New Matrons are going to be tempted by discouragement because everything feels so unfamiliar and overwhelming while Mature Matrons will be tempted to boredom and stagnation because everything has become too routine and comfortable. We can help each other out of these troubles if we work together and engage each other in the grand work of homemaking. This

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.

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.

I’ve observed women who don’t go into widowhood, old age, or retirement with any response but to focus on themselves, as if their work is done now that they’re a widow, abandoning the next generation of women. I want to encourage women to re-forge the links between maid, matron, and crone, between grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter.

Each stage interweaves with the ones around it. Maids should never be tackling marriage and babies on their own. Matrons should not refuse to share their skills and experiences with others. The link between Maids and Crones has been broken between the generations, we need to repair it. Crones must teach and train and encourage. All of us are tempted to believe the lies of our hearts and the culture. All of us, young, middle, and old must stand together, shoulder to shoulder, shield to shield, garden to garden, and hold the line on church, husbands, homes, and children.

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.

The tangible, practical elements of our lives are important, but they can also be a shallow trap that pulls us away from the real benefits of our labor, much like living by sight instead of faith. It’s easy to judge things only by the parts we can see. Much of every woman’s work is the repetitive rhythms of days and seasons. But, like living by sight, if we’re not constantly on guard, we can mistake the superficial, visual parts of HearthKeeping for the whole. We will blindly see cleaning and cooking and laundry as the only elements of homemaking and miss the deep, rich world just at the edge of our sight. We will miss the hospitality, comfort, calm, and beauty a skilled homemaker brings to the whole world around her.

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?