The Umbrella of Homemaking (Part 2)
Orderly, wild, intimate. Umbrellas bring these three aesthetics to mind. They’re much like home, like a little piece of home you carry with you when the weather is wetter than normal. A bit of order, a pinch of chaos, and a nestling in close. Homemaking is about our heart-ability to manage the order, chaos, and intimacy of our hearths, to tend our hearths. Its breadth of options is often overwhelming. We want to truncate it or limit it so that we can check off all the boxes and know we did a good job. But the real limits of homemaking are beyond our sight because homemaking is an attitude before it’s an action.
If you’re in a situation where you feel you can’t be all in on homemaking, maybe due to homeschooling, church commitments, a job, hubby’s career, or just lots of littles, I challenge you to see that those things are homemaking. They all fit under the umbrella of homemaking. It’s not “have kids or be a homemaker.” You are a homemaker with kids. It’s not, “I’ll be a homemaker one day when I don’t have to work.” You are a homemaker who has to work like many homemakers before you. It’s not either/or, it is that you are a homemaker and under that umbrella nestles everything else: kids, jobs, homeschooling, social obligations, hobbies, education, etc. Homemaking goes under the umbrella of marriage, and marriage under church, and church under Christ. Homemaking is a matter of perspective! It’s where you start when assessing life and making priorities. HearthKeeping is bigger than cooking, cleaning, and laundry. It’s who we are more than the specifics of what we do.
When we fail to see ourselves as the tender of the hearth first, when we fail to see homemaking as the umbrella we function under, the boundary of our freedom, and our calling by Christ, we create puddles of issues. What are these deep and dangerous puddles? A segmented life, constantly feeling frantic, a lack of priorities, and unclear communication.
1. A Segmented Life: When we put homemaking over here, a tiny umbrella covering only dinner, laundry, and cleaning, while over there, a tiny umbrella containing only your social life, and another over there that says ‘husband,’ and another over there that says ‘kids,’ and another for paid-work, and another, and another, and another, our lives are segmented. We have no unification, nothing holding the parts together. Instead of Christ, Church, Marriage/Home, Family, we have a million little clashing, banging, loud, angry umbrellas swaying around in a clamoring disorder. That’s not gentle and quiet. It creates an atmosphere of franticness.
2. Franticness: With all those little umbrellas we end up spending the day dashing from one umbrella to the next. This umbrella. This umbrella. This umbrella. The umbrella of laundry. The umbrella of cooking. The umbrella of maid. The umbrella of wife, on and on and on. Dash. Dash. Dash. Feeling the anxiety yet? Soaking wet yet? Frantic switching of umbrellas leads to a lack of clear priorities.
3. Lack of Clear Priorities: Trying to balance between all the umbrellas of our life keeps us from seeing both the big picture of our lives and the details. How do we decide what the next step is or what the next goal is when we have no overarching goal or guideline? Do we use the squeaky wheel principle? Procrastination? Say yes to everything and everyone? Say no to everything and everyone? Keep our finger in the dike and hope the rain doesn’t flood us? What guides us as to what is important next? This lack of clarity leads to miscommunication.
4. Miscommunication: Who are we and what are we even trying to do? When we have this segmented and frantic mindset, we create a vortex of miscommunication. How can we effectively communicate to our husbands or help them make wise informed decisions if we are trying to hold 500 tiny umbrellas at one time?
Seeing how expansive homemaking is, seeing it as our heart, our starting point, our calling, calms the clamor. We hold one umbrella and from its protective, dry, warm underside we hang our life. Now, our life is all together. It’s calm and protected. We can assess our priorities and communicate.
Example: when my Grandpa passed away at the end of September, I was a riot of mixed emotions. The funeral required traveling. My relationship with him wasn’t close but it wasn’t non-existent either. I did love him. And I love my Grammie, my Mom, and my family, and wanted to be with them to cry and laugh and love on each other. On the other hand, we had just gotten back from vacation. I was struggling with work deadlines, upcoming projects, getting my home back in gear. Trying to also travel to a funeral would not only require a massive reshuffle, but it could also send me into a fatigue flare-up which would inhibit my ability to take care of my home. The holidays are upon us and I was already feeling overwhelmed by life. I went back and forth, back and forth. How do I do everything?
