Home: The Overlooked Mission Field

When Kathy, Robin and I prepared for the Living a Legacy Conference, without really talking to each other about the specifics of our individual talks, we realized there was a common thread weaving it all together: the mission field of HOME.

I asked in one of my sessions, why we are so receptive, supportive and excited about foreign missions (and we should be), but the same things we praise about the foreign missionary we actually disdain in a mother who has given her life to mission work.

For example, the more a missionary suffers and sacrifices for the sake of imparting the gospel to a people group, the more we extol his work, never once thinking the hardship to be a “sign” that he is doing the wrong thing. Again, this is true and right.

But if a mother suffers (pregnancy hardship?) and sacrifices (gives up comforts to afford to be home) so she can disciple (impart the gospel to ) her children (people group) (so they can go out and plant mission fields), take meals to her neighbors, send cards of encouragement to her hurting friend, or walk with her through a difficult marriage, she is somehow wrong, wasting time and/or invoking her own (and her family’s) hardship by her “irresponsible” choices.

We’ve missed it. The examples I gave are all equally important, equally necessary and should be equally esteemed.

When our homes ceased to be “mission bases”, myriads of problems arose that have had to be solved by means never intended.

Kathy spoke in more detail in her session, “The Heart of Hospitality, How to Disciple the Nations, One Home at a Time”, but suffice it to say, that we need an awakening of the importance of home and its vitality to the gospel, our communities and our churches.

We need families in tune with the needs around them willing to minister in whatever way they are able.

Once you look, you’ll be amazed at how white unto harvest it is.

My Mother…Reflections on Mother’s Day

My mother has had over three dozen children. She gave birth to two, but giving birth isn’t really what makes one a mother, is it?

It’s the hard stuff. The stuff my mother has done over half her life, with little accolades and with no earthly payment. The mother-stuff.

And the most important of her jobs? BEING THERE. Being available….the heart of what it means to serve.

She never thought of being anywhere else. She was a wife and mother, and she was needed. Still is. And she is still there…available. Serving. That’s my mother.

My mother and I are hardly anything alike. I actually inherited far more of my father’s qualities, which made my mother’s life more…challenging, and I’ll leave it at that.

I wish so much to be more like my mother–more sacrificial, more in tune to needs around me, more willing to place my needs and wants behind those of my family.

Yes, my mother is amazing.

She’d rather be in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes than talking politics around the table. She’d rather serve the food than mingle with the guests. And regardless of what she’d rather be doing, she does what needs doing because that’s what  mothers do.

My dad is strong, wise and capable. And yet he is only half a man without my mother. She completes him because she serves him. She completes our family because she serves us.

There will be a gaping hole in our lives when my mother isn’t in it.

I’m so grateful to have had a mother available for me, willing to lose her life every day.

I rise up and call her blessed while it is Today.

Diapers, Dishes & Dominion: Why You Need to Change Your Mind About Diapers

My friend, Leah, is another “mother in the trenches” with a vision as big as Texas. She has written a profoundly important book for mothers who are struggling with fear, insignificance and purpose.

Diapers, Dishes and Dominion combats the destructive message of “peripheral motherhood” and replaces it with the inspiring message of what mothers can do to change the world when they grasp their influence and responsibility.

Here’s a bit about the book:

“Change your mind about changing diapers and you could change the world.

It’s hard being a wife and mother. The constant barrage of feminist propaganda tells stay-at-home moms their lives are insignificant, and inner discontentment can spring up from the mundane frictions of daily routine. From many sources, Christian housewives are under attack every day. And for some of them, a bad day has become their whole lives.

Author Leah Smith was in that boat: plagued by shapeless anxieties and prod- ded by nameless longings. She was ready to give up on marriage, family… even life. And she didn’t even know why. One night, she asked God to liberate her from her fears. Right then, she began a journey of freedom into the truth. Her life has never been the same.

Diapers, Dishes & Dominion is a product of that journey — a summary record of the truths God can use to transform ordinary Christian housewives into His weapons of mass reconstruction. In simple and straightforward language, Leah exposes some of the most prevalent lies Satan uses to keep Christian women irrelevant in God’s Kingdom, and she presents biblical truths these wives and mothers need to know in order to change the world — one diaper at a time.

Every wife and mother who wants to make an impact needs to read Diapers, Dishes & Dominion.

The first step to changing the world is changing your mind.”

Listen to Leah’s interview with Kevin Swanson from Generations With Vision!

Controversy Over the Obvious?…It’s Best For Women to Stay Home With Their Children

A good follow-up, I think, from my recent post that received so much commentary.

It’s this that I just cannot get past…that we (as a whole) get literally angry over the blaring, obvious fact that families need mothers…that it’s good for a nation to think this way. Some of you are mad just because I said that.

It’s this excerpt from the excellent article linked below, that resonates with me. Not debating over “when and if and how” and “it’s not fair”, but acknowledging what is good for us and our families, which will facilitate a movement toward making that more possible for more women.  And when we are about what is good for all of us rather than what “I want”, it’s just makes sense.

