The following comment, made regarding a previous post, breaks my heart. But unfortunately, it echoes the misconstrued ideas of many, many women. This is PRECISELY the thing I fight against, especially through this blog. I fight against the lie that the feminist movement has perpetuated throughout our culture, wrecking homes and making women miserable.
“I hate to see a woman who has the ability to invent, create or start their own business be sentenced to the kitchen and husband slavery. God gave us a brain with limitless potential and I do not believe a great God would tell us to only use part of our talent. Enjoy your family if that is your thing but don’t judge the people who do not have a house full of needy children and a tired
husband.”
Oh, do you hear the heresy? The notion that a home is a place where only brainless people stay? People really do believe this! They believe that a “woman who has the ability to invent, create or start their own business” should not “reduce” herself to being a homemaker.
Furthermore, the idea that a homemaker can indeed invent, create or start their own business is foreign! Let me just say from experience, if nothing else stopped me from returning to the work force, the sheer freedom I have to utilize my gifts from home would be enough. I could never do the inventing, creating and business I do now when I worked. I was enslaved to my job, and to all the limits it created. The feminist lie is such an irony!
(As a side note: every person has a specific job, regardless of all his or her many gifts. Is a doctor limited in his profession if he happens to be a great musician too? If an accountant also loves to paint, should he refuse to be “reduced” to the confines of his accountant’s office? Homemaking is simply my profession…it doesn’t nullify my other abilities. I hope you get my point.)
And, all inventing, creating, etc. aside, those are just by-products–fringe benefits of being a homemaker. They aren’t even the issue…listen closely to the comment above…”enjoy your family if that is your thing…”
This isn’t about what I want to do, or what “my thing” is…it is about God’s perfect design, about serving others, about giving my family my best. It just so happens, that when I give myself to that design, the joy and desire follows. That’s the beauty of trusting an Omniscient Creator!
Oh dear women out there who believe that being home is “enslavement” and drudgery, there is another picture I hope you get the chance to see….and possibly paint yourself!
21 comments
*hearty applause*
Hearty…because this touched my heart. I love this post. 🙂
What better place for a creative woman to than in her own where she can limitless free expression, a flexible schedule and the possibility to touch every sphere of life? Homemaking isn’t just getting dinner on the table by 6 and folding laundry! We have, as society, lost the art! Homemaking can include your deepest passions! Sewing, painting, music, dance, cooking, hospitality, decorating, correspondance, writing, teaching, and on and on! What other job on God’s green earth gives one such freedom?!
Home is a lovely place to be.
Thank you for speaking the truth! It is so good to hear the truth when everyone, even our “Christian” friends insist that homemaking is not what a woman is supposed to do- that somehow women are called to something much “higher” and more important than “just” serving our families. The lies have spread and are rampant even in the Christian community.
Thanks for sharing Kelly!
You are on target Kelly! If anything I think it takes a TON of skill, motivation, invention, creating and so on to run a happy, productive, efficient home.
I don’t know of any man that would not want to come home to a loving wife, with a peaceful home, filled with the aroma of food cooking, clothes washed, dried and PUT AWAY, and an evening of intellectual conversation with a wife, and many laughs with the children.
I for one am so thankful for a husband that appreciates me and needs me. I know in his eyes I am worth far more than rubies! :o)
I agree Kelly!! I don’t see how being a mommy and wife is considered “enslavement” I would rather be at home working than any where else. It so much more fulfilling knowing that I please my husband and children other than anyone else(well of course God first).
Romans 12:2 “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing, and perfect will.”
Kelly, thank you for speaking the truth! Being a wife and mommy is such a blessing. I know the world and others don’t always see it this way (sad), but God does. EVERY day I get to love and care for my husband and children. What a high calling. Life is so FULL!! Home is a blessed place to be – I thank God for making that clear to me!
Stephanie
Agreed. Passionate Housewives Desperate for God is an EXCELENT book that addresses this very issue. They term the opinion that you quoted “whitewashed feminism”. Its not radical but it still has the same goals and aspirations as the very anti-biblical radical feminist.
I Love that I can express my talent in the home! In particular I enjoy sewing and decorating.
Kelly, the part about “your thing” really got to me too. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? “Your thing”. I keep thinking about that video I saw on Visionary Daughters, featuring Mrs. Chancey describing feminism: “not what God says. What *I* say.”
It’s so tempting to fall into this tolerance trap… “you want to be a homemaker? Great! You want to work full-time and neglect your children? Oh, that’s awesome too” – no, ladies. We need to be much clearer than that.
What about the army of workers then required to do the jobs mothers aren’t doing? The teachers, day care providers, laundry workers, maids, seamstresses, manufacturers of appliances of convenience, preparers of premade foods, and cooks? (Not that every homemaker excels at each of these) Who is doing those jobs? Mostly women. Even in the “ideal world” feminists might imagine, half of those workers would be women. Clearly only the dull-witted and boring would be suited to these tasks–certainly not those who would consider themselves inventors, creators, etc. And what if the woman who worked as a maid could save as much money by staying home, cleaning her own house, and cooking her own meals, and caring for her own children?
