There are so many things I wish I had the time to do. I have lists and lists of ideas I want to try, recipes I want to make, and posts I want to write. I’ve made peace with the fact that many of these things will never get done, but I have to continually look at that list of undone things to make sure that what I’m leaving undone isn’t actually something necessary.
One necessary thing I see many moms leaving undone is making a home.
A home is more than just a house you live in with your family. It actually has nothing to do with the structure, but rather it is the essence of your family and the little things within the structure that speak to who you are as a family. It isn’t even the decor or the furniture or the food that makes the home; although, those things can definitely be a part of that essence of family.
What a home truly is goes much deeper and is often lost in the craziness of the day to day life of the family. It is the connections between family members that make a home a real home.
Have you ever been around a family that seemed to only live together, but really didn’t do much more than that? They sort of passed in the hall or coming in and out the door, never really connecting with each other. Their house was void of relationships.
With our online life taking up more and more time, our home life has suffered immensely. We are connected with people we graduated high school with, but lack connection to the very people who live under the same roof as us. Sometimes I wonder if people online know more about us than our own families! How’s that for being disconnected?!
It’s time.
It’s time to come back to our real world. It’s time to put first things first and work on the relationships we have with the members of our household before we check out the status of our friendships online.
It’s time we took the time it takes to make a home by taking the time it takes to be a homemaker. And the only way we can be a homemaker is by not only being home, but by building strong relationships with the people we are making the home for.
Emily Spencer says
I just love this! Reading your words is like a breath of fresh air. As a young wife and mother, I often see friends neglect their families and responsibilities in favor of their online lives. I honestly see social media as a true danger to young (and old) homemakers. It is so easy to become caught up in the statuses and pictures of our “friends'” lives. We see only the good and exciting moments in their lives and feel jealousy towards them and dissatisfaction with our own boring, normal life. My husband and I have talked frequently about our online presence. He has set guidelines for our family that we both abide by. We both only have a Facebook. I post one photo per day of our baby daughter on Facebook (which is completely private and how we share family photos with many extended family members and friends). I will only update my status with positive and uplifting updates. Once my husband is home for the night, the phones, laptops, and kindles are put up. We protect this family time fiercely and it has certainly benefited our family. We never turn on the radio in the car and use that time to talk. It is very sad to me that many couples do not know how to just be alone with their spouse without t.v. or phones or computers. Thank you for the reminder that, as a homemaker, my purpose is to create and cultivate a home for my family.
Amy says
Sometimes I wish I had a smartphone…until I see how much freedom I have without it. 😉 It’s good to set boundaries and guidelines with these things because otherwise, it is much too easy to let it run away with us.
deborah says
Great reminder! I’ve been contemplating real life relationships lately. While I love many things about the internet and blogs and connecting with others, I’ve just thought a lot about life beyond the computer. 🙂
Several of my friends close around me don’t do much online as far as blogs and it is a whole world they’re not familiar with. And that’s fine. I enjoy both worlds and I don’t want my computer to become all there is!
Amy says
There’s a balance to be had for sure! The internet is a wonderful place, full of useful information and a channel for keeping up friendships that might never have the chance to grow in real life, but it can easily become a time suck. We have to be diligent and prayerful in how we use our time.
Alek says
Thanks for the reminder. You are so right and this hit close to home for me.
Laure Covert says
Yes! People connections… and so worthwhile to build that up. It blesses those who stay under the roof and those who come in and out in friendship or need.
whitney says
couldn’t have said it better myself!! 🙂
kendra zickafoose says
Oh, I love these words! I grew up in that home that you spoke of. It was more of a museum. Beautiful, but not really lived in. Relationships often only skin deep. My growing up years are my biggest motivation for how I want to live my life as a mama and homemaker today!
On another note, I used to think that I needed to search for my calling, to go after all of the things that my heart desired to do, until one day I realized that this calling of being a mama and homemaker lasts only for a season (of course we are mama’s forever, but our babies won’t always be in our homes!). Not sure why it took so long for this thought to click in my brain, but once I looked at life that way it ‘freed’ me from feeling as though I needed to ‘find myself’. And it has helped me to more fully embrace the next many years in my home.
Amy says
I love this. We are pioneers with all this technology and we don’t know the long term effects it is going to have on us, our kids, and our families. We need to be in much prayer and in the Word of God to make decisions about what we are or aren’t going to do online. My big thing with the internet is the mental energy it can take, even when not online. I love Richard Swenson’s work about margin and how we are in an age the world has never experienced before. Progress gives us more and more of everything, faster and faster and the result is overload and stress. I highly recommend his book a Minute of Margin.