Voices Calling Us Home

Theology of Home I: Finding the Eternal in the Everyday

My son David gave me this book for Christmas some years ago. The tag said, "They are YOU, Mom." And he was correct.

I took my time paging through the beautiful photographs and naturally slipped into open and audible oohs and ahhh's. But it wasn't just a book on home decor. It was filled with analogies between home and the spiritual life, and how one feeds the other. Truly wonderful. There were paragraphs on dads and their importance to daughters. There are wonderful thoughts on the spirituality of meals, and deeply reflective chapters laced with the wonder that is children.

I have been standing on my very small soapbox, it seems, for so many years declaring to anyone who knows me and will listen that it is HOME where it all happens - all of it! The beauty. The prayer. The insights. The inscaping of children's hearts to unearth the most incredible thoughts and aspirations. And yes, it is SO hard and filled with crosses surely, but just because it is hard does not mean that it is not amazing and worthy of our lives. If you one day reach a clearing through your busyness and see it in hindsight this will ring loud and true.

Home is not this drudgery, not this image of barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen as the 60's feminists would carelessly have us call it - hanging our heads and feeling vaguely like traitors to the sisterhood because we have chosen to stay home. Much guilt has been imparted to us and we carry its heavy burden. We can easily fall for this image of ourselves if we don’t make the time and the effort to reflect and actually see what and who we are in the home. This book helps us see.

Home needs patience and effort to be discovered. It needs a mining sort of heart. Not one that scuffs around on the surface complaining of borgeois tedium, gives up and watches the soaps or scrolls mindlessly through instagram rather than dive deeply into the possibilities, meanings, and the downright adventure that is our calling, a very real and necessary calling! Home is not a sideline afterthought.

Creating a space and an atmosphere for love to dwell and thrive is more challenging than any 8 hour job I have every had outside the home.

Home is rich in color, smells, and sounds that will turn into the most vibrant memories. It is where we first feel the stirrings of inspiration up in our rooms as we read books by our radiator in the winter and are given time to do so. It is stories read, music listened to, dreams stirring, meals beautifully served with linen and china that tell every child in the house that they are worthy of the wonder - and the time of their mother.

When I read this book, I almost cried. It echoed back to me what I wanted so much to say. And it echoed it in a beautiful way.

My favorite paragraph was on the spiritual beauty found in using linen napkins. My mother would have stood up and cheered if she were alive to read it. She was a great champion of the linen napkin!

But the best few pages for me put forth the argument that a woman will love her home and not seek fulfillment elsewhere only if her husband does not either. If a husband considers his fulfillment outside the home. If his job takes him over and he lives for that most of all - then the wife will want that as well. She will resent the fact that she is "stuck" at home while her husband is defining himself by his work and not as a father and husband.

But if the man sees his greatest work, his priority as the husband and father of his home, if his outside work takes second place to his role in the family and serves it - if he comes home from work and dedicates himself to talking, reading, and hugging his kids. If he helps to make supper, and makes it a priority to pray with his wife and children every single day, if he finds peace and rest in just being a dad - then his wife will see that the home is most important to him - that this is the place where he dwells most naturally - where he longs to be even when he is at work - then she will settle into her role as the heart of the home. She will be less tempted to seek any greater fulfillment than what she has been called to as a wife and mother. For her husband will rise up and call her blessed for that very thing.

I love that! What perfect logic is there!

It is with great gratitude that I salute this book and its authors at Theology of Home. I can only say AMEN from my own small soapbox of the Universe. I read this book over and over again, often on days where I need a reminder from a friend who understands. These ladies have become my friends. They have given me the gift of hope. There is no greater gift one friend can give another. I pay that hope forward to you all. Take it and read it. You might just put out those linen napkins this very night at dinner!

This was the first wonderful offering, but the best thing is: there are now three more books after this - just as pretty and reflective!!!

Perhaps I should start hinting this fact to David.