The Main Thing

I read a blog post today written by a mother of six children age eight and younger.  In it she confessed that she does things she likes--like sewing, even if her house is not orderly.  She does see to it that her children are well-fed, and she does laundry regularly.  Her children help a good bit with regular housekeeping chores.  Nothing in those revelations was the slightest bit shocking to me.  It's exactly how I lived life when I had young children.

Because I could never manage doing everything well (or even adequately at times), I remember creating a very simple mental list of priorities:  people, other living things, things.  That God and a life of faith trumped all other priorities was the understood Ultimate Priority.

When I felt the most overwhelmed, priorities needed to be determined within each main category.  For example, in the "people" category, I concentrated most on the people that I was most directly responsible for--husband and children.  Since the children were the most helpless and needy, and the most in need of nurture and training, they were at the top of the time priority list.  I don't think Hiromi felt neglected, but we didn't spend a lot of "just us" time.  On my part, I was ever so glad when he could be at home with me and our children.  I don't remember wishing to escape from my children, and he felt the same way, although his means of supporting us financially always meant working at away-from-home jobs. 

In the "other living things" category, I prioritized animals over plants. If I couldn't get water to everything, the animals came first.  If I had time for plants, I prioritized keeping them alive over making them beautiful.  Food plants generally came ahead of ornamental plants. 

Things.  Necessities over frivolities.  Simple over elaborate.  Convenience over appearance.  Inexpensive over costly.  Maintenance and repair over replacement.  Make do with what is readily available rather than reflexively acquiring something new. 

This all sounds spartan and severe, but it was also a vast canvas that invited creativity, nurtured trust in a loving Father, and rewarded me with many reminders that God is a wonderful provider.  I genuinely loved spending time at home with my children, or going away together. 

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I was awarded a bachelor's degree with a major in education ten months after our wedding, but working outside our home was never the plan for me.  Having a family was the priority.  I never pined for the academic life I had left.  In many ways I wasn't a "natural" homemaker and mother, but I wanted to do both well, and I found fulfillment in delving deeply into various aspects of these roles.

If my natural instincts had been stronger, I would have had less need to read books about every homemaking and mothering task that I needed to tackle.  As it was, I amassed a library of books on a host of diverse topics and borrowed many books from the public library.   I'm sure that sharing what I was learning with my children helped cement the "lessons" in my own mind, and working and learning together brought us all pleasure.  Although the process did not always follow a smooth upward trajectory, it also had the natural effect of building competence and confidence in our boys. 

After my boys were all nearly grown, I realized one day that I could actually help others learn a great variety of skills by simply leading others in the same paths that I had followed while parenting and homeschooling.  I did just that when I taught high school classes in sewing, nutrition, food production, home environment, etc.  While I also taught more academic classes, they involved a lot more slogging on my part and on the part of the students than did these hands-on classes. 

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At this stage of life, I have no regrets about having invested almost exclusively in being a parent and homemaker for about 20 years.  A job or ministry outside my home would have been second-best on a number of fronts.  Among the benefits I see are these: 

1.  I gained a deep knowledge of many segments of ordinary life that add a great deal of richness to my life now.  In retirement, I'm spending a lot of time at home again, and I love it, but I'm also free to pursue interests outside my home.

2.  When the child rearing, homeschooling days were past, I had much more to offer others outside our home than I would have if I had been locked inside a classroom, teaching for the same duration.  I was a more well-rounded person for having stayed home to engage the world from there.

3.  While I fall far short of my mother's hospitality accomplishments, I've tasted what a powerful ministry this home-based way of reaching out to others can be.  The simple act of inviting others into your living space and sharing food and friendship is focused on benefiting guests, but it's also inevitably a learning, growing experience for the host family. 

4.  Being at home together during the day made going away as a family in the evening far more doable and attractive than if the children or I had been gone all day and come home just in time to eat and get ready to go away again.  In this way, we benefited from many learning opportunities in the community.  Among them were Partridge Community Association events, Community Concerts at Memorial Hall, 4H events, involvement in a large, diverse extended family, special meetings at church--often with rich learning opportunities from speakers who had seen slices of life elsewhere or in other times--blending it with deep conviction and compassion and humility. 

5.  Our children had time to pursue individual interests and passions with fewer uniformity-inducing (and mind-numbing?) hours in a conventional classroom.  They were hardly out of grade school before they were doing a lot of real work for real income, at their own initiative, with only limited guidance and assistance from us.  They swapped out car engines, cut, sold, and delivered firewood, developed software, and did farm work, etc.  I don't see how this could have happened in a less home-centered lifestyle.  Maturity was not hurried, but neither was immaturity prolonged unnecessarily. 

6.  I didn't know then as much as I know now about the physical, emotional, and cognitive benefits of spending time in nature, but playing and working outdoors a great deal benefited all of our children enormously.  While I had some knowledge of the "dumbing down" effect on children when they spend time mostly with similar-in-age peers, I appreciate this more fully now. 

7.  For everyone in our family, making a contribution outside our home did eventually become possible.  When it did, it seemed like exactly the right thing at the right time, with the right preparation. 

8.  Our adult children have each others' backs--and ours.  They use their disparate skills and resources to benefit each of the rest of us, although their own families come first.  We're friends who love to be together.  I do not take this privilege lightly.

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Perhaps one artless way to summarize what I feel that worked for me in parenting and homemaking is "keeping the main thing the main thing."  Home and family were truly the main responsibility at that stage of life, so keeping it at the center of my investment and commitment made sense. 

When the mother of six children age eight and under (one set of twins is part of this number, as is a newborn) says she sometimes ignores other duties to sew, I still see her keeping the main thing the main thing.  She does that for her family, at home with her family.  She is not sending her children away to be cared for or invested in by others while she escapes to take a job in a sewing factory.  Big difference.

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The succinct language of Biblical commands* can also be applied to homemaking and child-rearing:

1.  Keep yourselves from idols (don't worship what is unworthy of your adulation, investment, or commitment)

2.  Love others as yourself and serve others before yourself.

3.  Let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. (KJV)

4.  Esteem others more highly than yourself.

5.  Pray without ceasing (and remember that the Good Shepherd gently leads those who are with young).

*All given here by memory, some in paraphrase.