Blogging and Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life

My friend Carol blogged about why she blogs and asked her blogging readers to tackle the same question. She had some great thoughts about it and got me thinking.

1) Blogging helps me think more clearly. As I work to get my ideas into a form that others can understand, I refine them.

2) I need the practice writing.

3) I aim to be an intelligent, hopeful, joyous voice standing for biblical womanhood and all it encompasses: submission to my husband, joyfully teaching my children, working with creativity to make a comfortable home from which my family can serve the Lord and others. There are so many strident voices denouncing anything less than paid work and overreaching ambition in wives and mothers that there needs to be someone speaking the truth. I may not be a loud voice, but many small voices might have an influence.

4) Not only do I hope to speak truth in a hostile culture, but I hope to be an example to younger women and an encouragement to women my age and older. I don't read many blogs, but the few that I do read regularly encourage and sharpen me. It would be a privilege if my writing did the same for others.

5)  I hope to leave a written record of my thoughts for my children, a legacy for future generations.

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In light of these reasons for writing, I'd like to recommend another book.

I recently re-listened to CJ Mahaney, Jeff Purswell, and Josh Harris discussing 'A Pastor and His Reading'. While I'm not a pastor, there was much food for thought there. One realization I came to is that, as a wife, mother, and home educator by calling, I should regularly include books about these callings in my reading diet (more in later posts about some of the other observations I've drawn from this whole series of podcasts).

Then a friend recommended this gem:

Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life

I nipped over to Amazon.com and was pleasantly surprised when my package arrived the next day.  (Amazon's two-day shipping is great!)

As I read it, I was refreshed in my vision of making a home and all that it means.  This isn't a list of practices and techniques, but a theological and philosophical defense of, well, keeping house.  Margaret Kim Peterson reduces keeping house down to Christ's commands to provide food, clothing, and shelter in his name.  However, while she reduces and simplifies the scope of keeping house to these three areas, she doesn't reduce their importance; she makes them larger. 

She also turned to Psalm 104.  As I read the excerpt through tears, I saw the Creator of the universe keeping his creation, putting it in order, providing for life and comfort -tasks that we see as drudgery and mundanity, yet the Lord himself does these things.

I came away from each chapter with a new appreciation of the work I've been called to. I've also realized that there are ways of thinking and talking about them that need to change. By the Lord's grace, I'm making these changes and I think that will be helpful in maintaining this new focus (more about that in later posts, too).

Not only was the content enlivening and inspiring, but the writing itself has an appealing, lyrical quality.  It was a joy to read and re-read.

SDG!