It just so happened that Sarah and I have had a running conversation about why it is so important not to run ourselves to the point of ragged exhaustion every day, based on a quip I stumbled upon. HearthKeepers has again and again returned to the benefits of not living the chronically frantic life. I have horrifically discovered yet another reason to build rest, recreation, and nourishment into our everyday lives: we never know what will happen tomorrow morning.

In the early hours of an icy January morning, my husband experienced an aortic dissection and almost died. He had to be care-flighted to the next city over and go immediately into open-heart surgery. There is a part of my brain—seeing that sentence in black and white, raw, unembellished, and with none of the hyperbole to which I’m prone—that is still reeling. Our lives turned an unexpected corner. It feels like one moment I was in my cozy home, and the next I was dumped into whitewater rapids and told to swim.

I’m going to be pouring out several articles as I process what my life is like right now and what it will be going forward. There are so many micro-providences, so many “it just so happened,” that I’m unable to comprehend with my finite mind God’s governing goodness. There is such a sense of queasy horror I’m still wrestling with like a lingering, unsettling nightmare that won’t dissipate with the sun. So here are some of my first rambling thoughts and observations to help me organize my heart and mind, which will make me sturdier. They are being viewed through the lens of HearthKeeping. This may be simply because my brain is familiar with thinking along those lines; it may be because it gives me an objective bubble between myself and what happened. I may write more personal things later, but this may be enough to keep things processing.

Observation 1: Leaving Space

We homemakers are the front line in emergency situations, whether with pets or children or husbands or friends. It is often we who realize the situation has turned into an emergency, and it is we who start the emergency tending even before the EMTs arrive. It is vital that we acknowledge and accept this truth.

I’m not suggesting we live constantly on adrenaline, waiting for the proverbial crap to hit the fan every second of our lives. I’m not suggesting we give into fear or become helicopter homemakers. None of that is tending or cozy or nourishing. What I am suggesting is an attitude of preparedness that includes rest. This ties into our whole season on the goals of self-care. We work to be sturdy because we will be called upon someday, probably when we least expect it, to actually be sturdy right now. Preparing for hard times demands that we not run ourselves ragged during the calm seasons. It means ending our days with a little bit left over, because we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. It means doing a lot of mental and emotional work up front, so when we’re faced with the worst we can imagine as wives, mothers, and friends, we’re not starting with a deficit. The deficit will come, but we can help ourselves and our people and better allow others to help us if we are working now to strengthen ourselves mentally, emotionally, and physically, which means we don’t create lives that are chronically frantic. If we do that, when true franticness comes, we’re hit by demands to produce more from already empty cisterns.

Dear homemaker, when we take breaks, work out, read, pause, and begin and end the day softly, we’re not being idle or slothful. We are keeping a reserve in our cisterns for those emergency tending situations. We are loving and preparing to love our families and our community.

Observation 2: A To-Go Bag

One of those little providences, those “it just so happened” things, was that I had made a To-Go bag back in September after my chicken, Frigg, got attacked by a dog, and I ended up at the veterinarian’s with nothing but my dying phone. (Life, Death, and the Woman) After I got home and the dust settled, I put together a bag of things: charger, magazine, water bottle, snacks. I hung it by the garage door where it could be grabbed without a thought. I was so thankful for that bag when my husband was rushed into emergency surgery. Because he was care-flighted 45 minutes away and went straight into surgery, my brother-in-law brought me home (the roads were too icy for me to drive myself), and I took ten minutes to grab my backpack, dump my purse into it, dump my To-Go bag into it, make my bed, and was ready for the treacherous and gut-clenching ride to the emergency waiting room.

While I didn’t take that specific To-Go Bag because I had a tiny pocket of time, I took the stuff set aside in it. This was one less thing to think about in my already overcrowded brain and the emotional maelstrom I found myself standing in. We don’t all need to be preppers, and we’re not all inclined that way. We’re not all “how to survive the zombie apocalypse” wired. But we should all take 10-15 minutes to pack a bag with those things we might need when our world is turned upside-down in an instant—chargers, a light sweater, water, food, notebook and pen, mild entertainment. If we have kids, small things that are comforting to them, or small surprises to help pass the time and deal with the trauma, like new coloring books and new boxes of crayons. (We all know that after the initial gasp, most emergencies turn into days of hurry-up-and-wait, a boredom that can’t be avoided, but isn’t productive; it just sits.) It might not be a bad idea to add a small book of important names and numbers and personal information. So much information flies at you from medical staff that basic things like our own phone numbers can elude us. Talk to other homemakers and ask them what they wish they’d had on hand when their lives were turned upside down. The more we share with one another, the better prepared we can be when we face those things we can never be prepared for.

Make sure your To-Go bag is realistic. You don’t want to be lugging twenty pounds of stuff through the long-hallway-maze that is a hospital while you try to get information about a loved one. Only take things that will serve in an emergency, not all the nesting things. You may also find that a backpack will be your best bag. It can be slipped into more easily and won’t cause further irritation—not being able to find what you need, straps slipping off shoulders, feral water bottles slapping against you—in a high-frustration, high-stress situation.

When I first started ruminating on what I had learned about tending my hearth from this situation, these were the first two things that came to mind. In the next set of thoughts, I’m going to talk about helpers.

Being intentional homemakers isn’t a protection against bad things happening and isn’t an instant fix for all wounds. Our cultivating of beauty, nurturing, and coziness doesn’t make us immune to medical emergencies, suffering, or even death any more than it keeps winter colds at bay. But it does help us handle those situations. Our everyday work equips us to understand what might help a mentally, emotionally, or physically damaged person stop clenching: soft blankets, beautiful art, comforting food, a willing-and-ready helping hand. Emergencies are often proving grounds. They show us the chinks in our armor. We see where our thinking isn’t where it needs to be and where our homes aren’t where they need to be. They shine a light on our complacency. They also demand that we let things go. High standards are good; they truly are. But we must always hold them loosely and remember that our work is to tend people with our things, not tend things to avoid our people.

Many of you have faced seasons of terrible trauma, some acute, some chronic. It is vital we share these things—as much as we can—with one another so that we are weaving a stronger and stronger safety net in our communities to support each other during these horrible moments when life turns a horrifying corner.

The HearthKeeper and the Emergency

Slow Living and the Golden Mean