Purpose & Intentionality

“I hope you can see the providentially provided moments of rest.”

Deanna Brown said this to me in passing one day when I was struggling with some high-level, fatigue-induced anxiety. (Ladies, get yourself an older woman!) Her statement became an earworm in my head, repeating over and over.

It is the idea of purposely looking for and paying attention to the moments God gives you to mentally and/or physically rest.

Purpose.

Intentionality.

These two things give the chaos order.

Let me explain, no that will take too long, let me sum up:

I can run errands in a state of frantic anxiety constantly telling myself, “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late,” like the energizer bunny married Alice in Wonderland’s white rabbit, and they had some demented litter of twitchy baby bunnies.

Or! I can trust to the Lord’s care the driving time, waiting for Pick Ups time, traffic, and my To-Do list. I can purposely decide to see all that time in the car as providentially provided rest time. I can make the time and myself miserable, or I can make it restful and even joyous! (Insert sun, wind, and music here.)

This attitude adjustment doesn’t happen by chance. It takes purposefulness and intentionality.

I have to take note!

Observe.

Correct my thought habits.

God provided sit-in-the-car-in-the-sun time. I need to appreciate it, not ruin it by being anxious about things outside my control.

If I’m being one of those demented rabbits, I will drive recklessly. I will spike my fatigue, making the rest of the day’s tasks impossible to accomplish, and I will probably snap at my husband when he needs to talk to me, because I’ve believed the lie of franticness.

I will, most of all, miss seeing God’s tender care and kindness towards me. I will miss His providential care and I will miss a beautifully created autumn day.

How sad is all of that? How unforgivable?

Purposed.

Intentionality.

These have become two of my favorite HearthKeeper words. (My personal favorite word is visceral. Don’t ask, I’m weird.) They take us from being tossed about, flitting from anxiety to anxiety, and constantly overwhelmed to a big picture where we trust and observe God’s kind providences. They take us from chaos to order in our homes.

If I can purposely and intentionally watch for moments of rest provided by my Heavenly Father, I can learn to purposely and intentionally manage my home.

This starts in our heads. This requires the hard work of retraining the muscle memory of our brains. We all talk to ourselves, preach to ourselves, have gut instinct reactions. We have this in our heads. And it can be trained. It can be corrected. But it takes a lot of work. We have to pay attention to our thought life. We have to listen to ourselves and observe our thought patterns. We have to be purposeful and intentional.

Think about our husbands. We can spend all day disrespecting them in our minds. We can believe the lies of the world that they are stupid, ignorant Neanderthals. We can reject all of that and still respond to everything they say with a mental snide remark. We can habitually put them down in our minds to the point that we don’t even notice we’re doing it. Then, we wonder why there is no love in our marriages.

We must go to work to purposefully and intentionally fix our mental habits. We must watch ourselves. Each time that snide remark rears its ugly head, cut it off. Cut it off and replace it. We must stay observant to see all the ways they love us, care for us, help us, and provide for us. We can notice weakness or we can notice strength.

But we must be purposed and intentional.

It won’t happen by a wish or a whim.

This takes great strength, fortitude, wisdom, and observation.

We can tear our homes down around our ears and that starts in our heads. It starts small, but it grows until we’re demented rabbits, running around missing out on God’s providential blessings and demented wives who make their homes miserable.

When we’re purposed and intentional, it blossoms out into our homes.

As you can tell, Welcome Home by Myquillyn Smith had a huge influence on me because here I am talking about it again. What I truly and deeply loved about this book was that it took my gut instinct and turned it into purpose. It gave me intentionality.

When the weekly menu includes more soup than salad, the candles burn more often, cranberry wassail is made weekly, sweaters are unpacked, and down comforters cover the bed like a soft layer of snow, I’m not just winterizing my home. I’m on purpose slowly bringing in the season. I can welcome winter by accident and happenstance or on purpose. The actions haven’t changed, but my mentality has. Welcome Home helped me to see with intentionality what I was already doing organically. It beautified the practical. It coated practical duties with a dusting of artistry. It opened my eyes to observe in detail all the delightful, temporary gifts from the Lord that crowd my day.

(Some of you may read this book and not have as many lightbulb moments as I did. We’re each at different stages and phases in our homemaking careers, so I’m not plugging the book, so much as sharing what I learned and how I learned it.)

My new winter throw pillow makes me happy, but not because I’m resting my soul’s hope in it. It makes me happy because it is a visible manifestation of my intentional, purposeful management of my home, a kindness from my loving Father, and a symbol of the hard work of my husband. God didn’t have to fill the world with fluffy pillows, and I certainly don’t deserve one, but he’s a good Father and thus pillows.

Now, my wonder and enjoyment of specific good gifts that fill my home like throws, fur, wood, candles, pillows, soup, and a strange mix of heavy metal and Christmas music aren’t going to be the same delights you have in your home. Your focus may be less brick and mortar and more on inviting people in. You may not care about pillows but you adore the game day recliners, big screen TV, and easy snacks. Decorating may not be your thing, but a well-prepared meal thrills you. Your garden may grow food or flowers, or you may not have a garden. Puppies and children may dissuade you from white or anything fragile, so your home is tough and able to bear with slobbers and teeth and sticky fingers.

Either way, HearthKeepers, no matter the diverse family God has built for you, seek to observe. Seek to be purposed. Seek to be intentional. Go at the hard work of fixing your mental habits. Strive to see the beauty of the practical. Notice God’s gifted rest time, even if it is just a moment when all the mouths are full.

The other day, I went to get some work done on my husband’s car and I thought about how I could bring more work with me to do while I waited. Then I thought about how busy the week had been and continued to be. So I brought a book and sat in the sun, and on purpose, intentionally used some providentially provided rest time. God is good and knows we are but finite children. He provides for us and we, we should open our eyes and see what he does.

I’ve written two articles about Layering in the home, but I think this is the first layer. The first layer is teaching ourselves to observe our little worlds and go at them with purpose, one mental attitude at a time. Then we can go at the outward cleaning, cooking, decorating, maintaining, hospitality work. We can go at all of that without being driven by ideas of perfection or becoming demented rabbits of hither and thither anxiety. This is the work of a lifetime, ladies. Don’t. DO NOT. Cease and desist from thinking that you will have all your homemaking skills complete in one tidy package and that until you do you’re not a homemaker. Stop thinking other women magically have it all together, and no longer need to learn or grow or practice. Go at the work of HearthKeeping layer by layer, trusting your soul to the Lord. Trust and Strive, with purpose and intentionality.