It’s been a long, hard year, but it has been good. It’s been a character-building year. But for the first time in my life, I feel like the Matron of my home. I feel in control and aware of my home's needs and growth and struggles. I’m so thankful to have reached this point. I’m so thankful for this constant conversation between homemakers that is challenging me to go at my work lovingly and intentionally. I’m so thankful to be a HearthKeeper.

If we want to keep our attitudes in the right place and not lose the spirit of the season, we need to keep our eyes on the big picture, not on all the tasks. We need to focus on the delight and joy and purpose of the feast. Yes, it’s a ton of work, but work is rewarding.

Marriage is hard, but it is also beautiful. It is beautiful in its teamwork of men and women in a long dance of support, help, leading, following, working together, and working differently so that the whole family grows.

Sons, nephews, grandsons, boys live in our homes. As much as the world is beating down on our daughters with lies about the subjugation of women, the oppression of homemaking, and that fulfillment can only be found in working a job outside your home, they’re also beating down on our men. Sometimes subtly and sometimes loudly.

Orderly, wild, intimate. Umbrellas bring these three aesthetics to mind. They’re much like home, like a little piece of home you carry with you when the weather is wetter than normal. A bit of order, a pinch of chaos, and a nestling in close. Homemaking is about our heart-ability to manage the order, chaos, and intimacy of our hearths, to tend our hearths. Its breadth of options is often overwhelming. We want to truncate it or limit it so that we can check off all the boxes and know we did a good job. But the real limits of homemaking are beyond our sight because homemaking is an attitude before it’s an action.

If femininity isn’t defined strictly, what if I’m not being feminine? Welcome to freedom. Freedom is a heart matter. Freedom requires you to judge yourself and not your neighbor, and oh how we hate this. We would so much rather not judge ourselves and gleefully judge our neighbor.

Freedom says you make your home according to your husband’s leading, coupled with your gifts, sensibilities, and tastes, within the bounds of providence.

Using the five senses to manage homemaking requires purposefulness and intentionality. We can’t have our head in the clouds, or be so frantic we’re rushing through life, or so discontent we just wish it all away. Noticing the five senses doesn’t require us to overturn our lives. We start small. It takes time to retrain mental habits. Start by just being thankful for temporary gifts filling this world. Once we start, worship fills our hearts. Thankfulness filling our hearts will go further in making home a delight than all the things money can buy.

Being a woman isn’t easy. Being a HearthKeeper isn’t a job for wimps. It is hard work, lots of growth, ever-changing, presenting constant new challenges, and requiring us to constantly renew our love for it and remember why we chose this life. It is a vast field of endeavors often overlooked by everyone. It is mundane and it is magic. Practice discernment. A woman with littles is living a life different than a woman with teens, as different as the life of a single woman compared to a married woman. This means we can all read the same article and yet have to pass on parts, embrace other parts, feel convicted by one thing and not convicted by another. This is not only true here, but in all of life. Life as pilgrims in this world requires wisdom and discernment.

God promised us the changing of the seasons and the food that they would produce. Autumn is given to us to enjoy! It is a time of harvest, a promised event, and a gracious act of God. He promised us seasons and every year, when Autumn overtakes summer, God is showing His faithfulness. What is not to celebrate?

How are we supposed to fill our homes with a sense of comfort, enjoyment, nesting, and beauty if we hate it all and don’t see ourselves in it? If we don’t cook food we enjoy, don’t have decorations that we love, and organization that works for us, we’re going to fill our homes with constant complaints. Don’t make the work harder than it needs to be and don’t think you’re somehow more holy if you’re more dour.

What if I’ve attained that which I’ve been working so hard for but just haven’t stopped to notice? What if my life is simple, but my mind and soul are what is still frantic? What if I’m so busy hunting, I failed to realize I’ve arrived?

Food has been a bastion of HearthKeeping from the dawn of time. Men are the breadwinners, but women are the bread makers.

Us cooking nourishing meals, cleaning our homes, washing sheets, encouraging rest, planting flowers, tending our shelters, clothing, and food is tending the church. Who do you think makes up the church?

Don’t allow yourself to be mentally lazy. I get it. We’re all busy, busy, busy, but if we’re so busy we can’t study theology even for a few minutes, we might need to reassess our priorities. Your children need to see this in you. I remember getting up in the morning as a teen to get ready for work and always finding my Mom up before everyone else reading her Bible and memorizing Scripture. I remember her engaging with my Dad in family worship, in Saturday night theological reading, and lots of theological discussions. That is a legacy given to all five of us kids that can’t compare with any other earthly inheritance.