From my farm I can see most of the world; and if I wait here long enough all people pass this way.
David Grayson, 1907
I ran across this sentence and took a second look at it. It wasn’t specifically written from a housewife’s perspective, but I think it’s meaningful.
I haven’t always been a housewife, of course. I spent many years working different jobs and going to school before I got married and settled into a career at home. Back before my life was centered around the home, I always felt a restlessness on the rare day that I spent at home. even when I had a lot to do. I felt like I could go stir-crazy looking at the same four walls. I know I haven’t been the only one. I’ve heard it from mothers on maternity leave….”What do you DO all day? I’d go crazy staying at home; I HAVE to be on the go.”
However, in seasons where my outside commitments have been minimal I find myself liking to be home to the point that I’m not anxious to leave. I’m not a recluse or a hermit, but I’m happy at home.
Happiness as a Homemaker
How can you learn to be happy and contented at home?
Stay home. It takes awhile to break from the “on-the-go” mentality and to slow down enough to enjoy being at home. You might want to climb the walls for the first few weeks. But now if someone offered to do all my errands I would be perfectly content to stay in my home and yard and leave just on the weekends to go to church and visit family.
It seems that the more I’m gone from home, the more unorganized our home life becomes. You’d think the house would stay cleaner the fewer people were home making messes and eating and changing clothes, but it’s not the case. Mail still piles up, furniture gets dusty, food spoils in the back of the fridge, and the people still expect clean clothes.
A Homemaker IN her Home
And instead of getting bored, I have the opposite experience. The more I’m at home the more I find to do.
From my home I can’t see most of the world but I can see most of my world. And that’s kind of a relief some days. (I’m sure that was the author’s point.)
Sometimes we make our sphere too big. All the news of the world is in our faces. Every activity is within sight. It’s hard not to get caught up in it all and feel discontent with our small world. But when you try to embrace it all, life gets overwhelming and becomes too much for us to manage.
I don’t believe we miss as much as we may think we do at times, which is why it’s called the fear of missing out and not simply “missing out.”
The stuff that’s important and the people that we’re meant to influence (and be influenced by!) will find us.
4 Comments;
I appreciate the comment that it takes time to settle in to being at home. In my experience, this time is measured in years rather than weeks, especially if you’re building up your home and your family at the same time. It is quite gradual. It takes time to learn to manage the home, to figure out what you actually like, and to learn the hard lessons of who you really are and which outside and inside commitments actually help you and your family thrive. It takes time to build the soil in your garden…time to learn skills…time to train children as they grow to love and help the home rather than abuse it. Time for the kids to grow. It takes perseverance, but there are big rewards!
You are absolutely right! And even when you think you have it all figured out, it won’t be too long before you need to modify things a bit (or a lot!) or you realize that things that used to be important suddenly aren’t anymore.
A task not for the faint of heart! 😉
I agree totally with your post. It took me years to get over the ‘gotta go, gotta do’ mentality. Yet once I settled into being a full time homemaker, it was easy to enjoy my small piece of the world. I still have days where I spend the day in town, using the library, shopping at thrift stores, and perhaps enjoying a meal out with my son, but I am always happy to return home. By the way, the quote says that if I wait, all will pass by’. Yet I have waited for YEARS, and not once has Harrison Ford crossed my lawn!
Oh my goodness…I can’t stop laughing. Same here, though. I’ve yet to see Harrison wandering around my neighborhood!