The Tricky Part

I stumbled across this quote as I reread Killing Rommel by Steven Pressfield. It gave me such a thrill. Stomach clenching, chills, a quick rush of delight. Not only does it have a perfect Lord of the Rings vibe, not only does it sum up one of the elements of warriors and war that I love, but I immediately rewrote it in my head for HearthKeepers:

The role of the homemaker, in my experience, is nothing grander than to stand sentinel over herself and her people, towards the end of keeping them from forgetting who they are and what their objective is, how to get there, and what equipment they’re supposed to have when they arrive. Oh, and getting back. That’s the tricky part.

*Insert delighted shiver here*

I adore anything and everything that romanticizes and elevates the ordinary. Anything that draws back the veil on the mundane and routine so that we can catch a fleeting glimpse of the magic working behind the scenes. For just a moment, we catch sight of the intangible. This quote does that, or at least it does for me.

Of course, once I gloried in it, I then also had to explore it.

Sentinel: This is to be the sentry, the lookout, the watchman, the guard, the beacon. It carries the idea of being a vigilant shield. So much of our work is guard duty. We guard the family calendar, nutrition, rest, and entertainment. What is housekeeping but setting a shield of mental, emotional, and physical health around our people? I love that the quote says that we also stand sentinel over ourselves. In our self-care-saturated society, we often forget the necessary work of tempering ourselves. We cannot do guard duty if we aren’t present, cheerful, calm, and ready to do the work. If we don’t believe in the value of what we are doing, we won’t be effective. We must rule ourselves before we can rule (as a Queen) our homes.

Who They Are: Do we and our people know who we are? Are we kindly speaking the truth in a way that produces growth? Do we allow our husbands, children, friends, and families to speak? In our safe-space-saturated society, do we embrace the fact that our homes should be safe places for people, but that real safety is found in truth? Do we hold these in tension? Do we know the value of teamwork? Do we know who we are as a family? Who are we? Is this how Vincents, Joneses, Smiths, Reddis, Coles, etc. behave? Do we have a sense of our own history? Do we have a sense of our religion? Do we know what is important to us, to our husbands, to our children? Being the one who stands guard over this is to be the one who thinks about the flavor of the home. Not just the chores that need doing, but the comfort meals, the music, the stories, the colors, the vacations. All this is an exploration, expression, and engagement in who we are and who our people are. We—under our husbands, if so blessed—are the ones who hold this in our hands and distill it into the building we call home and into the lives in our home. It is vital that we do not forget who we are.

Objective: Goals, chores, social activities, work, school, health management, grocery shopping, laundry, Lord’s Day attendance—all this and more are our objectives. They can be as simple as getting our kids to dance class or a football game. They can be as big as moving and recreating a home in a new location, husbands struggling at work or with their health, and children with learning disabilities. Objectives are the small things like removing a stain from a dress, and the big things like remodeling a home. They are the unseen things like working on attitudes and disengaging from chronic franticness. Our job as homemakers is to make sure we and our people know what our objective is, how to get there, and that they have the equipment they need (mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically). For example, the objective is to be at Sunday morning prayer meeting. Everyone needs to know that that is the goal of the whole family. We need to think about what will be needed, what hurdles will have to be overcome, and what sacrifices must be made to get there, like not filling up Saturdays, earlier bedtimes, picking clothes out the night before, and simple breakfasts. Or if you have a midweek prayer meeting, it may be not stuffing Wednesday with lots of activities, keeping dinners simple, planned wind-down after church, and quiet Thursday mornings. Making sure you arrive with bibles, notebooks, and water is part of the work. We must make sure our people have what they need to be in prayer meeting. Our objective, then communicated steps on how to get there, with equipment at hand. This applies to every area of our homes and our people. Some things are going to be less structured. You probably won’t sit down and tell your family that the objective is to eat breakfast, that you will be providing the equipment of forks and knives, and that this is how we will all arrive at the breakfast table, but all those things still must happen, and we’re still responsible for them, structured or unstructured, spoken or unspoken, routine or project.

Getting Back: Equipping our people to go out and do their work via our work of cooking, cleaning, laundry, and general management, is also to engage in returning. No one does these things if no one is coming back. We’re not on a suicide mission. Our men and our children aren’t on suicide missions. They’re coming back and we want them to come back. We want our husbands to come home. We want our children to go play outside but then come back in. All our labor, day in and day out, meal in and meal out, bills paid, dishes washed, clothing cleaned, ironed, and mended is setting out small lights to call our people home. We are always in the process of lighting the way back home. The truly tricky part, and where we stand sentinel over ourselves, is in our attitudes. Do we make our people feel loved or like unending burdens? If you moan and groan every time your husband comes to talk to you, he’s going to stop talking to you. If you are harsh and belittling of your children, they’re going to flee from home at the earliest opportunity. Honestly, ladies, if we aren’t home, physically and mentally, our children will go find a surrogate mother who is. If we don’t do our work of housekeeping and homemaking, our people will drift away for cleaner, calmer places. If we aren’t home, engaged in being a loving wife, our husbands will face constant temptation to go find a woman who is. This getting back, making sure our people get back home, either from the far reaches of our towns and cities or simply from the backyard, depends so much on how we have equipped them, which starts with our attitudes. It starts with our love. A kind, strong, brave, love that softly, gently wraps her arms around her people and holds them close is one that makes sure everyone gets back.

I simply want to cup every woman’s face and say this is both the hardest and greatest job in the world. Look how beautiful it is. Doing the dishes is calling my people home. My people may be one man, but I want my man to come home. Your people may be friends who don’t live with you, but you can still make your home and yourself the place they want to be because you’re calm, caring, and safe. Sometimes it is calling yourself home. You may not want to be home because you have failed to put the work into making your home a place to be.

All of this points to our ultimate home in glory. How will you communicate eternity with the Lord to those around you if no one is ever home, and no one likes to be there when they are? What power do we hold, ladies, to make life joyous, courageous, and kind or cold, distant, empty, and hard?

This is to be a homemaker. What a glorious work it is!