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.

When you start to dig deeper than simply cooking, cleaning, and laundry, homemaking has some beautiful, wonderful, intangible elements that we need to observe, harness, and tend. This is part of being a good homemaker.

Winter can be harsh and hard, as many of us Texans learned early in 2021. But part of being a Proverbs 31 woman is being prepared, cheerfully prepared. Take the long dark cold of winter and make her your handmaid for planning, nesting, tending, and loving your family.

Whatever your heart song is, I believe it will point you back to your hearth and with such diversity as to enrich our world. Our diversity is a gift as much as our heart songs. The rich tapestry of our interwoven lives is one of the great beauties of God’s creation. We’re all similar and all different.

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?

HearthKeeping came because I wanted a strong yet feminine title. I love homemaker, housewife, tending hearth and home. All these terms and ideas needed to be included but with a tomboy feel, a woman in the Old West, gun in one hand, a horse at her back, tending her food in cast iron while she actively waits for her man to come back kind of word: HearthKeeping.