“All In” Brought me Rest and the Outdoors
Being home.
Being home is my favorite place to be.
I don’t want to be out and about. I don’t want to rush from one appointment to the next. I don’t want to hurry out early in the morning and hurry back late in the evening. I don’t even often feel like I just need to get out of the house. While I’ve always had a bit of a homebody tendency, this desire to be within my four walls or on my bit of the earth had to be cultivated. We leave home, go to school, get jobs, and barely “live” in our apartments. We get married, settle down, have kids, and sign them up for soccer, football, karate, music, dance, art, and more. Or we take a different path, focusing more on a career outside the building that houses us. None of these things are bad or evil. They’re all good gifts to be used as we can. They’re blessings. They’re also addictive. They keep us high on frantic living, stress, and anxiety. They keep us out of our homes and off our ground. This often cuts the cords that connect our hearts to our hearths. We can’t tend hearths that we never touch, never live around, never rest beside.
When I first gave up my paid employment and became a full-time homemaker in my vocation and location, I feared I would never get any rest. This little voice in the back of my head nagged me into believing that I was now on call 24/7. It whispered that I was now a slave. It taunted me to expect that I would now be run ragged and burnt out. I don’t know that I ever gave that loud internal monologue an actual voice, but I sure voiced the bitterness at my husband if he dared to need something and the woe-is-me feelings at the slightest tipping of my inner apple cart. I had a “hired help” attitude. I believed my homemaking was a job like any other job. It should have an agreed-upon beginning, lunch, breaks, and end time. This is how jobs worked. I should get off on the weekend and not have to think about work.
Homemaking, dear ladies, isn’t a job.
Homemaking isn’t my part-time job, my full-time job, or even (I know I’ve used this term often, but I’m growing out of it slowly but surely. It served me for a time.) my career. Homemaking, tending my hearth, is who I am and what I do. It is my heart. It is my makeup. It is my soul. It is who God made me to be. I don’t start homemaking at 6:30 and clock off at 7. I homemake all the time. I am the heart of the home. How can I be the heart if I’m not here? How can I be the heart if I’m clocked off? Does your heart stop working at the end of the day?
If we believe an office-based life is the standard, then that always-on nature of homemaking will feel chaotic, demeaning, and pointless. But why do such a thing? Office-based jobs are a fairly recent phenomenon if we look back across time and cultures—but motherhood and homemaking go all the way back historically and all the way across culturally. Which scenario provides a more human outlook on life? Which is more in tune with how we were designed?
Simplified Organization by Mystie Wrinkler
The sweet truth is that when we put in the effort to educate ourselves about this calling and life-long, always-on vocation, when we practice day in and day out, when we cultivate good attitudes, and correct our thinking, homemaking becomes more restful, not less. The sweet truth is that when we are home (I mean actually home), our homes become more expansive. I’m less a slave shackled to my kitchen now than I ever was as an employee, manager, or owner in the past. How is my life “easier” (kinder, healing, gentler) when I’m on call 24/7 as opposed to 8-9 hours of work? Because homemaking isn’t a 9-5 job, so the mindset and the pace are completely different.
Side Note: It takes forever to get out of this employee mindset. The longer we’re out in the workforce, the longer it takes us to get out of the 9-5 mentality. We will unnecessarily push and punish ourselves, filling our minds with false guilt if this is our perspective on homemaking. Understand that it does feel empowering and stimulating. This is why it is addictive. This is why it takes so long for us to eject it from our inner gardens.
I’m not on call.
I’m a homemaker.
Shockingly, at least to me, shifting my perspective has calmed my life down. This is no different than being a woman, wife, mother, and church member. There are never moments in our lives where these things aren’t true of us if this is what we’ve been blessed with. Being a wife isn’t something I do only when my husband is around. It is something I am all the time. It is part of my identity and guides my life choices. It’s not a burden, it just is. We don’t turn being a homemaker off and on. If you’re a mother, you don’t stop being a mother at five and go somewhere else and turn off your phone. You’re a mother every moment of the day for the rest of your life. It’s not on or off, it just is. It’s the same as being a church member. You’re not part of the body of Christ only for a few hours on Sunday. It’s not an employment. It is who you are.
Side Note: All this being said, it is vital that those of us who have side jobs, in or out of the home, set appropriate boundaries. Your work should not be able to reach you 24/7. In our digital age, this often requires us to gatekeep those boundaries. How ever this plays out in your life, you should not be available all the time to your boss or clients.
