Finding Joy in Your Home

What does it mean to be a homemaker? How do you define a homemaker? Does homemaker simply mean a stay at home mom or does it encompass so much more? How do I glorify God in my homemaking and what does it mean to be a Gospel-Centered homemaker?

These are the questions I try to answer every day in my ministry. And I think once we can begin thinking Biblically about our role as a homemaker, the other pieces in our home start to fall into place. When I'm facing a new day and trying to muster up the energy to get out of bed and start the coffee maker, reviewing the reason behind my homemaking helps so much. 

Listen to the Podcast:

We also recorded this blog post as an audio podcast. If you want to listen in instead of reading, click play below or do a combination of both

And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. 

Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer.

Over the past several years I’ve wrestled with what a homemaker really is. What does it meant to “keep my home?” How do I decide day in and day out what I should be spending my time on?

Where do I turn when I feel overwhelmed by it all??

Getting to the roots of what a homemaker is (and really understanding what that means) has time and again given me encouragement. It has freed me up to focus on what is important in life and let go of those insecurities that plague us all.

The focus on my blog and in my ministry is Gospel-Centered Homemaking, and so over time, I’ve received a lot of comments from women who feel like they don’t fit in this “homemaker” box. I hear comments from wives who work full time and express that they can’t wait until they stay home full time so they can finally be homemakers. Single women email me and share that “one day” they hope to be homemakers. And I have discussion after discussion with busy, stressed, overwhelmed moms that they just wish they could be “better” homemakers.

I want to challenge you to think outside the box a little when it comes to being a homemaker. 

1) How do you become a homemaker? 

I don’t think that a homemaker is something you become, but rather, something that you are. 

You are a homemaker by definition. You are a homemaker if you are a woman. Whether or not you have kids. Whether or not you work outside the home. Whether or not you are married. You are a homemaker because God has designed your role to be a keeper of your home. 

“And so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive, that the word of God may not be reviled.” - Titus 2:4-5

Managing a home, or helping your parents manage a home, is about so much more than dusting and dishes and laundry and cleaning. Keeping a home takes motivation, direction, and a vision of what you want for your home.

Keeping a home means transforming four walls into a place of rest from this world. It means creating a haven for your family to slow down and focus on Christ. That is going to be our ultimate goal within our homemaking.

Creating a Gospel-Centered Home means crafting an atmosphere of Christ-likeness.

The physical aspects of running a home: the cooking, the cleaning, the bill paying, are all extremely important. So don't get me wrong, those are important tasks and parts of being a homemaker. But ultimately, the motivation and the goal behind our homemaking is to glorify God and to point our family and ourselves back to God. 

2) You don't have to be a wife/mom to be a homemaker

The beautiful thing about being a homemaker is that God gave us the tools that we need to fill our role – even if we work full time outside the home or are not married yet. God has made women naturally caring,

Two weeks ago I shared an important post and podcast episode on encouraging your husband to lead with love. I got a ton of great feedback on this episode and a ton of new questions about encouraging your husband to lead. 

I am certainly not an expert on this topic and still have a long way to go when it comes to encouraging my husband and learning how to be more respectful and loving towards my husband. But we got one question in particular that Jason and I both felt like we could identify with. 

So I asked Jason to join me this week to chat about leading and how wives can encourage their husbands. I learned a lot too from asking him these questions. 

Listen to the Podcast:

We also recorded this blog post as an audio podcast. If you want to listen in instead of reading, click play below or do a combination of both

And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. 

Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer.

When you want your husband to lead 

We filmed this podcast episode with two goals in mind: 1) to help you as a wife better understand your laid back husband and 2) to hopefully give your husband a few resources and ideas for leading his family. We decided to address this topic because we got this question from a reader last week: 

"I do jump in at times like you said and it has been a difficult change for me too. Your husband sounds like mine in personality and I sound like you. When we are coming together to discuss things I need to bring up I do feel like I give him space and time to think and discuss but he often doesn't have an opinion or it's very hard to get a response from him. It makes me very frustrated. Often he doesn't know what we should do and will just automatically go with what I suggested where I am looking for more of a discussion. Particularly in the realm of day to day parenting which is the bulk of what I come to him to discuss. I am wanting him to lead. How do I encourage this? Are there any books, blogs, or resources for either my husband or myself to help in this?"

This is struggle that Jason and I have encountered in our marriage because he is very laid back and easy going and I take charge and lead very easily. We've had to learn how to bring our gifts together so that I am still bringing my own gifts to our marriage but also encouraging him to lead. 

Head up and listen to the full podcast episode to hear our discussion. But here's basically what we discussed: 

What are the struggles of a laid back personality? 

