7 replies to this topic

[Candice]

Just thinking about this after being a stay-at-home mom, then returning to work after 14 years. Worked one year (extremely long hours and days). Now back to being at home again.

Working gave me a (fleshly) sense of value via kudos, etc. In my eyes, my value at home is really nothing. This is a surprising admission. Yet, I wonder how many others feel the same. The world offers us tangible value via input. Our value or worthiness in Christ is, however true, less tangible to me. I hate admitting this. Can't quite get past the lack of value put on staying home and caring for home, etc.

Any thoughts?

[Meema]

Candice, dearheart, if you will allow a grandmother to give you her perspective, I think I can, at the least, give you a broader horizon.

In the seventies, as I was raising my three kids with a very limited income, most of my women friends were responding to the siren call put out by the slick magazines that women should go to work to “find themselves”. I might have also fallen into the trend if I could have figured out a way to earn enough to have anything left over after paying for childcare. Instead I was more or less forced by circumstances to do with what I had and thus I was a stay-at-home mom long before the term was coined. This concept of “working mother can have it all” was born in the late sixties, early seventies by the aggressive feminist movement.

My mother never had to deal with that concept. She understood her job was to cook, clean, wash clothes and hang them on the line outside in all manner of weather, iron my dad’s shirts and be at home for my brother, sister and me. She had no idea that she had no value and sang while performing her “job” and to my knowledge she never even once considered she ought to be finding herself working for a wage in order to have worth.

I point this out to demonstrate that our value as a human, male or female, is not based on a dollar amount. This is a lie that has been forced on us. It is part of a greater lie that all things must have a dollar value in order to be recognized in this era of idol worship. To put it more bluntly, we have been duped.

Is staying at home cleaning, minding kids, managing the shopping and cooking unfulfilling? The answer depends entirely on whether or not you perceive to all “jobs” need to have pay stubs to prove they have value. How we approach each new day that God gives us really depends on how we choose to see our worth to Him, not the world.

So, from my perspective, I stayed home, instead of leaving my kids for someone else to raise and influence. I volunteered in the school because in the seventies, while the other mothers were busy working for someone else there was a shortage of volunteers. I learned so much in those years. What I earned has long outlasted any salary.

It doesn’t matter what our job is, all God cares about is the honor we bring to it because it reflects the honor we give to Him.


For Christ,
Meema

[Lori Smith]

Candice,

You might enjoy A. W. Tozer's take on the subject. I think it is sweet and humorous. He writes, "Have you ever stopped to consider what work is? Let me put work in its simplest form. Work is moving things and rearranging them. We have something over here and we work to put it over there. Something is in the pail and we put it on the side of the house, which we call painting. Something is in the cupboard and we work to put it in the skillet" (A. W. Tozer: The Purpose of Man Designed to Worship, p.38). His point is not to demean work, but to recognize the greater thing. He feels our greater purpose is this: "God made man to be like Him so that man could give more pleasure to God than all the other creatures" (p. 43). Thus, work is not the issue; Instead it is about our relationships to God and to one another. We work to please others, and God performs works through us because He delights in us and has chosen to use us to bless others. So it really isn't about rewards we get from society. It's about enjoying the God who enjoys us, and it's about doing things for our family because we love them. We don't have to worry about the status the world places on things. Thanks for starting a great topic!

[Candice]

. ..It's about enjoying the God who enjoys us, and it's about doing things for our family because we love them. We don't have to worry about the status the world places on things.

