Routine is loyalty and faithfulness made sight, given firm, given tangible expression, and action.

Caring for the elderly has long been the realm of women, just as caring for children is. We have the abilities needed to do this. For a generation, our elderly have been handed off, but I think we may see many needs here open up moving into the next generations.

Setting goals and managing projects in the home requires us to leave behind concepts of corporate management and masculine expectations. We are women managing homes. This ultimately means that we must take into account the big picture of tending when we set out goals and plans.

Our culture is in love with the idea of the “found” family. Do you know why that is? We told homemakers their job was worthless and they should go do something more important. Women did that and now we have the loneliest and most lost generation of people.

I want everyone to get as much out of this group as possible. I want every woman here to be engaged with tending to her people be they husband, children, family, extended family, church family, or friends.

God has gifted many women with drive and energy. You are the doers! The goers! Yet even you face times of transition, health struggles, or lulls that might make you feel like you’ve lost your value.

There are times in life when those of us who have chosen to keep life simple have that simple life turned upside down, when we don’t feel like we’re living a quiet life, working with our own hands, minding our own business, when those of us with a simple life wake up and find ourselves in the middle of an active life we didn’t sign up for.

We must guard our hearts and garden our femininity. Don’t stamp it out. Nurture it. Let’s not allow the power-dressing, power-hungry, angry, blue-haired women to tell us that being Feminine has no value. It is weaker and softer. It does flourish best with a man guiding, guarding, and protecting it. That doesn’t make it less valuable, but more!

Home should be flexible enough and long-term enough in its mentality that it is able to tend to the sick, even if the sick is you. That means pausing and doing this thing then back to other things. When someone gets sick, even if that is you, the home should be able to pause to allow you or others to recover.

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.

Cultivating a simple and quiet life has taken a lot of mental and emotional work. Some of it has been by choice and some of it is due to God’s providence. But the delight of calm living has enthralled me. The simple life lends itself to observation and thought. It allows you to open your eyes and heart to little things.

You active, driven social women have a great gift, one that many of us envy. We’d all love to manage our homes, tangibly love our husbands, homeschool our kids, manage a business, and serve our church while having a robust social life. If you have even half of that, be thankful. Use that gift as long as you are given it within the appropriate bounds of rest, recreation, thoughtful awareness of others, and appropriate priorities.

If we want a next generation of women who have a burning hearthlight, we must let them be part of the homemaking. We must include them in the dance of getting food on the table on time, at the same time, and still relatively warm. We must train them in fabric and textures. We must show them and let them experience the delight of nurturing plants and selecting produce. We must showcase merry durability and cheering strength.

Our hearths will be better tended if we take a break now and then before burnout.

Being feminine requires great courage and wisdom and love. Stay in the fight, sisters. We must not allow the world to tell us motherhood is only changing diapers and thus boring, unimportant, and something we can do without. Motherhood is who and what we are down to our very bones. We must not allow the world to take true femininity away from us.

As with every aspect of homemaking, finding the balance seems to require purpose and intentionality. It requires seeing why we do something, the boundaries of that action, and then being intentional about doing it on purpose. It requires bringing those subconscious habits out to the front of our minds so they can be examined, tested, and changed if need be, before returning them to basic muscle memory.

You have a kitchen journal. It may not be organized or even visible, but if you manage food in your home you have one. Now, you get to think about whether you need to organize it or not. You’re welcome.

Our homes enjoy couches, lighting, house plants, and good food, but they need a center of merry durability. We HearthKeepers provided that. That is our vast work.

Lofty goals and expectations are good for us. It’s important to be diligent and to stretch ourselves. But it’s also important to correctly judge the type of work we’re called to. Our domestic arts are very cyclical and continuous. They don’t stop because we’re in the business of tending souls through ordinary things like cooking, cleaning, and laundry.