There are a few questions that keep turning up like bad pennies, both on this blog, and in other conversations I’ve had in other forums about why I’m a homemaker instead of having a job. They are:
- What if your husband dies?
- How will you get a job with no skills if your husband can’t support you anymore?
- What if he leaves you?
- What are you going to do with yourself when your kids grow up and don’t need you anymore?
I will, at a later date, take each of these questions out to the woodshed and give them a good spanking. I won’t even break a sweat, it’ll be so easy. But before I do that, I’d like to address the one thing that underlies all of these questions: fear.
Because each question addresses a single practical point of its own, it’s easy to miss the fact that they are all really saying the same thing: It’s not worth the risk for you to do the right thing. Even further down than that, what’s being said is: You can’t trust God.
So, what if my husband dies, leaves me, loses his job, has to work so many hours he doesn’t have time to take care of his own spiritual needs (thanks, Michelle, for the very novel way of asking that same old question. I was getting bored with the old ones.), or my kids all move away and I can’t find anything to do with myself?
I ask you: So what if any of these things happen?
My God will still be my God. I don’t believe He’s going to let me starve, but if He does, then I’ll starve in the center of His will. I choose to listen to Him now, when I can clearly hear Him telling me to attend with my whole heart to the young souls with which I’ve been entrusted. I’d rather take those material risks now than be terribly sorry when I’m old and “wealthy” because the kids my government so kindly raised for me never had the daily instruction in Godliness that would someday save their souls.
“Give us this day our daily bread” –Matthew 6:11
“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” –Matthew 6:34
Jesus wasn’t saying don’t prepare for tomorrow, of course. He was telling us that worrying is wasted effort. I’d go a step further and say that worrying about these things would be a sin. He said he’d provide. He’ll provide. I don’t need to borrow my troubles from what might happen tomorrow. Walking in faith means doing things that come with an awful lot of what-if’s.
So would you folks kindly stop trying to kill my husband now?
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Dear Ladies In Question,
I’m the dying, soon to be unemployed, roving-eyed husband being discussed.
Despite my wife’s brave words, I fully intend some day to leave her and my children, to stop providing for her, and to die. Interestingly, my plans are to perform all three actions on the same day.
Being a procrastinating degenerate, though, I’m sad to say that I must disappoint you in that I cannot be trusted to fulfill these plans soon enough to validate your points, assuming the good Lord is kind enough to continue to allow me this moral failing. Please accept my apologies.
I do hope that my acknowledging that your fears are valid offers you some satisfaction, though.
Kind Regards,
Yet Another Untrustworthy Husband
I hope you know that I think the world of both of you and Jesse, I think you’re a great mom and homemaker – you’re raising awesome kids. I sincerely wanted to know if your ideas would be different in that scenario. It’s your blog and it’s okay if you don’t want to answer, but I really don’t think I’ve ever spoken to someone who feels like you do and I’m curious. I think there’s more than one way, but I am still curious to know if you think you would change your mind given different scenarios; not scenarios without Jesse in them, but as a couple together. Maybe you don’t know…I think I would stay home given different scenarios, but that’s not what I’m living so I can’t say for sure. I’m not trying to change your views or lifestyle and I’m not contemplating changing mine; I think it’s very interesting to see the differences in people. At no point did I say or insinuate that it isn’t worth the risk to do the right thing or that I don’t trust God and I would be offended that those words be put in my mouth. Don’t worry, I know that my God is big enough to provide for all of my needs. I didn’t question your ability to provide if you were on your own; you’re a strong woman and you’d do fine and you’re right; God is faithful to provide. I wasn’t asking the same old question contrary to your assumtion; I wanted your honest opinion about a question – that wasn’t an attack on what you do or how you do it. I’m glad you’re a homemaker and in no way would I or should I question why you don’t do things the way I do. I started reading your blog because I do find it interesting and I like to hear about your opinions even when they differ from mine. What I did say was that I was raised with the idea that it’s important to be able to provide on my own. I should have clairified that it doesn’t matter whether I work from home, or outside of the home to be able to provide for my family. I don’t question your ability at all nor am I trying to say that you should do or think of doing anything differently. My point in my very wordy post was to say that I’m not so sure that one way is the only way. I think there are some very Godly people in this world who were raised well with a different home life than you’re describing and some who were raised by homemakers that didn’t turn out so well too.
man – being brief isn’t one of my strong points huh?
Michelle, I’m sorry that sounded like I was saying you, personally, don’t think God is going to take care of me. You have to admit, you were invoking the same kind of fears that the other questions listed do.
What I mean is that many people (and yeah, on a smaller scale, you) spend a bit too much time thinking up ways that the life I’m living might not work out for me. It’s just interesting how quick people are to assume that there IS only one way to survive financially or thrive emotionally–and that way is to have a “job”. And yeah, there is an element of doubt. Most of the time, when that question is raised (NOT YOU!) the person has come to the end of their argument, still wants to convince me that they are right, and has nothing left but to throw fearsome scenarios at me because those are the doubts that they have about their own lives.