Once we stop fighting or demanding that homemaking be a 9-5 job, we can start going at our own pace. It’s like homeschooling. Everything becomes educational. If you define homeschooling as only the book work, you’re missing out on what makes homeschooling such a blessing to a family. All of life is educational. There is so much for little people and not-so-little people to learn. You are homeschooling your child from the moment of conception. Even parents who farm out the book work side of education are still homeschooling. Viewing it that way is freeing, not confining. Bookwork is confining. (This doesn’t mean it’s not important; it’s just stating the nature of the beast. Looking the beast in the eye helps us manage it. Ignoring its nature only makes our work harder.) When you look at homemaking as part of who you are, everything becomes homemaking.
This mental shift calms everything down. I’m not trying to get done. I’m simply doing.
As a homemaker in my home, I can make my pace crazy or not. I can include gardening, learn new skills, have chickens, pick up nephews from school, have brunch with family and friends, tackle big projects, small projects, and more. I can have a relaxed day on Monday and a reset day on Tuesday. Even vacation is still homemaking. Suddenly, with some practice and intentional cultivation of my heart and mind (Guard and Garden!), I’m not overwhelmed. I am simply doing. And doing can be 30 minutes to sip coffee and rest, a bit of time making phone calls, doing the taxes, and then heading out to trim a plant. It can be laundry, dishes, bathrooms, yoga, and a picnic. It can be errands and a nap in the sun or a dip in the pool. If it is all homemaking, all tending our people, then I can dance this dance at my own pace. I can enjoy my day because it isn’t a job, it is something so much richer, broader, and bigger than working a job. I laugh because I don’t deserve this. Why do I get to have this privilege? I’m so thankful to be a homemaker!
I get to go outside!
I have always been a reader, and I have always loved nature. I love the changing seasons. I love nature documentaries. I love big, sweeping vistas and tiny flowers hidden under leaves. I love studying animal behavior and communication. I love reading. I have books everywhere. I buy and borrow books. I love fiction and non-fiction. Stories are my favorite things. The best days are days I get to combine these two gifts and read outside. Do you know that when I worked 9-5, I almost never got to go outside? We lived in concrete and asphalt-surrounded apartments or else I was rushing out the door. Sitting outside was something children and old people got to do, not busy managers. Do you know how crispy the human soul becomes without time outside? Do you know how dull a soul gets without books? I do.
Now, because our entire home and property are mine to develop and grow and make beautiful and cozy, I get to go outside. I must go outside. Because my work is no longer employment but homemaking, I must make time to develop my brain, challenge it, feed it new thoughts, train it to see beauty, and exercise it just like I do my body. This means I need to read. I can’t do this job well with a weak and lazy brain any more than I can with a weak and lazy body. And all of this I get to do as a dance, not a slave to the rat race. All of this is who I am, not just my job.
What have I found as I’ve changed my perspective of what it means to be a homemaker? A bouquet of pleasantness in my work that I never expected. Here’s what’s funny: I saw it. I saw it in Ma Ingalls, in Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle, in Goldberry, Galadriel, and Farmer Maggot’s wife. I saw the calm, sweet, cozy heart of these women. I wanted it so badly, but I didn’t know how to get there. I think I’ve found the key. These women are all in on who they are. They’re not employees. They’re not strained by thinking of themselves as on call 24/7. They’re all in on just being the homemakers they are. Goldberry’s washing day isn’t a burden, it’s part of her dance. Farmer Maggot’s wife isn’t flustered by three more men at her table. She whips out more mushrooms and beer. Sophie cleans the castle and from this work, creates a family and finds love. Galadriel bakes her bread and weaves her cloaks because these are her joy and delights, not because she’s a slave. And her bread and cloaks protect and sustain those she has gifted them to.
Going all in on being in my four walls, managing this tiny kingdom, seeing it as mine in my heart, not the 9-5 job, not even (on a certain level) as my career, has brought me peace, rest, outdoors, reading, new skills, deeper friendships, and a rich thankfulness for what I’ve been given. I have no desire to be chronically frantic, on call, or clocking in and out. Homemaking has given me more work for my heart, mind, soul, and fingers to do than I can ever plumb. Like being a wife, mother, and church member, it is a work I will be engaged in practicing all my life. I couldn’t be happier.
Homemaking has given me fireflies.
I wake early and see the dawn. I step out at dusk to send six hens to bed, and I see fireflies.
I’m a homemaker.