In a moment of clarity and grace, I stepped back and asked myself, “What would be best for my home?” I set aside conflicting emotions, desires, tears, sadness, and just asked myself what my home needed right now. Taking in the pastoral struggles my husband was embroiled in, the upcoming projects, and the holidays, what was best for my home was to stay home. I hated to make that choice, but I felt much calmer about it and knew this was the best choice for my home. Instead of being segmented which causes franticness and unclear priorities, I looked only at my umbrella of homemaking and was able to make the right choice and communicate it to everyone else. Calm.
Nestling our lives under the umbrella of homemaking, tending our hearths, guides our decisions because we look at the whole, not the segments. It helps us remain the mistresses of our homes instead of the frantic slaves to every wild wind.
Should we sign our kid up for piano lessons or some other commitment? Maybe, and maybe not. Looking at it under the umbrella of homemaking, we’ll be much better equipped to see the ramifications and sacrifices required. And, we’ll be able to give our husbands necessary information so they can make wise ultimate decisions. Without the umbrella of homemaking, we might miss things like how the commitment affects dinner time, the family routine, current commitments, and everyone’s ability to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on Sunday morning. We might only look at one aspect of the commitment instead of the whole.
What about husbands who haven’t bought into homemaking? Unfortunately, just like our daughters aren’t taught the wonder of homemaking, our sons aren’t either. They’re taught that a woman doesn’t want to be home and he’s misogynistic if he wants her to be engaged in their home. We may find ourselves married to men who see homemaking as a side thing, or even something he does while you work. He may not think of you as a homemaker, or that you might want to do it full time, all in. If you communicate that you want to be a homemaker, he may not get it, or might actively discourage you. He sincerely doesn’t know any better.
Dr. Laura has lots of advice on talking with your husband about your desire to be a homemaker. Be cautious with her advice because she can be manipulative, but her advice isn’t all bad. She makes good suggestions about what you need to take into account if you are trying to communicate with your husband about what you would like to do.
Make being a homemaker a matter of prayer, keep a submissive spirit, and don’t nag. Seek out an older woman who won’t encourage you to put down your husband or think less of him even if they disagree with him. Finally, or maybe firstly, go talk to your pastors. I can’t tell you enough how helpful it can be to you and how encouraging it is to them. Do you know how nice it is for a pastor when you come to them with a small problem before it becomes a massive, destructive issue?
Be honest with yourself about what you’re asking of yourself and your family. Being an all-in-homemaker won’t solve all your problems. You’re a sinner bringing your sin with you. Not only that, but people won’t understand your choice, so you’ll get the “I could never do that, you poor thing” look. Be prepared to be tempted to fill your life with social things instead of tending your hearth. Be prepared to be both overwhelmed and bored.
You’re adjusting. You’ll have moments where you have an insight into just how much needs to be cleaned, learned, scheduled, budgeted, and attended to. Things can get crazy fast when you see how big this world of homemaking is.
But you’ve also been accustomed to the stimulation of working on a team for set hours and getting the tangible reward of a paycheck and accolades. You may feel bored working in your home. My suggestion, and I say this gently, is that you aren’t bored. You’re either procrastinating, being lazy, or you need to increase your motivation or grasp of one of the many subjects homemaking includes.
Bathrooms have to be cleaned. But you cleaned the bathroom yesterday. You cleaned everything! Then pick a project. Do you know how to remodel? Is there someone who could use a meal? What can you study to make your homemaking richer and deeper?
Also it might be time to have kids, if you’re younger or newly married. Boredom will go right out the window when you introduce a baby into your family.
Keep in mind, we are warned as women about being busybodies, going from house to house. If you’re a high-energy woman, reach out to your deacons to find out who might need help or how you can serve your church. Stay focused on learning the ebb and flow of your own home. It’s easy for homemaking to turn into a vast social life until your hearth is dusty and cold. Be on guard while also looking for ways to serve.
My favorite band has a line in one of their songs that has always struck me: “boredom sets into the boring mind.” This job is only as boring as we allow it to be. We should train ourselves to see how broad our umbrella is, not how narrow.
This isn’t just me cheering, “Ra! Ra! Ra! homemaking!” This is me seeing the calm, joy, and delight in my home as I learn to think about it more fully and clearly and sharing it with you to help you and encourage you if I can. We can choose to love HearthKeeping, and by loving that choice, we can make our whole world expansive and beautiful. The more we buy into this, the more courageous we will be to claim it, encourage it, and teach it. It’s more than just doing the laundry and cooking another meal. Open your eyes to see it!