How do you handle being a more laid back person with the fact that God has called you to lead your family? 

"It's very interesting. When it comes to other areas of my life, such as work and business, it was easy for me to take leadership roles in those situations. When no one else was taking initiative, I knew I had to step up and fill that role. But that role has never been a natural thing for me inside the home. 

So being a leader in the home is something I've had to do a lot of study about and prayer in because it doesn't necessarily come easily to me. Being the spiritual leader in the home is something I have to be very intentional about because by my own nature, I won't do this automatically. 

And because you tend to do things well and I have a high level of trust in you, it's easy for me to just jump on board with what you want to do instead of taking the initiative myself." 

So how do you motivate yourself to step up and lead? 

God works in and through our personalities, but as a husband, you are also called to lead your family. So with knowing how your personality is and the fact that you are supposed to lead your family, what do you tell yourself to get motivated in that area? 

I got an email last month and I just knew I had to address it because I can so identify with her heart. I’ll share more in a minute, but I’ve had two very difficult twin pregnancies and then a third pregnancy which should have been easy and uneventful, but turned out to be fraught with complications.

So today we are going to be talking about how do we respond when pregnancy doesn’t go the way we planned, or when things are a lot harder than we expected (and this lesson powerfully applies to motherhood in general as well).

Listen to the Podcast:

I also recorded this blog post as an audio podcast. If you want to listen in instead of reading, click play below or do a combination of both

And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. 

Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer.

Here's the email I got:

“I'm new to your podcast and maybe you've covered this topic after Podcast #6, but I have a question for you that I've been struggling with. I'm due with my second child in February and both this pregnancy and my first have been very difficult both physically and emotionally (I'm unfortunately not a fan of the healthcare system that my insurance covers). It's unfortunately to the point that I don't think I want to go through any additional pregnancies (my oldest was 6 months old when I became pregnant with my second baby so I never really had a break). I'm just wondering how you were able to get through your difficult pregnancies? I don't want to struggle through my pregnancies, I would really like to enjoy the experience. Thank you in advance!”

My Pregnancy Journey

I want to first share a little bit about my pregnancy journey and experience because I can so identify with her emotions. I am so thankful for our five beautiful blessings, but we've had some ups and downs in the process as well. 

If you are new around here, we've had five kids in four years. We have two sets of twin boys and a baby girl who was born January 20th. 

Our first set of twins, Malachi & Micah, were born at 36 weeks 6 days and weight 5.5lbs each. I went into labor with them several times starting at 30 weeks. We had to medically stop labor a couple of times and I was in and out of the hospital several times before they were born at almost 37 weeks via emergency c section. After all the stress, thankfully they were born healthy and happy. 

Our second set of twins, Remington & Ryder, were born at 38 weeks and weighed over 7lbs each. From around 30 weeks on, I had over 10lbs of baby and had a really rough final 8 weeks. I could barely walk by the end and was in a lot of pain. As much as we were hoping for a VBAC this time around, we ended up with another c section due to pre-eclampsia at 39 weeks. This time the surgery was rough, I lost a ton of blood, and recover was really really hard. 

When R&R were 9 months old, we got a great surprise: We were pregnant! This was certainly not in our timing or our plan to space them so close together, but God is good! This time around, God had a different plan: a single baby girl! Magnolia Rose was born on January 20th after a third unwanted c section. And we are busy adjusting to life as a family of seven with five little kids, four and under. 

I certainly haven't had the craziest stories and I am so so thankful that my kids are healthy and strong. I know that many others are not as fortunate.  But along the way, things certainly didn't turn out how I wanted or expected and it was really rough at times. At the end of the day, I can identify with my email friend about not loving or even enjoying pregnancy. 

So how do we deal with this? What do we do when pregnancy, or motherhood, doesn't turn out the way we expect?

This is a tough topic to talk about. Some of us are lost when it comes to encouraging our husbands to lead. Many of us bristle at the thought of "submission" and letting him lead. 

I know I have good intentions when it comes to wanting Jason to lead. But when push comes to shove, when I get tired and irritable, when it comes down to it...I often don't let him lead or encourage him to lead how I should. 

So what does it look like to let our husbands lead? And how can we encourage him to do so? That's what we are chatting about today. 

Listen to the Podcast:

I also recorded this blog post as an audio podcast. If you want to listen in instead of reading, click play below or do a combination of both

And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. 

Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer.

This is a topic that I need to visit often because it's really easy to forget these lessons. It's easy to stay focused on my husband and encouraging him for a day or two but then life gets busy and he falls off my priority list. 

I honestly don’t have a lot of real advice myself, because it’s something I struggle with. So today, I am going to be sharing some excellent advice from Christian women who are far wiser than myself and who have been married far longer than I have.