Hi Lori,
Thanks for your input. Much appreciated. I see it as doing these things so my husband and teenage son will be served. Unfortunately, it never seems to be enough - cooking the best food I can for the day, keeping laundry and all things tidy, clean and arranged. My husband always seems to want more money and my going back to work for a year helped him to buy three rental houses for income. So, that was my value then. Now, I feel like the only people who are in "need" not just "want" are the poorest of the poor on the planet. Is it not God who has put a burden on me to serve them. I feel like this daily pleasing my family is just meeting their wants and "spoiling" them in doing so. To be honest, I'd leave to go to Burma or somewhere to be a nurse to those too desperate to even plant seed - they just eat it from the bags. This is a complete spiritual dilemna for me as I watch the American Dream become an American Nightmare for me and my husband and son. They just don't see it as I do. They just don't get it.
Love, Candice

[Lori Smith]

Hi Candice,

It must be difficult to be on a different wavelength spiritually than your husband and son. Do you think God might be drawing you towards something? Perhaps you should pursue things that might bring you fulfillment. Seeing the change in you might affect the rest of your family. Sorry you are going through troubling times ...

Blessings,
Lori

[Candice]

Is staying at home cleaning, minding kids, managing the shopping and cooking unfulfilling? The answer depends entirely on whether or not you perceive to all “jobs” need to have pay stubs to prove they have value. How we approach each new day that God gives us really depends on how we choose to see our worth to Him, not the world.

Meema,
I agree here with your thoughts. I don't put value on the dollar part of it. It's the contribution, the transition to a new way of serving others when kids grow up and that need isn't really there in the home. The need appears in my heart of hearts to be out there...not at home. The home appears full of wants, not needs.

I see hurricane Sandy and want to just get on a plane, go to a rampaged street and help until the LORD says it's time to go home. This is where need is and I just believe, as Lori questioned, the LORD is preparing me for something new...a transition of sorts to be available for HIM to use my life.

Thank you Meema for your words of wisdom!

[Lori Smith]

Candice,

Sorry to but in, but I wanted to share one way you might volunteer. Either that or it might get you thinking. BGEA is always looking to train chaplains to send to disaster zones: http://www.billygrah...rt_training.asp The training is brief and you can decide when and where you go. Of course there are other opportunities in other ministries. Just a thought, I'm not trying to be pushy. I'm just excited about the thought that God might be calling you towards something. Of course, listen to God for yourself.

Lori

[Meema]

Candice, if you will indulge me please, I’ll share yet another perspective on this topic. Interestingly it’s been on my mind quite a lot lately. I hope this doesn't seem presumptuous.

First of all, as others have said, you must listen to what God is calling you to. But allow me to gently admonish you to be sure it is what God wants, not just what you crave. This is an important and subtle difference. This time is a strange one and I believe God's peculiar people are all being called to something.

Once my kids were grown I spent the next thirty years applying skills acquired while a volunteer to several different careers. One of those caused me to move to another city, where I have been now for twenty five years. A whole lifetime can happen in a quarter century. And now my kids and their kids are here with us, having migrated after their paths took them off in their directions, college, Navy, marriage. It’s confirmation to me that this is where God wanted us to be in this time.

All the time I was pursuing “paid” work, I had a still small voice nudging me to consider there was something else I would be doing. In retrospect I can see clearly it was a process that led me to where I am now. One step in front of another, from going somewhere else to work everyday to being at home again in a home office, layer upon layer of more skills added, learning curves suffered through until I found a place for all of them to come together, which is where I am now in my journey. And I am quite sure this is where I am supposed to be, doing what I am doing, my personal calling.

I understand the urging you have but what I am trying to show you is that if you are restrained by circumstances from doing the great things you wish to do, perhaps God is calling you to a learning curve first. I’d bet dollars to donuts that there is great need in your area. Need is everywhere. A food bank? A woman’s shelter? Foster care? Perhaps there is a need that no one or organization has yet to recognize. And perhaps you are already involved in these kinds or other local charities. It’s hard to speak intuitively when I know nothing of your life, skill sets, and circumstances. But I can understand your earnest urges from the small amount you have shared. You want to do something. You want to make a difference. You want to serve. This I understand completely.

I guess the point of all this is that we don’t have to think in terms of huge grand efforts to be of good service to God.

For Christ,
Meema