“Hey, you two ladies, come over here,” the zookeeper said, motioning to my friend and me. “You’re going to love this.”
We raised our eyebrows at one another (has anyone ever singled you out in the Australian exhibit?) before wheeling our double-strollers toward where she stood. The sign beside her read “Cassowary (Casuarius casuarius),” and the bird behind her looked as strange as its name. Its legs stubbier than an ostrich, its body just as black, it was the head that captured our children’s wide eyes. Sagging skin of sky blue, navy blue, red, and orange, topped with a solid, helmet-like structure above its eyes: The cassowary peered at us from behind a reptilian firework.
The zookeeper interrupted our inspection. “Get this: Once female cassowaries lay their eggs, they take off! No homemaking for them. The males take care of the nest while the females go in search of another mate. How’s that for a life?”
To the zookeeper’s surprise, my friend and I did not match her excitement. Instead, her words have sat in the pit of my stomach for a year now. That speech lodged itself into the category of “Conversations That Make Me Feel a Little Sick” — and not because her sentiment is an outlier. Often, it is the rule.
Firstfruits Are for First Importance
I frequently hear women — both wives and singles, with children and without, believers and unbelievers — saying things like, “Homemaking is just boring compared to a career. How can women feel like they’re really doing something? I won’t waste my brain, skills, and life taking care of a home.” We may as well be beckoning to one another in an urban zoo, admiring the freedom of the cassowary.
To be clear, when I write that I’ve heard women say such things, I do not exempt myself. Years ago, I consciously pitied (pitied!) homemakers. I swore to protect myself from such lifeless labor, going so far as to say I probably wouldn’t have children. Never would I marry a man who thought highly of such antiquity.
This man found me anyway, as did the Scriptures. Today, instead of ignoring, misreading, or outright rejecting verses like Titus 2:5 (which calls women “to be . . . working at home”), a privileged thrill runs through me. I love to labor in ways that God designed women to labor. While Titus 2:5 doesn’t confine all women, in all stages, to work solely at home, it does call wives and mothers to give the firstfruits of our time, energy, and attention to the people whom God has assigned first importance in our lives: our husbands and children.
Like the Proverbs 31 woman, any work we now do outside the home is made to serve our own home. When she sets out to “[bring] her food from afar” (verse 14), she is not driven by the desire to “use her giftings,” “have some balance,” or simply “get out of the house.” No, she is driven by the desire to “[rise] while it is yet night and [provide] food for her household” (verse 15). By God’s good design, the coop is not for flying. The coop deserves our firstfruits.
More Than Mere Activity
So, why does investing in the home sometimes feel like investing in a root canal — like the last thing we’d rather do? Our answers differ. Some women name boredom (“I don’t want to”). Others cite inability (“I can’t”). Still others say it’s just not their responsibility (“I won’t”). But I wonder whether there’s another reason, an unconscious one, that colors all our other reasons: We’re idle in our homemaking.
Perhaps you’re thinking, “Yeah, right. I work hard to care for our home — it’s all I do. I shop, store, pack, cook, wash, wipe, load, unload, fold, organize, sweep, vacuum, and mop. I call pediatricians, parents, teachers, and coaches. I stave off fights and sicknesses. Oh, and I drive — I drive everywhere. Try to name something I’m not doing.”
I’ll try: While our bodies are busy, are our affections idle? Our hands may move all day long, but are our heads and hearts working alongside them? What if the problem is not homemaking itself but how little labor we put into it on the most important level: the level of our desires?
I love how 1 Thessalonians 4:11 puts it. This verse can remind women young and old that godly homemaking is more than mindless activity. Godly homemaking is ambitious.
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands. (NASB)
Aspire to Home-Make
How would our view of the home change if we were to awake with hearts that set out to home-make? What if, every day, we saw our husbands, children, and homes as the first people and first places to nurture, to cultivate, to bless? Just as we can aspire to run a marathon, earn a degree, or get a promotion, we can aspire to home-make:
Aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands. (1 Thessalonians 4:11 ESV)
My most unhappy (and therefore unfruitful) days as a homemaker are the days on which homemaking gets in the way. Of what? Everything else I’d rather be doing. Sleep, exercise, reading, adult conversation, online contract work, neighborhood outreach — the list of preferred activities runs long. On these occasions, homemaking does not rank among my objectives. Instead, it’s the bothersome, part-time gig keeping me from my better, more fulfilling callings.
But homemaking is an ambition — one the Creator of the universe celebrates! Live quietly. Mind your own affairs. Work with your hands. The world will not applaud the woman who, on a Saturday evening, preps several days’ worth of meals for family, church members, and friends at deathly cost to her “me time.” But “[her] Father who sees in secret will reward [her]” (Matthew 6:6). Neither does society honor the mother who leaves a law career to homeschool — but she knows that helping to raise children in “the discipline and instruction of the Lord” will take every ounce of experience, intellect, and energy she’s got (Ephesians 6:4).
Organizing weeknights to ease a husband’s burdens, arranging a room to fit all fourteen adults in community group (comfortably), crafting winter activities with the neighbor kids’ likes and dislikes in mind — caring for a home and the people it houses takes more than a body. It takes even more than a brain. It takes a soul, one so saved from “the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13) that bearing ordinary, unseen, often unpopular burdens for the good of others actually tastes sweet. It tastes sweet because it tastes like our gloriously self-giving God (Ephesians 5:2).
If homemaking is anything but honey on your tongue right now, take heart — literally. If you are in Christ, God has “[given] you a new heart, and a new spirit” (Ezekiel 36:26). Lay prayerful, Spirit-dependent, daily hold of the happily self-sacrificing heart that is yours in Jesus. And be patient. Learning to “work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23) is, for most of us, a lifelong process — and an ambitious one, at that.
So, sisters, our God-given ambition need not be at odds with our homes. In fact, by God’s gracious appointment, homemaking is exactly the kind of labor in which feminine ambition can thrive. But, as is true of the whole Christian life, our hearts sit in the driver’s seat. No matter how fast our hands may move, homemaking is only idle noise and neatness if we have not love as we labor (1 Corinthians 13:1).
Not Cassowaries
Back to the female cassowary: Praise God for filling the animal kingdom with such fantastic creatures! But a woman is not a cassowary. Where God has given the gift of marriage, our firstfruits belong to our husbands, our children, and our homes, not to some other people in some other nest. Prioritizing your home life need not clash with leading an ambitious life.
Indeed, in God’s eyes, homemaking itself is ambitious — no matter what the zookeeper says.
Desiring God