Personal Growth

My Sunday school teacher told a story today about when his dad was in medical school and pursuing his career while his mom was a housewife. For the first little while, she would make dinner and wait and wait and wait for him to get home. She felt like she was always waiting on him, and finally one day she realized how silly it was. While he was gone pursuing his education and growing intellectually and socially, she realized she could also be learning and growing and improving herself. I had a similar realization early in my marriage after I decided to stay at home with our children. When my child-rearing duties were done and I was waiting around for Jordan to get home (often with resentment I might add), I decided to spend that time developing skills that interested me. I taught myself how to sew. I taught myself how to build and restore furniture. I taught myself how to bake bread and other foods from scratch. I have taken on the majority of the DIY projects in our first fixer-upper. I manage all of our finances and keep a detailed budget. I have trained for a few races. I have researched both sides of several political arguments and formed my own opinions. If there is something I am wondering about, I research it and write about it to stimulate my mind. Right now I am learning how to garden, and it turns out it is way more complex than just dirt, seeds, water, and sunlight. I also regularly study my church's history and doctrine. I pray and wrestle with God about anything I don't understand and ask how I can improve. And don't worry, I have also been known to binge-watch TV shows because I am not super-human and just as the flowers and trees stop growing in the winter, so do I.  

I say all of this because I think there is a stigma about stay-at-home mothers, especially religious ones. They are perceived as submissive procreators who just cook and clean and serve their husbands and children. In a way, it's true! Sometimes it takes all my time to do only those things. And that kind of service is a personal sacrifice, but sacrifice humbles and refines us. And at the end of the day, my husband and I get to come back together and we are both a little wiser and stronger and changed. I think it's important to remind women (and men) that even if a mother chooses to stay home, she can still be learning and improving herself, just like fathers and mothers with careers outside of the home are doing. We need to remind each other that careers, degrees, and titles are not the only ways to develop skills and gain knowledge. My refining is more behind the scenes, but it is still real and happening.

I understand that staying at home is not for everyone. It can be isolating and lacks structure. I like that I don't have bosses or deadlines and that I make my own schedule, but it is hard not having specific, quantifiable expectations. It is difficult to measure success because everything I do gets undone and I won't know for years if my children will become the kind, self-reliant people with integrity that I am consistently teaching them to be. But I have no doubt that my contribution to my marriage and society are valuable and equal to that of my husband and women with careers. One day, Jordan opened his drawer and jokingly and appreciatively said, "Wow! I open my drawer and my clothes have magically cleaned and folded themselves!" And I replied, "I know! And I open my bank account and money just magically appears there every two weeks!" We each have our role and our ways of serving each other, while also getting to improve ourselves. It is a great balance we have found, and we are very content with it.

The only times I have questioned my decision to be a homemaker are when society or the media paint my role as subservient. I think in our efforts to encourage girls to be whatever they want to be and pursue higher education and higher-paying-jobs, we have inadvertently insinuated two things--that career prestige is the most valuable thing in life and that choosing to stay at home is lower education. The ironic thing is I actually feel more qualified and prepared today to enter the workforce than I did the day I graduated from college, but my resume shows six years of post-grad unemployment. There is no way to prove or measure the last six years of disciplined growth, but it has happened. I know it, my family knows it, and God knows it, and I guess that's all that really matters.