following, working together, and working differently so that the whole family grows.

Orderly, wild, intimate. Umbrellas bring these three aesthetics to mind. They’re much like home, like a little piece of home you carry with you when the weather is wetter than normal. A bit of order, a pinch of chaos, and a nestling in close. Homemaking is about our heart-ability to manage the order, chaos, and intimacy of our hearths, to tend our hearths. Its breadth of options is often overwhelming. We want to truncate it or limit it so that we can check off all the boxes and know we did a good job. But the real limits of homemaking are beyond our sight because homemaking is an attitude before it’s an action.

If we want to encourage each other and be an encouragement to other HearthKeepers, we have to embrace the idea that this is where we want to be, that this is worth it, that this is beautiful, and that this is hard work. How can we do that?

Homemaking is no more about being perfect than life is about being perfect. We don’t walk around saying we can’t discuss or share our Christianity because we’re still in the fight against sin. We don’t refuse to let our kids eat because they don’t have refined motor skills. Why do we treat our homemaking this way?

Are we calm? Do we understand the physical and spiritual good of what we’re doing? Are we cheerful in our work? Or are we distracted, angry, rebellious, mean, snapping, or bored? How do we handle interruption? Do we find elements of homemaking, not necessarily all of them, but elements of homemaking soothing? Can we tell when our family is anxious and distraught and calm things down by our wise work? Are we creating a space around us that is both personal and welcoming to others? Are we examining our systems and sharpening them? Are we engaged?