Homemaking Study

At my Monday morning biblestudy group, we are following the book Feminine Appeal by Carolyn Mahaney of Girl Talk, which takes an in-depth look at Titus 2 v 4-5:

"Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, ⁵ to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God"

Each week we are looking at a different virtue as listed here, and taking it in turns to lead the morning. I chose to lead the 'be busy at home' morning because homemaking is something that I am so enthusiastic about, it is a lifestyle choice that Hubby and I have made, and I feel that I have gained such a different perspective on how God sees homemakers as opposed to how the world sees homemakers. I wanted to share that passion and calling with the ladies that I spend each monday morning with.

I spent a lot of time in prayer whilst ironing over the past few weeks about how I should lead the morning, and what to say, and how to present it. I also spent an hour in a coffee shop on Friday afternoon pulling together my thoughts and went and bought 15 candles to give to my ladies.

Yesterday morning, as I was doing housey tasks, I was feeling very grumpy and my thoughts had turned negative and untrue towards what I was doing. I realised after a fashion that the devil was attacking my thoughts and my confidence in what I know to be right, and I shared this with Hubby who had been commenting on my grumpiness all morning. He prayed immediately that I be protected from these attacks and almost immediately, I felt my grumpiness lift and my excitement for my God-given role return.

Onto this morning - I was fully expecting more niggles from the Devil as often Monday mornings are quite frought for me. But this morning was brilliant. We'd slept right through the night until 5.30am, Ben had gone back to bed for an hour this morning, and I'd spent some lovely time with Ruth (and done 3 loads of washing). Then just as we were about to leave, the doorbell rang, and there was a post delivery man there with a box for me. It was a box of fabrics sent to me by Val over at The Victorians Didn't Even Like Pink, and I was so excited to receive them. I didn't expect them until at least Friday, so it felt like such a huge blessing to receive them on the very morning that I was going to lead a study on homemaking. And then in the car on the way over to church, Ruth and Ben held hands most of the way. It was a very precious sight.

And so to the study. Once again, I realise that I am not a natural leader of such things. I talk too fast, it all seems so disjointed to me and we ended up talking about things that I had said that the morning wasn't to be about, namely the 'work outside the home mums v stay at home mums' debate. I don't feel that I overly encouraged the ladies in their God-given role, or blessed them, or even gave them anything to think about. I gave them all a scented candle, but since we didn't get onto the bit where we could share ideas for making our homemaking role more beautiful, I don't know how much sense they made.

I did come away with an overwhelming sense of how selfish we all are as women. The main thing that everyone struggled with was the servanthood nature of the job, and all wanted to be doing something else where there was recognition. It was all about how we feel, and even the analogy I gave at the beginning, that we are queens presiding over our own dominions elevates us to a higher standard than perhaps we ought to think of ourselves. Humility is hard, servanthood is hard, but it is what we are called to do. I think its called taking up our cross...

So I thought that I would put my preparation notes and scribblings down into a series of posts here on my blog as a record of where I am at at the moment.

Stay tuned :)