Practical Abby Jones Practical Abby Jones

The Four Virtues: Fortitude or Courage

We don’t deny that the world is full of risk, darkness, and death just waiting to rend apart our homes and our people. We don’t deny that at all. It’s true. What we deny is its power to intimidate us into panic or apathy. We look it squarely in the eye, our candle gleaming brightly in our hands, and we endure.

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Practical Abby Jones Practical Abby Jones

The Virtues: Justice

While prudence is much a matter of our minds, even in its more practical application, justice is about how we treat people. It’s about treating people right. Justice is defined as “fairness, decency, conforming to truth.”

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Practical, Inspiration Abby Jones Practical, Inspiration Abby Jones

Feasting

You have poured all this labor into this glorious food. Enjoy it! Let the tastes and textures thrill you. Rehearse those well-trod paths of old stories and memories. Get loud. Sit for five minutes. Observe your happy, content people and be thrilled, oh tenders, at the feast, all the feast. From start to end, planning, cooking, consuming. Enjoy the feast!

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Inspiration Abby Jones Inspiration Abby Jones

Thankfulness

Ladies, attitude is everything as homemakers. We can make poverty an adventure, water into broth, cold nights cozy, husbands into courageous warriors, and children into men and women. We do this. Us. The homemakers. But we can’t do this if we’re not thankful.

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Practical Abby Jones Practical Abby Jones

Project Management in the Home

Setting goals and managing projects in the home requires us to leave behind concepts of corporate management and masculine expectations. We are women managing homes. This ultimately means that we must take into account the big picture of tending when we set out goals and plans.

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Inspiration Abby Jones Inspiration Abby Jones

Tend Your People

Our culture is in love with the idea of the “found” family. Do you know why that is? We told homemakers their job was worthless and they should go do something more important. Women did that and now we have the loneliest and most lost generation of people.

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Abby Jones Abby Jones

Surviving times of Lower Activity

God has gifted many women with drive and energy. You are the doers! The goers! Yet even you face times of transition, health struggles, or lulls that might make you feel like you’ve lost your value.

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Practical Abby Jones Practical Abby Jones

Surviving Frantic Times

There are times in life when those of us who have chosen to keep life simple have that simple life turned upside down, when we don’t feel like we’re living a quiet life, working with our own hands, minding our own business, when those of us with a simple life wake up and find ourselves in the middle of an active life we didn’t sign up for.

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Opinion Piece, Philosophy Abby Jones Opinion Piece, Philosophy Abby Jones

You are not Behind, Part 2

We must guard our hearts and garden our femininity. Don’t stamp it out. Nurture it. Let’s not allow the power-dressing, power-hungry, angry, blue-haired women to tell us that being Feminine has no value. It is weaker and softer. It does flourish best with a man guiding, guarding, and protecting it. That doesn’t make it less valuable, but more!

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Philosophy Abby Jones Philosophy Abby Jones

You are not Behind, Part 1

Home should be flexible enough and long-term enough in its mentality that it is able to tend to the sick, even if the sick is you. That means pausing and doing this thing then back to other things. When someone gets sick, even if that is you, the home should be able to pause to allow you or others to recover.

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Theology, Inspiration Abby Jones Theology, Inspiration Abby Jones

Breaking Things

With my fists slowly opening, I find myself saying yes! Use it! So what if it breaks, or wears out? Better that than not enjoying it at all!

This too is part of delighting in our homes with a heart of merry durability.

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Inspiration, Theology Abby Jones Inspiration, Theology Abby Jones

Delighting in the Home

I get to be here for the long haul, not just the weekend. I get to pour myself out without frantic adrenaline, dog-eat-dog, stay relevant, exhausting passion. I get to pour slowly, learn, test, and take my time as an eternal being, not a one-shot life.

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Inspiration, Practical Abby Jones Inspiration, Practical Abby Jones

The Simple Life

Cultivating a simple and quiet life has taken a lot of mental and emotional work. Some of it has been by choice and some of it is due to God’s providence. But the delight of calm living has enthralled me. The simple life lends itself to observation and thought. It allows you to open your eyes and heart to little things.

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Inspiration, Practical Abby Jones Inspiration, Practical Abby Jones

The Active Life

You active, driven social women have a great gift, one that many of us envy. We’d all love to manage our homes, tangibly love our husbands, homeschool our kids, manage a business, and serve our church while having a robust social life. If you have even half of that, be thankful. Use that gift as long as you are given it within the appropriate bounds of rest, recreation, thoughtful awareness of others, and appropriate priorities.

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Practical Abby Jones Practical Abby Jones

Practical Thoughts on Raising the Next Generation of HearthKeepers

If we want a next generation of women who have a burning hearthlight, we must let them be part of the homemaking. We must include them in the dance of getting food on the table on time, at the same time, and still relatively warm. We must train them in fabric and textures. We must show them and let them experience the delight of nurturing plants and selecting produce. We must showcase merry durability and cheering strength.

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Inspiration Abby Jones Inspiration Abby Jones

Know Thyself

To be effective managers we need to be aware of ourselves. We need to see what we’re good at and use that, and we need to see where we’re weak and go to work.

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Inspiration, Philosophy Abby Jones Inspiration, Philosophy Abby Jones

Femininity

Being feminine requires great courage and wisdom and love. Stay in the fight, sisters. We must not allow the world to tell us motherhood is only changing diapers and thus boring, unimportant, and something we can do without. Motherhood is who and what we are down to our very bones. We must not allow the world to take true femininity away from us.

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