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Modern Homemaking REdefined: Meets Marriage Comments Off

This article is a repost from Meredith of Penelope Loves Lists. If you’re interested in guest posting for Sister Wisdom, see the guidelines here.


love is doing something when you don’t feel like it

My marriage to J is my second, and I know now that happy marriage isn’t luck, or sex, or even just promises of forever. It’s daily maintenance. Not “work”, because I don’t think marriage should feel like work, but maintenance. It’s paying attention and clearing a path for your partner through every day life.

It’s you caring more about him than you care about yourself. That’s not always easy when you’re as busy as we are, right?

Being married to a man like my husband, who loves so completely through actions ( every morning I was sick, he cleaned the whole house before leaving for work, so that my mind could be “at ease”. I know.) has taught me the extreme value of doing for each other, rather than just saying “I love you” every day.

I find that my love speaks loudest when I do something for him when I most don’t feel like it. After a long day, when I’ve completed more than I thought I ever could. That’s the time I try to do one extra thing for J. Because that’s when it means the most.

Are you loving through actions today? Are you showing your family that, though your To Do list is miles long, they have a place right at the top of it?

[Annie here]

Let’s just recap those last 2 questions, in Modern Homemaking REdefined terms:

1. Are you loving through actions by what you choose to focus on, what you choose to let go, what you choose to make important, what you choose to overlook?

2. Are you making your husband and children a priority, even when the home needs making? After all, whom is the home for? What is the value of a home without the people in it.

CHALLENGE: What can you drop from your standard “homemaking” to-do stuff in order to free up a little more time to rest, to read, to be with the ones you love, to listen to your children, to take a walk with your husband, to call a friend? Drop it today. I dare you! Then let us know about it.

Today’s 2 Cents Courtesy of:

Penelope is a type of person. My name, however, is Meredith. I’m a working, married, 30-something mom of three, trying desperately (and, I admit, a bit compulsively) to hold together all the crazy aspects of my life. For me, the only way to do that is with lists and with all manner of organizational tools.

http://penelopeloveslists.com/organize/on-my-mind-love-is-when-you-dont-feel-like-it/

Modern Homemaking REdefined: I Commend the Enjoyment of Life 2

This guest post is written by Betsy Ball Clark. If you’re interested in writing a guest post for Sister Wisdom, see the guidelines here.


My oldest daughter recently handed me a tiny strip of paper on which she had written, “Do you have secrets about me, that you are keeping from me?” I laughed when she gave it to me. “Like what?” I asked, “That I found you in a basket on my front porch on a cold rainy night with a note that said ‘Please take care of this baby’?”
Now she laughed. “No,” she said, “That you dropped me in a ton of toxic waste and I have super powers.”
Some days I wish I had super-powers.

Perhaps at first glance, my home would appear to be somewhat conventional; my husband works. I work at home (I prefer “Domestic goddess”), and home school my children, but the ideals I had in my mind about orderliness in home making have turned out to be anything but “Ideal” in my home.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and I abhor clutter. I have declared war, but so far, nature is winning! Periodically I sink into pits of despair about my lack of organizational discipline. I make attempts, and hopefully each time I am taking small steps to grow in this area. But the real hope I have in making a home is the loving, growth and shaping of four wonderful people I love more than anything else in this world.

Three Things I Want to Achieve

1. Love my husband well.
My children watch how my husband and I interact with one another. They see us fail, and they see us succeed. I want to model true, self-sacrificing love to them. I also want to model that self-sacrificing love requires renewal on occasion. I want them to know that healthy self-sacrifice doesn’t require becoming a non-person. Just as I want them to become the best that they can be in who they are, I want them to see us doing the things we enjoy and living life fully.

2. Help My Children Discover their Passions.
Things they love, and things they really, really like. Children are each so very different and sometimes I expect them to fit neatly into proper little children boxes. I am learning to train and teach them uniquely in the ways that will be most effective for them, as the distinct and beautiful creatures they are. This is a continual learning process for me. My oldest is a fiery, passionate “artist” in the making. My second, as a classic boy loves “the machine” (technology) and relationships are not as openly important to him. My third is all about inter-personal relationship, and has perceptions and interactive skills that blow me away!

3. Help my Children Discover and Pursue their Purpose.
Our passions surround our central purpose as spokes on a wheel. I believe God’s purpose for each of us is to glorify Him. This may look different for each person. Enjoying the good gifts He gives and thanking Him for them is to bring Him glory. Serving others, creating, working, playing, laughing, weeping with the sorrowful, loving, and finding the vocation you want to pursue, all have to do with our passions. Colossians 3:23 says “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.”

This has become somewhat of a life verse for me. My understanding of what brings God glory has grown from a narrow “Stained glass” view into a flourishing, rich tapestry that all of life; doing dishes, changing diapers or performing surgery can be a magnificent expression of honor to God if it is done as to Him.

As my small children grow, my place in their lives moves from one of control (while they were babies I did everything for them) to one of influence. Their external behavior can be somewhat controlled by environment when they are young, but if there is no change and redemption of their hearts, when the circumstances change, they will change with them. As they grow into adults, I long for them to be securely anchored to an unchanging Rock of Jesus Christ that will safely guide them through all the storms of life.