Clearly the feminist dream isn’t for everyone–only the best and the brightest. The average woman would probably have to settle for a dead-end job or two and low pay. It is only the intellectual elite who would truly “benefit” from these jobs where one could invent and create. So the feminists are not advocating equality for all women–only those women they deem worthy. Perhaps this is part of why they look down on homemakers–we wouldn’t have what it takes to work in their prestigious positions, after all. Does it still sound egalitarian throught that lens?
And here’s a thought–which girls are more likely to become the intellectual elite of tomorrow? Daughters who were raised by the state, and the under-paid under-appreciated teachers and caretakers and nannies their professional-career moms pawned them off on? Or children who were raised by mothers who loved them, spent time with them, worked to fuel their passions and tailor their lessons to their learning styles?
Young Christian Woman, that is an excellent stream of thought!!!
Anna S-
Since when is working neglecting children? Not feeding them, not clothing them, stuffing them into a closet for a weekend… THAT is neglecting them. Some of us had working mothers and were NEVER NEVER neglected.
Neglect comes in various degrees. You’ve only described a ver extreme case: “Not feeding them, not clothing them, stuffing them into a closet for a weekend… THAT is neglecting them.”
Real or perceived, a child can feel neglected if Mom is too busy to come to the school play, if someone else has to help with homework, if Mom is too tired to play bingo at night or read the bedtime story. A child can feel neglected if Mom and Dad have to work unexpectedly instead of taking the promised trip to the zoo. Whether this is “real” neglect or only imagined neglect on the part of the child is irrelevant.
Have a child raised by the State, the school, the nanny or the TV IS a form of neglect, even if the child stays well clothed and is not stuffed in a closet.
Not to sound like a troll, but a child who is upseet because mommy can’t play bingo needs to let it go. That’s life.
Is that life? Is it? Is that what we are teaching our children?
“Get used to disappointment kid. There’s more where that came from!”
God forbid!
Life has more to offer than that.
Sure there’s nmore to life than that. but why expect your parent to give you everything? Life is about finding the people who do want to spend time woth you, not about expecting the person you want to spend time with you do always be there.
please pardon my awful typing, it was a long day at the office
Shanie, life is about finding the people who do want to spend time with you? Tell that to the sweet, new baby being brought to mommy’s arms for the first time’-“Sorry kid, this is not the person who really wants to spend time with you, but if you keep looking, I’m sure you’ll find the right one.”
I do not at all want to cast judgement on your thought processes, but do believe ANY of what GOD’S WORD says a mother’s calling is to be?
How is a mother going to follow God’s VERY SPECIFIC command to teach the words of the Lord God to her children when she sits in her house, and walkest by the way, and when she lies down, and when she rises up (Deut.6), if she is busy serving another woman’s husband in the workplace, and busy sending her loving child to go see if daycare worker #4 is the one who really wants to spend time with him?
I’m sure this does sound hard-nosed to you, but God’s Word is clear on this truth. “Buy the truth and sell it not”. Not even for all the feminist’s fancy dreams (LIES, actually).
Beth
stacyzwife@msn.com
“Since when is working neglecting children?”
OK. I’m glad I checked this thread again. You know, I currently attend a training program in clinical nutrition in a hospital (prompted by my mother and intended to give me a flexible occupation once or twice a week until I become a wife).
So, yesterday, we had a patient, a 7-year-old boy, hospitalized because of a certain condition that requires nutritional intervention. We went to his parents and asked, “what does your son eat?”… they glance at each other –
“Um. Well, in the morning he has some milk and cereal and then we rush him to school – he eats lunch at school – and then he has evening school until 7 PM… he eats dinner there. Then he eats a snack at home, so we don’t really know what he eats during the day…”
You know, I’m sure this boy’s mother loves him. I’m sure she means well. But the fact remains that she spends time with him for – 1 hour? 2 hours? – until he goes to bed. That isn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
to anon…
I’m not a christian. I don’t believe in God. Sorry. I like to read blogs like this because I have a hard time finding blogs and such about marriage and kids, and all I can find are ones like these. I’m really really not trolling, and I’m not as heartless as I sound about children. And as for the little baby whose mother doesn’t want him, well… there are measures against that for a reason. BC and abortion.
Shanie,
I wasn’t referring to a mother who didn’t want her newborn, but a mother who did not have the time a newborn needs from his mother, because she had other things demanding her time.
I’m very sorry to hear you don’t believe in Jehovah God, Who created you, and Who died on the cruel cross of Calvary to redeem sinners like me and you. He is truly the only one Who can give any of us freedom- freedom from the bondage of sin, and freedom to live joyful lives in the area He has called us to. I do find it interesting, though that you capitalized God, if you truly don’t believe in Him. But the truth is, everyone believes in some god- whether it’s the god of self, or some other man-made god.
Maybe there is a reason you’re not able to find blogs about marriage and children with the particular slant you claim to be looking for-maybe it’s because, for the most part, only Christian women truly have a desire to learn what is best for their children and families, and to pass that on to other women, who are searching for those same answers.
I will definitely pray that the loving, gracious God Who created you and your children will bless you with Light to see the Truth of who He is.
Beth
stacyzwife@msn.com