Homemaking Tips I've Learned From College

[Ok. Yes. I like this picture. I think they- I mean their clothes- are cute.]

I never thought college would prepare me to care for my future husband. But it is. Because I’m commuting to school my experience is different from most’s. I “leave” school but don’t go back to a roommate, a best-friend, or a bustling hall-way. I am just one of ten-thousand other students. School is more like work than college.

So I’m learning what it’s like to get up at six and come back at six, to be thinking and stimulated and attentive for hours on end… and then to come home… 

Here’s what I’ve learned:

1)      Hot food sounds good. Really good.

2)      Hugs and kisses at the door sounds really nice, too.

3)      Being told about things that I need or should (or you would like) me to do does NOT sound good. [I know I read this somewhere, but I learned it first-hand when I walked in the door and my brother insinuated that the dinner-making ball was in my court. (Are. You. Crazy?!?)]

4)      Bad things may have happened in the day (and the 45 minute drive in traffic may not have done much to mitigate this effect on my psyche).

5)      I need love. Lots of it. Because nobody has loved me all day long.

I know most of us already know this. Many of us practiced it on our fathers when we were little. But it’s easy to forget.  So take it from one who’s learning what it’s like to be homesick- every day- and make home the place to be.

This post is for Lisa Ente :-)

Motherhood Musings

Would it shock you to know that I’ve been thinking a lot about babies lately?

Maybe it was reading this blogger’s post- and reminiscing on baby-blankets and little siblings.

Maybe it was going to a party and holding baby-Leah – with her happy gurgles and soft black hair… baby-Timmy smiling with his big-blue-eyes...

I was scarcely eleven when my youngest sibling was born. –Too young to feel maternal fluttering when I held her in my arms. (I still played with dolls on rainy days.)

I remember the first time I realized I wanted to be a mother- not in the baby-bottle and stroller sort of way but instinctively, in my very being- a longing to hold and bear new Life.

I was fourteen – it’d been a while since my sister was little- we were camping and a family friend let me hold her newborn.

She was so small- warm, alive, nestled, unable to support herself, against me.

Perfect life.

I can only imagine what that feeling will be like when the little one is my own, mirror of myself and the one I love.

I remember realizing how small I was. Every other baby-holding had always invoked thoughts of when “I’m all grown up and big.” But at scarcely 5’1’’ –and petite at that- I smiled at the realization that “this was it.” I wasn’t getting any bigger. (Ouch. This is gonna hurt!)

…to have a baby in your arms… to feel its first stirrings within you...

I am not alone in longing for children, I know. Most of us girls want children from the time we’re born. Babies draw us like magnets. We play with dolls and mimic motherhood since old enough to first grasp the concept. Yet negative attitudes and societal pressures soon make us think otherwise. Could this tucked-away, forgotten desire be the reason for girl after girl at my college being either ambitionless or pursuing careers in which they taught or worked with children, (the only legitimate outlet for their maternal feelings society allows) despite the fact that when my teacher asked the class how many of us wanted kids it seemed I alone raised my hand?

For my own part, I have embraced the role God has given me- to follow in the footsteps of Eve and Sarah- to bring forth children and to raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

But it seems, at times, like the world itself is against me. Children are delayed as long as possible, and if you do choose to have them we have day-care centers, public-schools, and summer camps to carry our children from the cradle into adulthood.

Once women were told they could only be house-wives. Now, liberated, we must be anything but housewives.

I confess at times the alternatives offered are temping: independence, so-called “freedom,” and a life devoted to my own interests.

I am still single. Uninvolved. I could choose to do that with my life if I wished.

But I don’t wish.

How many others would wish as I do if they were not afraid of what people would say and think of them- of us, wimpy, naive slaves to our husbands, the stove, the mop, and the baby. The home: “Not good enough!” For heaven’s sake, DO something with your life!

As if caring for a man and raising the next generation wasn’t doing something.

So, godly women around me, if this calling be true, and if my desires are good, then

…encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored. –Titus 2: 4-5 [emphasis mine]