It is a wonderful thing to know that you will always be loved and treasured by Him as you enjoy the rich gifts He has given while you make a temporary home here on earth. I would love to share how you can be in relationship with Him if you don’t know Him yet!

Really, if you live in a home, you are somewhat of a home maker. Homes are the hubs from which we live life. We rush in and out, to soccer games, or church, or the grocer. We fuss over how we want it to look and feel. We invite friends to share time and food together with us. All these things are important. They are the things we do, but overall, the home is only an expression of who we are. It can be warm and cozy, and a little messy. It can be perfect and sterile, like a picture in a magazine (sometimes I wish I lived in a magazine, or at least had a maid who made it look like I do).

I shall bear my discontent about my housekeeping imperfections. I shall strive to overcome them, and be grateful when my husband is patient with them. But most of all, I shall enjoy the gifts one day at a time of the ones I love, here in my imperfect home.

Today’s 2 Cents Courtesy of:

Betsy Ball Clark is a second generation homeschooler living in Greensboro, NC with her husband Greg, and their three children, whom she homeschools: Jessica – 9, Joshua – 7, and Grace – 3. She enjoys being with family and friends, hiking, coffee, and fun. Betsy and her family attend Seacoast Church, and try to live by Ecclesiastes 8:15. She writes at her personal blog and at Beauty – Women Only, which is primarily for the purpose of encouraging women.

Setting Priorities: Good Is the Enemy of the Best 4

What we do today, right now, will have an accumulated effect on all our tomorrows.

-Alexandra Stoddard


Value Judgments

Every Yes I say to something out, about, away,” a wise woman once told me, “is a No I have to say to my family.”

She didn’t mean that you shouldn’t ever say Yes to anybody but family.

She didn’t mean that it’s wrong to ever say No to your husband.

She meant that you need to see the true cost of each choice you make. If it’s worth it, great. But if it’s not? Let it go on by. Life is too short to waste. continue reading…

Baselining: The Multitasking Antidote 1

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From The Growing Life:

“The process of baselining

involves writing down everything you don’t have to have, be, or do, to live a happy and fulfilled life (for more on this, see here). For example, I don’t have to own nice furniture (thrift store furniture works just fine) or a house, I don’t have to finish graduate school, I don’t have to be able to tell a coherent story about how I make money. If you’re serious about doing a thorough job of baselining, you’ll download this spreadsheet and write down how much money and time you’ll eliminate by doing away with existing possessions, obligations, and self-images…What I’ve found is that my dreams naturally emerge after I’ve eliminated bullsh*t assumptions about what I have to be, do, and have in order to be happy (if this doesn’t happen for you, then simply do some dreamlining after you’ve done some baselining).” continue reading…

Day 7: Life Without a To Do List; Details and Priorities Comments Off

Cynicism is a form of resistance, a walling off of the possibilities for transformation. Mary Pipher

Challenge Update (Friday): Here’s an example of a typical to do list back in the days when I used one of those:

Email CW invoice
Post Arco articles
Cook (soup and cornbread)
Email worship conference info
Call Jennifer
Call about birth certificate
– Daily Routine (clean, laundry, blog, exercise, etc.)

Now here’s what Day 7 of this adventure looked like.

What I Did:
Cleaned up basement (stacked crates, swept, straightened)
Moved bookcase and desk
Cleaned out the refrigerator
Dealt with plumbing problem (called about 10 plumbers until I found one reasonably priced and available, set up a time, showed him the problem, paid)
Oiled the hardwood floor
Errands (Agape, Bahr’s, Wal-mart, Bread Co., Library)

The difference I am seeing between the days with a list and the days without a list is that I am tackling bigger things on these list-free days. Previously, I would right down those little details to remember: call someone, email someone. I would get up in the morning, glance at my planner, see a list of five things to do besides my normal daily activities, and think I just don’t have time for anything major today. I was planning myself out of being productive.

Details are tricky that way. I’ve forgotten a few details over the last week because I haven’t written them down. I haven’t gotten all of my daily tasks done everyday. But I have accomplished some bigger things at the expense of details and daily tasks. The priorities have shifted. The big projects now take precedence over the details. Is it dangerous to forget the details? Sometimes. It is much easier to catch up on details than it is to catch up on big projects. I can sit down and pay bills, answer emails, or return phone calls in about thirty minutes. Nothing bad has happened because I dealt with those things later rather than sooner.

Thoreau said, “Our life is frittered away by detail… Simplify, simplify.” (He also said, “We should distrust any enterprise which requires new clothes,” and while that doesn’t apply to this discussion I think it is sound advice. No charge for that extra.)

Simplify, simplify. Some details are important, necessary, and life will suffer if we neglect them for very long. Brushing your teeth, for instance, or buying groceries, bathing your child (and yourself), talking to your spouse. Important details. Many details are unimportant fillers. We pay attention to them because they seem urgent and they give us a sense of immediate accomplishment. They are busy work, distractions, tools of the procrasinator, impediments to our larger goals. In their right place, they cause no harm. In the wrong place, they are the pebbles we trip over that cause us to fall back down the mountain.

Better Life Tip: Put your details at the end of the day. Devote a half hour to “detail clean-up.” Don’t let them distract you from accomplishing the bigger projects.

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