Encouraging Your Husband to Lead with Love

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a woman criticize her husband’s ability to lead. Whether he’s failing, in her eyes, to be the spiritual head of the household or just not appearing to want to take the lead in parenting, budgeting, or planning the family vacations, many wives believe their husbands are passive. 

I’ve learned now to ask the obvious – but sometimes uncomfortable – question: Have you ever let him lead?” - When a Woman Inspires Her Husband by Cindi McMenamin

Ouch. I have to quietly raise my hand here. In our early days of marriage I know I’ve felt that same thing or at least thought it. But through studying what it means to be submission and to let my husband lead, I came to realize that while yes, our husbands absolutely do need to eventually step up to the plate, I wasn’t really letting him lead.

I'm not naturally a quiet and gentle person. I'm more of a bull dozer who likes to jump in and get things done. It's just my personality. What can I say? I'm the first born. But that's not an excuse when it comes to my marriage and following what God teaches on marriage. 

So I think that’s the very first thing we need to ask ourselves (or maybe even ask ourselves every 6 months or so): Are we even letting our husbands lead? Are we leaving room for him to do so? Giving him opportunities to lead? Quietly and lovingly encouraging him and letting him know that we have confidence in him?

It comes down to respect.

I think something that this topic comes back to again and again is: respect. 

One terrific way to make the room for him to lead and to help encourage him to lead, is to make sure that he feels your respect. Men and women tend to do things differently. We do things on different time frames, we approach problems and subjects differently.

Sometimes, it's really easy to jump in and take over if our husband isn't doing something the way we would like or the way we would do it (I am very guilty of this!).

All of this is communicating to him that we don’t respect him. And honestly, if the shoe were on the other foot, I would not want him treating me that way.

Here are some real men who responded and shared what it looks like in their homes when their wives let them lead:

“Ask me for opinions and input on decisions.”

This is the second post in a mini-series on Spiritual disciplines. You can go back and read part 1: Foundations of Spiritual Growth for the Busy Homemaker. 

Last week we discussed that when it comes to our own spiritual growth, we do have an element of responsibility. But at the same time, it's only in God's strength and through His working that we grow. We rely on God's grace and grow through His strength...but we are also to be diligent in obeying His commands. 

Listen to the Podcast:

I also recorded this blog post as an audio podcast. If you want to listen in instead of reading, click play below or do a combination of both

And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. 

Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer.

So how do we grow our faith? How can we get back on track in our Bible reading and prayer with the purpose of obeying God and drawing closer to Him?

Growth should be a normal part of our life

"Growth is also a normal expression of the Christian life. The New Testament writers assume growth and constantly urge us to pursue it. Peter urges us to 'Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ' (2 Peter 3:18). Paul instructs u that by 'speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ' (Ephesians 4:15)." - Growing Your Faith by Jerry Bridges

As Christians, when we look back and reflect on the past year or the past ten years, we should see growth in our spiritual life. We are not meant to be stagnant when it comes to maturing in Christ.

Of course, we do have times when we fall back into old sins or seem to be stagnant, but we shouldn't be okay with that. And it shouldn't become the normal in our lives. We should be striving to grow with each passing day, even when that growth is very slow and steady. 

"Spiritual growth occurs as a result of intentional and appropriate effort. The word intentional implies a diligent pursuit of a clear goal. Appropriate indicates that we must use the God-given ways of growth given to us in the Bible. We usually refer to these ways of growth as 'spiritual disciplines." - Growing Your Faith by Jerry Bridges

And that's what we are talking about today. Those disciplines that we practice such as Bible reading and prayer that draw us closer to God. 

We practice these disciplines because:

1) God has commanded us to 

2) They are the avenue through which God has given us to know Him more so that we can be transformed more into the likeness of Christ. 

Too often we wait for a "feeling" or a desire to want to read God's Word. We don't "feel" close to God so we don't pray or dig into His Word. But we shouldn't wait for these feelings, because they may never come or only seldom come. 

We disciplines ourselves to read God's Word and pray, not because we have to, but because we love God and are motivated to know Him more. Bible reading and prayer are simply two ways in which God has given us to accomplish that. 

Bible Reading

It's primarily through God's perfect word that we come to know Him more. We can observe God through nature and learn certain lessons, but it's only through God's word that we see the complete and whole story of who God is and His character. 

It is through studying God's Word that we come to know him more and more. It's through Scripture that we learn to put off the things of this world, to say no to ungodliness and to say yes to pursing a holy life more and more. 

"The primary means of growth God has given us is His Word. Peter tells us in 1 Peter 2:2 that 'like newborn babies, [we should] crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.