You know her type. The house is immaculately clean. I mean the-Pastor's-Coming-Over-For-Dinner clean...every day! Her pantry resembles the shelves in a grocery store. Her flowers and landscaping are Home Tour calibre, and she grows her own vegetable garden. Her kids are well behaved, speak in complete sentences and even make eye contact when talking to adults. Her check book is always balanced and the bills are paid before the due date. This woman is or-gan-ized! Did I mention that she always smells like freshly baked pastry? She's got this calendar thingy on her refrigerator that is color-coded so that there is no room for error in schedules and chore assignments. She's the Proverbs 31 Woman of the 21st Century and almost my complete opposite.
My mother-in-law, God rest her soul, was her generation's P31 Woman. The house my husband grew up in always looked like a show room and for years, he had a hard time understanding why I couldn't get it together the way his mother did. After all, she too had a full time j-o-b, was active in her church, and was also raising kids...and a husband (smile). So what was wrong with me? I wondered the same thing for years. Then one day it dawned on me that I simply wasn't her. Nor was I the blessed saint who raised me - my grandmother who also ran her house like a well oiled machine.
When I became a wife (again) some 23 years ago, I starting making futile attempts to keep all the balls in the air at once. I could probably pay a car note with the money I've spent on dry erase boards, Franklin Planners and other tools to help organize this circus I run on the corner of Wildemere and Thatcher.
After years of failure to become a Proverbs 31 Woman, I recognized that the blaring difference between me and the P31Women I know was not skills, but rather the choices we make in how we spend our time. Unlike the P31s, I spend a lot of time interacting with, and hands-on care for my family. On the other hand, the P31s tend spend much of their time doing, while I choose to spend more time being. This is not to be construed as an indictment against the Proud, the Few, the P31s; it's simply an observation of human nature.
My husband admitted that his childhood home was clean, almost sterile and so was the family's level of interaction. There were no story times, toys were shelved and on display in their original packaging rather than played with. Hugs and kisses were reserved for infants and toddlers. Conversation at the dinner table was limited mostly to the adults.
When I realized all of this, I chose to free myself from the guilt of not being a perfect housekeeper, but rather to enjoy my health, my family and the things I love being. I realize that revelation still doesn't afford me a license to be a slob. I learned to incorporate tools and habits which make my household what I like to refer to as organized chaos. My house is clean but not always neat. This year my garden is admittedly pitiful. Nevertheless my grandchildren and I splash about in their inflatable pool, hula-hoop, and make sorry replicas of sand castles like nobody's business.
I've just about mastered the art of multi-tasking. For example, I often take my laptop out onto the deck and chip away at my novels and blogs while the children play in the safety of our backyard. I do loads of laundry and serve my mom's lunch between episodes of Mr. Rogers and Caillou; and I still manage to crank dinner out at least five nights per week. That's in addition to my mom's breakfast, lunch and meds e-v-e-r-y day! Maybe that qualifies me to at least be an Associate P31 or a Suffragan P31.
A Word of Advice:
I would venture to guess that most of my readers are newlyweds or have very young families. At this stage in life it seems very important to please EVERYBODY. But I caution you to be sure to make relationships and quality time with your family a priority. If not, trust me one day you will look up from that mop pail and see a pair of long legs attached to the stranger who used to be your baby. The same one who currently paints your walls with peanut butter and jelly. Kids grow up way too fast. Enjoy these precious times while they're little because with kids, there are no do-overs. I wouldn't trade the love, joy and laughter we share for all of floors so clean you can eat off them and the neatly-folded-April-fresh laundry in the world.
Some of you might be feeling that you just don't measure up. Pray and ask the Lord to reveal what level of Proverbs 31 Woman He has made you to be. Perhaps you need strengthening and training in some areas, perhaps you need to substitute some activities for others. He will let you know just what is needed for your family. It's fine to have a role model as a template for how to run your house, but a Wise Wife realizes that one of the most detrimental things she can do is to measure her success or failure by someone else. Personally, I'm striving but not stressing to join the ranks for the blessed and highly organized.
Tip: There is a wonderful online community which offers a plethera of information and helpful hints for running your household more efficiently. Check it out! http://flylady.net/
Split Second Bible Lesson
In Proverbs 31, King Lemuel's sweet and well-meaning mother spelled out the characteristics of the woman he should consider marrying. She tediously listed the attributes that he should look for in the woman deemed worthy of carrying his honorable name and bearing his strapping sons and dainty daughters. I shared in a previous blog (dated June 18, 2008) that I did something very similar years ago when seeking the Lord for my perfect mate. The Queen Mother described a conglomerate of perfected traits that all of us wish we possessed. However when doing so, she was not gazing across a flowery meadow and pointing out an identifiable fair maiden. What mother wouldn't want her future daughter-in-law to be all that? The P31 Woman was, as described, a rare jewel... illusive and perhaps even non-existent in totality.
The virtuous wife/homemaker/entrepreneur described in Proverbs 31 is by all means a role model by which every Christian woman should aim for. We have to keep in mind that, as with all other aspects of our lives, we are a perpetual work in progress. So if and when we fall short of our aspirations to reach P31 status, we should not wallow in our shortcomings, but rather reevaluate our goals and continuously seek to understand God's perfect will for our lives. By the way, have you ever noted the fact the Proverbs 31 woman had servants?
Our God is loving, compassionate, all-seeing and all-knowing. He is even aware when we're perplexed about how to get grape juice stains out of little Kenya's pink church dress. We're instructed to take His yoke upon us for His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Matthew 11:29-30. In the meantime we are to acknowledge Him in all things, including what we consider the big as well as the small. Proverbs 3:3-5. So while we are busy going about His business, He is taking care of ours...no matter how trivial we might think it to be.
