It's a Good Day

Ever wonder if all that parenting is paying off? Kids truly do learn from example. Yesterday was one of those pat-myself-on-the-back kind of days. I'd had a busy day. I volunteered in the morning. Ran home; ate a quick lunch; fed my animals their lunch and gathered eggs; then ran off to town for groceries and other errands. I ended my outing with a 5:00pm pickup of Hannah and a friend from Drama practice.
Now usually, when Rachael walks in the door from school I'm home with a snack waiting, soft music playing on the radio, and cozy lighting. Yesterday when she got there it was cold in the house and dark. It was a rainy dreary day outside adding to the gloomy atmosphere inside. About 5:15pm my cell phone rang. It was Rachael wanting to know if she should start supper? Why, yes! What a great idea. So I began walking her through what I had planned for supper.

By this time the wind had picked up, it was raining cats and dogs, it was dark and I still had groceries to unload and a home to prepare for the evening. (Home to prepare?...I'll get to that!) Imagine my delight when I finally walked in the door and she had the lamps lit throughout the house, dinner started and a pot of coffee brewed. She thought we might like a hot drink on a cold night! That's my girl! I was so proud!

You see, she's learning that home making is not just about flipping a light switch and putting something in the oven. It's the whole deal. The sights, sounds, smells, and feelings. How do you feel when you walk in the door and there's no one to greet you. No smells coming from the kitchen. No sounds? Being a stay-at-home mom is so much more than the title implies. We moms, stay-at-home or not, set the tone for our whole family. That old adage about "ain't nobody happy if Momma ain't happy" is true and don't think for a moment it's not! Home making is so much more than just food in the stomach and clean clothes in the drawer. It's about making our homes a haven. A place for our family to want to be.

I was thinking about this the other day. A guest pastor at our church mentioned in his message that so many of the problems in American families today are because this is the first full generation of parents who are the product of divorced parents. They didn't have a stable family to model a family for them. Therefore, they don't even know how a family works much less how to parent their children. Hmmm, I guess that would apply to homemakers too. My mom was home. I learned from her example but how many women didn't have that blessing?

I am in no way perfect. Please don't think that, but I have learned a lot in the years that I've been home making. It's my passion. It's what I always wanted to do. I'm living my dream, thus making it that much easier to do it well. If you struggle with making a home my next few posts are going to be for you! I'm going to post about the art of home making. You see I believe that every little girl should be excited about someday having her own family and making her house a home for them. I firmly believe that with the feminist movement we as women have lost out. Let's think about this, ladies! Do we really want to bring home that bacon and fry it up in the pan? I'm so sorry for those of you who have to. I truly am. I can only imagine the emotional stress that puts you under not to mention the physical. We really weren't made to endure that kind of stress. Just look at the statistics on heart disease among women. Do you know when that number began to rise? I'll tell you, when women entered the workplace. You won't see that in very many publications but it's the truth. I guess I'm getting a little off track. I tend to do that when I'm talking about the role of women. Mostly because I feel so passionately about it! There's so much to say on so many levels! One of my favorite lines from the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding is when the mom says, "The man is the head but the woman is the neck that turns the head!" We women have known that for ages. It's what we do with that information that matters.