“The mentality which honors women more for their work outside the home than for their work within the family must be overcome. This requires that men should truly esteem and love women with total respect for their personal dignity, and that society should create and develop conditions favoring work in the home…”

Hear me: it’s not an attempt to “make women feel bad” who, for some reason, just are not able to be home. It’s about a collective agreement that would cause the whole of us to do what we can to support a woman home whose family needs her. Because this is what happens…if our mentality is off-base (“it doesn’t matter–there is no change in the climate of home whether mom is there or not”, etc.), then there’s a break down of  truth that hinders mothers from even being able to do their jobs. Churches and families (the first line of defense during a financial crisis)  cease to consider their need to help and encourage mothers to be home. “Go get a job like everyone else” is the default response. But not the right one. We destroy ourselves (collectively) when we don’t promote the truth, which in turn, causes us to behave wrongly.

Do yourself a favor and read all of  Controversy over the obvious? New Cardinal says it’s best for women to stay home with their children

Frumps to Pumps: Getting Dressed With Purpose

My friend, Sarah Mae, has written a delightfully inspiring eBook called Frumps to Pumps (Your One-Month Motivotional to Getting Dressed and
Staying That Way!) and I have just loved being recharged by her passion and insight about the importance of being prepared and dressing with purpose!

After the storm, getting dressed became what seemed like a monumental task for me and I felt (and still do!) like I was in a perpetual state of frantically working, which I thought excused my typical pattern of getting dressed in something besides “lazy” clothes.

Sarah Mae’s book was the motivation I needed and I think you will be so glad you read it! It’s a warm, light-hearted book filled with important thoughts for the aspiring Proverbs 31 woman to ponder as we seek to glorify God in everything!

Excerpt:

“It is fitting to end our challenge with the beautiful picture of dressing in strength and dignity…

With beauty, honor, and splendor. We are leaving a legacy every day whether we care to think about it or not. We are leaving memory trails in the minds of our children and those we love and those we meet. Are we dressing with splendor (another word for “dignity” in the Greek)? Are we dressing in the Light of the One who made us beautiful because of Him? What do we reflect?

We all face different seasons of life which lend to limitations in dress or time or energy. God loves us so much. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter in the space of Heaven and earth what we wear and yet there is something about the splendor.

There is something to being well-ordered and strong and dignified. Think about your legacy and think about how you can glorify God in how you dress.

Be strong in your heart for the Lord. Be honorable and faithful, and dress yourself  in these characteristics.”

Why I’m Not Teaching My Children to Follow Their Dreams

“What if your daughter wanted to be an interior designer? Go to school and become a professional? I’m only asking what if. Would you push her to stay at home or to follow her dreams?”

I was asked this question during a topic about a woman’s calling to be a “keeper at home”.

I could write a book about all the ways a woman is free to “be all she can be” and still remain in the realm of helpmeet and keeper at home, about the glories of being freed from the slavery of someone else’s clock and schedule and agenda.

But before all of that, we must be grounded in the basic teaching of Scripture about the call of a Christian, which directly opposes the teaching of feminism.

Notice in the comment above…”follow her dreams?”

I can not find anything in Scripture that encourages us to “follow our dreams”. In fact, quite the contrary. My Bible says to “deny yourself and follow Me”. Oprah Winfrey says to “follow your dreams”.

Fundamental to all that we teach our children should be a denying of self, at all costs, and a “seeking first the kingdom of God”. Dying to live, seeking what is eternal, others before ourselves–that is the theme that weaves true Christianity. Have you read the story of Christians who lived in the catacombs? Such sacrificial living is so foreign to us we can’t even imagine it. The giving up, not only of “all our dreams”, but even the very security of life and the simple joys of daily sunshine pushed these Christians to live in unthinkable conditions. They understood “losing your life to save it”.

Now the irony is that if we desire obedience above all else, He will give us the desires of our heart. But obedience is paramount; not following my dreams.

(As an aside, since coming home to work full time for my family, my “dream” of becoming a writer has become a reality in ways I never could have planned on my own. I know He cares about our loves and gifts.)

This is why man’s wisdom is so dangerous. It is most often driven by flesh–my dreams, my goals, my ambitions, my desires. Obedience requires faith to do what I cannot understand; to believe what may not make sense.

In my flesh, it may not seem reasonable to be a keeper at home. But if the Bible says that being a keeper at home keeps the Word of God from being blasphemed, then it is not my job to question the logic. I just have to obey in faith, and watch how mysteriously wonderfully God adds “all these things” unto me.

Am I teaching my children to follow their dreams? No; I’m teaching them to follow Christ, in whom all their dreams will be fulfilled.

“For the kingdom to shine we must not seek to do great things but seek to die great deaths. We could be heroes, if just for one day.” R.C. Sproul, Jr.