This is an article by Kristine Manwaring that I have printed up in my study journal - it was originally posted 14 Sep 2000 on the Meridian Website, but is no longer there, so I'm reposting it here for myself. :)
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I have spent too much time in my home discouraged.
I want to rear my children in a sacred atmosphere. 'With all my heart I believe that the best place to prepare for eternal life (John 12:25) is in the home,' said a wise teacher, and his words resonate to the core of my being. Yet, believing something does not automatically make it happen.
In the abstract, I love my family, I love my home, and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. In the reality of three meals a day, soccer games, dirty laundry, reports on Spain, and strep throat, the connection between eternal life and daily life often escapes me.
In my experience, the most sacred atmospheres are found in beautiful buildings of worship such as synagogues, cathedrals, temples and churches that are set apart from our daily life. In these sacred places, we worship God and perform rituals that connect us to Him. I picture clean spaces, hushed voices, beautiful artwork and uninterrupted worship. I cannot recall ever leaving such a place wishing I hadn't been there. It seems everything runs according to plan and that everything I do there is part of a larger, meaningful whole.
Homes, on the other hand, are noisy, messy, often disorganized and characterized by nothing but interruptions. The demands during a single day are relentless, and it is not uncommon for both Mother and Father to feel used or spent. Even in the quiet moments, I usually find myself cooking, folding laundry, giving spelling quizzes, and playing Legos. These activities do not feel sacred to me. What possible definition of the word 'sacred' could apply to these two seemingly opposite experiences?
I have read in a Bible Dictionary that 'only the home can compare with the temple in sacredness.' When first presented with this idea that homes should be sacred, I tried to make my home fit the kind of cleanliness and order I thought a temple represented. Instead of a more temple-like home, I ended up with a growing resentment towards the very things that homes exist for. Cooking and laundry became onerous because the tasks themselves created disorder. I became confused. Is my home still sacred when it is messy? What about when it is loud? What if I have children or friends who do not want to be reverent? Do they still get to come into my home? The harder I pushed my family to fit my narrow definition of 'sacred,' the more anxious and less temple-like we all felt.
Then I began walking in the mornings with a wise neighbor who grew up in a large, loving family and first became a mother at the age of forty-four. Our oldest sons are the same age. From her long perspective as a daughter and her more recent experience as a mother, she has come to believe that the work of feeding, clothing and nurturing one another is every bit as spiritual as it is physical. She feels strongly that when ordinary, life-sustaining tasks are done together as a family, they bind family members to one another in small but critical ways. She speaks of chopping vegetables and cleaning bathrooms with her sons with something akin to reverence. She has even said that scrubbing a wall with a child is a more productive 'togetherness' experience than attending his ball game or vacationing as a family. I was startled to realize that she saw as 'sacred' the very tasks that I always thought were obstacles to sacredness. And for evidence, she turned to the Bible. The parable of the sheep and the goats found in Matthew 25 clearly shows that Christ will judge us according to our willingness to feed an clothe 'the least of these my brethren.' Does this include members of our own families? In fact, Christ used imagery of feeding and washing and cleaning throughout His parables and object lessons. 'He shall feed his flock like a shepherd' (Isaiah 40:11). He even likens Himself to a hen who 'gathereth her chickens under her wings' (Matthew 23:37).
Even more striking to me, Christ not only spoke of these things, He personally did them. He fed multitude with limited tangible resources in a miraculous example of His attention to our physical as well as spiritual hunger. He washed the feet of His disciples to illustrate the humble service required of a Master and to reveal what He was willing to do that we might be entirely clean. When seen in this new light, my perception of tasks like peeling potatoes and scrubbing floors began to turn upside down and inside out. It was becoming obvious to me that when we care for the physical as well as the spiritual needs of our families, we are patterning our lives after Jesus Christ.
I learn even more when I share these tasks with my children. One Saturday morning my nine-year-old daughter and I were cleaning our large kitchen window together. I was outside and she was inside. We both sprayed the entire window with cleaner and when I looked at the window, I couldn't see her at all. Gradually, as we both wiped away the spray, her image became clearer until, with both the dirt and the spray gone, I could see her with perfect clarity. Our relationship is sometimes stormy, and the incident reminded me of my need to constantly keep wiping away surface tensions, judgmental thoughts, and misunderstandings whenever her true identity and potential are temporarily clouded from my vision.
Realizing something of the spiritual value of homemaking has made me more aware of the need to more fully involve my family in these tasks. My husband and I no longer simply delegate chores to our children each day. We wash dishes and make beds alongside them. By doing so, we have been blessed with opportunities to teach our children and be taught ourselves with a frequency and a depth we previously never imagined. A year ago, I spent most of my dishwashing time muttering under my breath and trying to jam too many dishes into the limited dishwasher space.
Now, every time I invite a child to thrust their hands into the warm, soapy water with mine, I learn something new about their spirit and their life. It is only when doing dishes together that my twelve-year-old son, who mostly speaks in monosyllables about his experiences at school, reveals who his friends are and why he has chosen the, the pressure he feels about his grades, how much he likes math, and what he thinks about his teacher.
Paradoxically, what I previously labeled 'mindless' and once thought of as interruptions to spiritual growth are becoming the core of what makes my home feel sacred. As I cook meals, wash dishes, make beds, and sweep floors, I am continually in the midst of both teaching and being taught about charity, humility, hope, and faith. I am exchanging independence and 'everyone seeking after their own' for a mutual dependence and unity in purpose that surely leads to being 'all of one mind, having compassion' (1 Peter 3:8). I feel the sacredness in my home not only when it is clean, but also when we are in the process of getting it that way. Some days I don't even mind that we will go through the process again the very next day.
Much of my discouragement at home was due to a sense of failure I felt for not being able to artificially create sacredness there. How comforting it is to be released from that burden. With joy and gratitude I now realize I need only look for the way sacredness already surrounds me.
