Part Three: My Job Description
It is wise to have a destination point before we map out our course or even get excited about the journey. In this post I am going to run through my experience and make some suggestions on having vision for that destination point. If time permits, I hope the reader can go back to The Car Keys Part One and Part Two and read all three articles as a whole. This article builds on the previous posts concerning the myth of the stay-at-home mom, the fact that we are given only 24 hours daily and must make biblical choices of how we will purposefully fill those hours, the great need for biblical contentment in the lives of contemporary women, and the basics of submission.
The conviction to stay home and build a strong family life that will affect the world for Christ matured through the lessons God sovereignly has placed in my life over the past 30 years. These lessons were external pressures placed upon me because my natural inclination is to undertake other pursuits and for the most part I was raised under a feministic agenda that did not uphold the Bible as truth. I will cite a few of the lessons I have learned in my journey.
For several years I did not have the ability to leave the home as we were a one car family and that one car could only transport one or the other as we seemed to go in opposite geographical directions. Those days were productive as they were filled with caring for my infant daughters. With the addition of a second car, I ventured back into a music career – teaching part time at a private school, teaching my piano studio of 35 students, and administrating and directing the choral and handbell program at church – all of this in addition to raising two toddler daughters.
It was during this time that I began listening to what Christian women were saying …. they were dissatisfied with their marriages, had shallow relationships with their children, were overwhelmed by their weekly schedules and living disconnected at best and frantic at worst, were discontent even as their financial resources swelled, and their homes were merely bedroom communities for sleep. Contemporary home living did not look attractive to me. I joined a group of twelve women, all who were a few years ahead of me in marriage and family . I listened to them converse month after month at our meetings. The conversations were disheartening to me and these women could not biblically defend their practices. It seemed that the woman who had it all had very little. At the same time, I desired to do more home things but responsibilities from outside the home took priority with the deadlines I had to meet.
Our decision to bring me home came with the decision to home educate. The first year of being home was tough. My social life diminished, my self-worth plummeted and my performance was no longer based upon pleasing the people around me. I had been addicted to competition in the workplace and had thrived on excelling.
I very much struggled with this. For one thing, going from musical performance to the daily tasks of caring for a home and educating two instead of two hundred was initially quite a lot to swallow. Because I did not have a vision for home life, tasks were weighted with boredom and drudgery or even ignored. I found that I did not really know how to love my children sacrificially or how to meet their needs. One of the downsides of metropolitan living was that during the first years at home, the car keys helped me to frequently escape in efforts to sooth my restless spirit. (Note: Half of the world’s population now lives in cities with all of the temptations and choices of secular man staring them in the face daily. Metropolitan living is a spiritual challenge.) I signed the children up for gym class, sewing class, art class, Bible memory verse programs, craft events and so forth. We shopped quite a bit. I talked on the phone a lot. We spent many days going to the local parks and libraries. I searched for answers to my restlessness in women’s seminars, bible studies and reading materials but they fell short.
Another external lesson came along that brought me home fully… five difficult pregnancies and in addition several miscarriages within a ten year period of time. I was too ill to drive, too exhausted to keep up with the world, and we spent day after day at home. It was from that sick bed that I caught a glimpse of home life and began to write out my job description and actually get excited about it.
God placed in my life several women who were pursuing scriptural living and had been doing this successfully for some time. I wished I had started earlier. The Bible became alive to me as I began to apply the women’s passages to my life. Right off the bat, my love for my husband deepened and quickened. My older daughters and I memorized Proverbs 31 and found a multitude of ways to apply it in our home. At every bend of the road came conviction to change and many times I struggled with the next step of obedience that God was bringing to light. Displeasure from others was high as hurtful comments were hurled our way that were based on secular feminism and not the scriptures. By this time I had found that I did not need to run away from home, or have lots of time off for myself. My joy and refreshment was in my marriage and in my children and within my own four walls. The funny thing is that through our home we were affecting more outsiders for Christ than in previous years. (My children, however, remain my primary evangelistic goal to this day.)
I had initially thought that I would cite examples of how staying home has created a fruitful life for our family and how it has reached our community for Christ. The rough draft list was so long that I gave up the attempt. Our lives are so full that I could not prioritize the list. An opposite approach would have been to detail out the areas where I have struggled that are being cured by living biblically… things like anger, irrational and rational fear, baggage from my childhood, and deep hurts. Instead, I am going to post “My Job Description” at the end of this article as a resource for those who are searching for vision in the area of biblical womanhood. I hesitate to do this as it is rather personal and I am far from achieving my goals. On the other hand, I wish I had read something like this years ago when I was searching for how to jumpstart my own life. It surely answers the feministic accusation that putting husbands first and raising children is dull, a poor usage of intelligence, a lower form of living, and oppressive. I find nothing of the sort in my life because God’s plan is always best and His promises are true for those who seek and obey Him. As we obey Him, we leave behind the shackles of sin and the chains of our flesh, and we come forth victors in a world that needs this kind of testimony for Christ.
What a reformation it would be for families to faithfully build strong Christian homes that would engage the world with the Gospel of Christ in modeling what real living is all about! The run-around-mom that lives a hybrid form of womanhood runs ragged and then returns home exhausted and her husband suffers, her family suffers, and her church suffers. Our nation suffers because run-down American families make up the very fabric of our nation.
One final item about The Car Keys. It’s not a set of rules. As soon as we publicized “Questions for Wives,” we received feedback that indicated that people expected a set of no-no’s, or they inferred that we were legalistically trying to rain on their parade. That is the wrong approach. It’s not that a woman is wrong to assist her husband in the marketplace. It’s not that taking advantage of a benefit in the community is wrong. It’s not that a certain number of days at home are the criteria. It’s not about skipping the library and the park. It’s not that a woman leaves her brain behind. It is, however, all about focus.
The vertical focus of the Christian woman is to love her Lord with all her heart, soul, mind and strength. She will do this through obedience to God’s Word and she knows up front that this obedience will be sacrificial. She will study and meditate on the scriptures in the context of the whole written Word.
The horizontal focus of a Christian woman’s life is good works achieved through her home.
The Proverbs 31 woman ministers to others through her home and “let her own works praise her in the gates.” Note, however, that it is her husband that does the actual sitting in the gates.
The I Timothy 5:10 woman is an elderly woman who has met the requirements to be cared for by the church. What are those requirements? She is “well reported of for good works; if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints’ feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good work.”
The I Tim. 5:14 woman is the younger widow who has not earned the care of the church. Again, what are those requirements? … “that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.”
The Titus 2:4,5 woman is to be sober, love her husband, love her children, discreet, chaste, a keeper at home, good, obedient to her husband “that the word of God be not blasphemed.”
Car Key Question #3 is: Do we have a vision for beautiful womanhood in the home?
Car Key Resource #3 to help us gain vision is: “My Job Description” from my personal notebook. This is something that I have been writing over the past 15 years. A current copy is found here. Feel free to print it out and scribble all over it and make it yours. Or start one from scratch. I would encourage you, though, to love your husband with such depth that you are willing to give up the car keys and place your focus in your home. Put them in the ignition only when the purpose is to fulfill your job as a Titus 2 woman!
For further study read the article, “An Exegetical Defense of the Woman as Keeper at Home.”
