Passionate Homemaking

Jen writes:

How on earth do you find the time to fit it all in? How do you enjoy your family, clean your home, cook such enor­mously nutri­tious meals, research every­thing, blog, etc., etc. I just can’t imag­ine how you do it with­out burn­ing out. I can barely keep up with the basics, and I feel stressed ALL THE TIME. Any tips?

Up to this point in our sim­pli­fy­ing series (on Wednes­days), we have been dis­cussing sev­eral dif­fer­ent ways to sim­plify your lifestyle, in menu plan­ning, in slow­ing down, in sched­ul­ing, and the like. These are help­ful tools for me in main­tain­ing peace in my home, but all these things can be done and still result in stress and frus­tra­tion if we don’t have our pri­or­i­ties in the right place. I have been there! By God’s grace, I have come to real­ize it all comes done to the ques­tion: Amy I walk­ing with the Lord? Did I com­mune with Him today?

The moment we see stress or frus­tra­tion coming out we need to search our heart with this question!

Communing with Christ

Col. 2:6-7 says, “Therefore as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and estab­lished in your faith, just as you were instructed, and over­flow­ing with gratitude.”

If we con­fess to be a fol­lower of Christ and to being filled with His Spirit than we are called to walk in Him. This means we are to be actively pur­su­ing rela­tion­ship with Him and seek­ing to nur­ture inti­mate rela­tion­ship with Him. It’s a living union we have with Christ! Man­ag­ing my house­hold well is not my pri­mary goal, but this will flow nat­u­rally from a con­tin­u­ous rela­tion­ship with the Lord. His Spirit must pre­mi­ate behind everything.

When home­mak­ing is cen­tered around Him, He pro­vides the joy and enthu­si­asm, the over­flow­ing in grat­i­tude as described in the verse, to com­plete all the dif­fer­ent respon­si­bil­i­ties that come on my plate in home­mak­ing. Walk­ing in His spirit pro­vides the proper bal­ance and moti­va­tion. Thank­ful­ness and joy in the tasks God has assigned for me to com­plete only come as a result of daily com­mu­nion with Christ.

When I expe­ri­ence bouts of stress (and we all do!), I must seri­ously ask myself: how is my rela­tion­ship with the Lord? Did I focus my day with Him this morn­ing? I hon­estly cannot do it all on my own strength! Together let us not buy into the enemy’s lie that we can do it all on our own strength or that we can make it through each day with­out con­stant com­mu­nion with the Savior.

What Is God’s to-do list for me?

The second ques­tion to eval­u­ate is: do my to-do’s really line up with what God has for me to do?

John 17:4 says, “I have glo­ri­fied thee on the earth: I have fin­ished the work which thou gave me to do.” Jesus had such a short stay upon this earth to com­plete the full work of sal­va­tion, and yet He came to the end and was able to boldly declare that He com­pleted the work! How was this possible?

As Nancy Leigh Demoss says in her book, Lies Women Believe, “In Jesus’ words, we find a clue–a pow­er­ful Truth that sets us free from the bondage of hurry and frus­tra­tion about all we have to do. Notice what work Jesus com­pleted in the thirty-​three years He was here on the earth: “I have fin­ished the work which thou gavest me to do.” That is the secret. Jesus didn’t finish every­thing His dis­ci­ples wanted Him to do. (Some of them were hoping He would over­throw the Roman gov­ern­ment!) He didn’t finish every­thing the mul­ti­tudes wanted Him to do. (there were still people who were sick and lonely and dying.) But He did finish the work that God gave Him to do.”

The truth is that all I have to do is the work God assigns to me! What free­dom there is in know­ing that there is time for me to do every­thing that is on God’s ‘to-do’ list for my day, for my week, and for my life!

Seasons of Life

It’s impor­tant to keep in mind also that we are all in dif­fer­ent sea­sons of life. With only one child right now, a small home (that only needs to be cleaned twice a month right now), and a mod­er­ate living (we pur­pose­fully keep our con­sump­tion to a min­i­mum), I don’t have as much to manage as the women with eight chil­dren! God’s assign­ment for me will be dif­fer­ent during the next season.

I have more time to blog, research and serve, as long as I keep my pri­or­i­ties in the right place: Lord, hus­band is served, Karis is cared for, and then comes the house­hold, and finally out­side ser­vice (which includes blog­ging and out­side min­istry). But then, I keep that min­istry home cen­tered. I am not going out and about. I am making meals for others from my home, invit­ing others to my home for hos­pi­tal­ity and fel­low­ship, etc. Right now I am grow­ing in learn­ing how to bal­ance the serv­ing vs enjoy­ing my family - that is hon­estly very dif­fi­cult for me!

I can’t do it all!

Lastly, guard against the lie that we can do it all! It is easy for me to slip into the mind­set that I should be an ideal wife and mother, keep my house per­fectly cleaned and orga­nized, pre­pare healthy meals for my family, be active in my daughter’s edu­ca­tion and in our church and com­mu­nity, stay phys­i­cally fit, while keep­ing up on cur­rent events!

Nancy shares again: “The Truth is, no woman can wear all those hats effec­tively. Sooner or later, some­thing (or some­one) is going to suffer. Frus­tra­tion is the by-​product of attempt­ing to ful­fill respon­si­bil­i­ties God does not intend for us to carry. Free­dom, joy and fruit­ful­ness come from seek­ing to deter­mine God’s pri­or­i­ties for each season of life, and then set­ting out to ful­fill those pri­or­i­ties, in the power of His Spirit, real­iz­ing that He has pro­vided the nec­es­sary time and abil­ity to do every­thing that He has called us to do.”

I could easily be com­mit­ting myself to serv­ing in many dif­fer­ent areas in our church, as is a weak­ness for both my hus­band and myself. I could easily be going to this or that out­side event. I don’t have the per­fect home, sched­ule or always pre­pare amaz­ingly nutri­tious meals, often times they are just simple bur­ri­tos (like tonight!), but that is simple and yet still pretty nutri­tious (black beans here we come!). There are days when I fall into bed at night with a huge pile of laun­dry still wait­ing to be folded (which was sup­posed to be done yes­ter­day!), because my day was filled with other things (pick­ing and freez­ing straw­ber­ries, for exam­ple.) If I am com­muning with my Savior daily, I find great source of peace and rest know­ing that that pile can wait till tomor­row. But if I am rely­ing on my own strength, I could easily get depressed going to bed know­ing there are dishes still in the sink and laun­dry to be folded.

In Conclusion

Jen, you are to be com­mended for main­tain­ing the basics! And that may very well be all that God has called you to do in this season. Take it before the Lord and your hus­band (as has a lot of insight into how much you can handle!) and eval­u­ate what your pri­or­i­ties are in this season.

“Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless the Lord guards the city, the watch­man keeps awake in vain.” Psalm 127:1

Unless I first rely on the Lord to do the tasks of build­ing, man­ag­ing, and watch­ing over my home, then I will labor in vain!

Recommended  Reading:

Shop­ping for Time: How to do it all and not be over­whelmed by Car­olyn Mahaney and daugh­ters - a supe­rior read on this very topic! Read my review here.