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.

To be effective managers we need to be aware of ourselves. We need to see what we’re good at and use that, and we need to see where we’re weak and go to work.

Nuance is important because it keeps the strong from tyrannizing the weak. At the same time, the weak must not demand of the strong that they quit being strong. We have to hold both things at the same time.

Sons, nephews, grandsons, boys live in our homes. As much as the world is beating down on our daughters with lies about the subjugation of women, the oppression of homemaking, and that fulfillment can only be found in working a job outside your home, they’re also beating down on our men. Sometimes subtly and sometimes loudly.

From the floors to the seats, to the displays, closets, clothes, to the organization, to the plants, dishes, tools, and everything else, we should seek beauty, use beauty, create beauty. Not because it is forever beauty, but because God thinks temporary beauty is important and He has given us things to richly enjoy. We may live our lives here below the sun, but we have an above the sun attitude. We know it is temporary, but because we do it to glorify God, it takes on an element of the eternal.

Holidays break routines. This is a good thing. Broken routines don’t become ruts. Holidays help you see the routine. Holidays give you a break from the routine which helps you appreciate it more. Don’t we all just love January when things get back to normal? Holidays help us appreciate the normal by charging into the middle of it and making a mess. As HearthKeepers, if we see this we can appreciate it, embrace it, and use it.

When our lights are low and the window is large, we look to women who have kept burning. We look for women who have passed through the trenches. We look to the old Sergeant, not the raw recruit, if we want to live through the battle of loving our husbands, loving our children, and keeping our homes.

I love the image of a candle in the window, the light shining bright and warm in the cold, dark gloom. I once read that in the past a candle was placed in a window to show those who were away how to get home. It was both practical—keeping your family from getting lost in the dark—and symbolic of safety, warmth, and love. A Candle in the Window.