Saturday, February 25, 2006

Fulfillment in My Home


While many women choose to work outside of the home, I choose to work in my home. I have a 4 year BSW degree that I have never used outside of my home. Will I use it in the future? Probably not. Do I regret getting my degree? No. If I hadn't gone to college I wouldn't have met my dear husband! While I am still in debt over my college degree, I am totally at peace in my home.

I am so thankful that the Lord has put it upon my heart to stay at home with my children. There are many days when I feel I will go crazy over one more question being asked of me, or one more mess or spill I need to clean up. But then I think about how blessed I am for these children of mine, and that I get to stay at home and care for them! I don't have the slightest inkling or desire to leave my home to work. Are we rich? Heavens, no! Zach is in the military and the pay gets us by, but isn't much. But I realize the value of my children. I couldn't imagine putting them in daycare where somebody else raises them, teaches them, sees their first step and hears their first word. I couldn't imagine being separated from them for 8 hours or more a day!

Ever since I can remember I have wanted to be a mommy. I would play with my dolls and be their mommy as a little girl. I would play with my Barbies and they always had their babies they took care of! I think even my marbles I would play with had babies! If you observe little girls in a daycare or nursery setting they are so interested in the little babies. Do you think that is just coincidence? I don't. I believe God has put the nurturing, mother-heart in all of us females. At the
Above Rubies retreat I went to last month, Nancy Campbell mentioned how even lesbians have this nurturing spirit in them, for if you notice the majority of them have dogs that they treat as children, nurturing them as they would a child.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to waitress or be a real estate agent or some other job or career, but it is just a fleeting thought. I want to raise my children in the Lord. I want to teach them the things the Lord instructs me to teach them. I don't want them to learn some perverted 'truth' out in the world, but I want them to have a Biblical worldview.

While I often struggle with enjoying my children, or being patient with them, I know that I am exactly where the Lord wants me to be- in my home, raising my children to be a light for Jesus in this lost world. Please note that I do not intend to offend anybody that chooses to work out of their home. I simply want to share how blessed I feel to make my home, children and husband my 'career'. I feel so blessed to stay at home. Today there are so many people who voice their opinions and who look down upon us homemakers, thinking we're weak or unable to work. So, I simply wanted to take a stand for myself. I am not a 'Desperate Housewife', but a fulfilled woman of God!
I will leave you with this:

Deuteronomy 11:18-21
Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.

2 comments:

Bethany said...

Oh. I don't blame you! I am hoping that in the future I will have the opportunity to be a sahm myself!

I always wonder about the women who say they just cannot stand to spend that much time with their children. It makes me incredibly sad!

ChicoryChick said...

This is so true! I have been thinking thoughts similar to these for the past week!