{"id":111803,"date":"2021-06-18T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-18T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/?p=111803"},"modified":"2021-06-18T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T15:00:00","slug":"why-homemaking-is-more-than-scrubbed-toilets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/articles\/topics\/parenting\/essentials\/why-homemaking-is-more-than-scrubbed-toilets\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Homemaking Is More Than Scrubbed Toilets"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My mom packed a lunch for me daily for nearly my entire school career. The only school lunches I would eat were spaghetti and corn dogs (obviously before the whole healthy school lunch kick).<\/p>\n

Mom had\u2014has\u2014this remarkable, nearly electronic memory containing what food each of my three sisters, my father, and I loved and loathed. Lunch contents varied throughout the year, from Jif with honey to Carl Buddig cold cuts neatly sandwiched and sealed in baggies.<\/p>\n

An old school friend recently referenced the encouraging messages Mom folded within my lunches. \u201cI do that for my kids now.\u201d<\/p>\n

From still-warm August mornings when school felt like a fresh sheet of loose-leaf, or the frigid dawns of February, I grasped a lunch in my little fingers.<\/p>\n

And when I think about homemaking, this is what I think of: How nice it is to have someone love you and care for you. Because in all the carrots and celery sticks she chopped, she was doing more than cutting vegetables. She was tending to my life, a careful gardener.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in the battle over domesticity<\/a>\u2014what it means if we\u2019re given a Crock Pot for Christmas, and making sure each partner is equally vacuuming\u2014we lose the arterial throb behind homemaking.<\/p>\n

No matter what gender provides or receives, homemaking provides intangible resources through tangible care. Homemaking wraps us tenderly even when we\u2019re not at home.<\/em> Through our senses, homemaking shores us up with the message, \u201cYou are loved. Your experience at home matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

And through that nurture, homemaking offers a sensory parallel to who God is.<\/p>\n

The first homemaker: for body and soul<\/h2>\n

One night after staying at my mom\u2019s, where she ate waffles for breakfast and watched Clifford<\/em> and Curious George, <\/em>my daughter asked, “Can I wake up at Grandma’s?”<\/p>\n

Heaven has to be a little like waking up in your favorite place in the world, with someone you love waiting to hug you, your favorite breakfast ready with your own special plate and fork.<\/p>\n

God intentionally stitched our souls to physical bodies\u2014a no-brainer when you consider the effects of healthy or unhealthy rest, food, hormones, or exercise on our souls. His creation of the universe was a cosmic act of hospitality: fruit trees, lush rivers, a world in which to mete out our dreams.<\/p>\n

And this homemaking stretches throughout Scripture, to the God who creates a heavenly home, a prepared place (see John 14:3<\/a>). It\u2019s more than just a good meal. It\u2019s a comprehensively peaceful, nurturing place for our souls.<\/p>\n

But God\u2019s domesticity extends within and beyond our physical places:<\/p>\n