There will always be more clothes to clean, more food to prepare, more poopy diapers to change...Eventually my heart gets tired and I start to wonder...Is this meaningless? Am I wasting my time while others are out doing "important" things?
No. It is not the job that is important. It is how the job is done. Any job, no matter how trivial, can be done as an act of worship and praise. A person can preach the good news, lead worship, counsel others, doctor wounds, do "meaningful" things, but if it is done without love and without worship, THIS is meaningless.
I am not just a housewife and I am certainly not unemployed. I am employed by my God and He has given me a job to do. To love and worship Him above all. And then to love everyone else: my husband, my children, my family, my friends, my church, strangers, and even those people that I wish I didn't have to love at all. My job is not just to run a home and raise children. It is to be reconciled with God in any way I can (even during the daily, mundane tasks). And to allow God to use me to reconcile others with Him, even (especially) those living in my house...even if it seems I don't have a lot to show for my work at the end of the day.
“But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value. If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames” (1 Cor. 3:13-15).
"A mother gets up and works and prays, prays and works. Because the prayers we weave into the matching of socks, the stirring of oatmeal, the reading of stories, they survive fire. Our prayers make our work acts of praise; our prayers make our work acts of passion for these people living here. These people we love more than life." --Ann Voskamp
"Often we dont view our daily activities biblically. We wrongly believe that the more mundane the task is, the less significant it is to God. As difficult as it is to believe, the hands that tenderly bathe your baby at night are no less holy than the hands that serve communion on Sunday. Every small act of love to your family- every diaper you change, every meal you prepare, every toilet you scrub, every errand you run, every fever you tend to, each tooth you pull, every moment of undefiled intimacy with your husband- each one is a holy act when it is done as unto the Lord."
- Stacy McDonald, from Passionate Housewives Desperate for God
"Hold a sleeping babe in your arms...and stand before a map of this world. Which would you rather have? Paris, New York, Tokyo, London--or this flesh lying against yours, this one made in the image and likeness of the very Divine? This world is going to burn up, cinders for the universe….but your child is a soul without end, forever and ever existence. The world has pitifully, laughably little to offer in comparison to this holy opportunity to raise up a child."
-Ann Voskamp
"What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God."
-Martin Luther
The master bedroom, which looks totally different now because jared IS WORKING FROM HOME and the room got a little rearranged.
Nancy's room
The living room
The dining room/art gallery
The other end of the dining room which will eventually be turned into Jared's office.
A view of the entire room
There are no pics of downstairs...maybe next year. :)