I threw that parenthesis in there because I have never heard that particular question before, and it really is a novel way of asking how on earth I can possibly expect this lifestyle to work out for us.
I can answer these questions because they have run circles through my head, also.
1. When we bought our house and got the mortgage, we got life insurance to cover the mortgage. So the mortgage would be paid off. His student loan would also disappear. That being the bulk of our expenses, I should be able to make it on his social security check until I figure something else out.
2. Not having had a paying job since high school, although I do have an engineering degree, I am at a disadvantage. But not for my God. I have a friend with the same kind of resume deficiencies needing a job after a divorce. God miraculous found her a job. When she went for the interview, they said that it had been in the paper and on the internet, and she was the only one to call about it! In this economy! Her employers are strong Christians and also agreed that the Lord meant for her to be working there. Through my homeschool group, I have a strong network of friends who will give references and prayer. I do have a lot of volunteer work to put on a resume that shows that I’m responsible and active.
3. I think that if we’re not married to a jerk, and hopefully a Christian, we can guard against this scenario. The minister who married us, in a quick drive-thru style, gave us one piece of advice: “Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath.” So we’ve spent some nights up late, especially when we were first married, but it works.
4. I think we’ll all be raptured by then, but I have lot’s of plans if we’re not. My grandmother wrote the book on what to do when you’re kids have left. She had six and when the youngest was getting into that high school age, My grandma went back to college in her fifties to get her bachelor’s degree in library science. She went on to get her Master’s at the Peabody School at Vanderbilt. Being a librarian was her dream and she did it. She worked as a librarian for the next several years, went to her father’s homeland of Scotland to visit relatives, and she also saw that 5 of her 6 kids went to college. Not that that means what it used to, of course. I think Dr. Laura talks a lot about what you can do after your kids leave as she is always talking about sailing, motorcycles, seems like she’s into something new and loving it all the time.
These are wonderful questions to bring up as they go through every SAHM’s mind regularly, especially at first. When finished college and we didn’t have a house or a job, I cross-stitched the part from the sermon on the mount about not worrying and framed it because it is a woman’s chief weakness in trusting God’s faithfulness.
Cindy – it’s not a big deal, but I’m not sure what I said that made you think that you don’t have much experience about money or taking care of yourself. Nothing about having a job outside the home is going to help anyone with that and I sure you’re doing a good job with it. I don’t know what part of my message sounded like I thought otherwise. When I read your post though it sounded to me the opposite which is why I commented. To me that post read that because I do work outside the home I’m neglecting my homemaking duties and that I’m incapable of raising Godly children or at least not nearly as well as you or other homemakers are. I simply wanted to bring up the point that I don’t think there’s only one right way. I think you’re doing a fantastic job like many other homemakers (not all), but I don’t think I’m neglecting my family just because I work outside the home or because one day I fully intend to send them to public school. I think my family will turn out okay too just like many others have. That’s my only point. I don’t question at all your lifestyle choices or do I think you should change them. My husband was raised by a homemaker and she’s still a homemaker today and it’s worked very well for them. However, I’ve never heard her say or insinuate that I or any other woman is in the wrong by working outside the home. That’s what I would like to understand about your position on the issue – that and that alone. Wasn’t your post a way of saying that you have no idea how I can possibly expect my lifestyle to work out for us with a Godly family intact? I’m not questioning your lifestyle at all; on the contrary I thought your post was questioning mine.
“Wasn’t your post a way of saying that you have no idea how I can possibly expect my lifestyle to work out for us with a Godly family intact?”
Kind of. My mom and dad almost lost me to the culture, and they did lose my sister. It wasn’t because they didn’t care what happened to me, but because they weren’t there to build the relationships necessary to guide me in my adolescent years.
Ultimately, God makes us Godly, not our upbringing. But the Bible makes clear that God holds us accountable for what we expose our children to, and for not taking their spiritual upbringing seriously. Wasn’t there a priest in the OT who was in serious trouble with God because he let his sons go wrong? Even though they had free will, and were adults, he was held accountable.
Simply put, I’m not judging anyone. I’m saying what is right. It’s up to you and every other person who hears it to decide whether they agree with it and whether they are going to apply it to their own lives.
The priest you are thinking of is Eli and his sons were a disappointment, but it’s because he “thought they would be ok”.
I understand where Michelle is coming from, as I used to think similarly. A horrible experience at my public school led me to homeschooling and that led to an exponential growth in my Bible knowledge and in my relationship to God. Why? It removed all the excuses I had for avoiding Bible study.
Check out this article by Luci McCleod at LAF about public schools:
http://www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com/?p=1042
I was also almost lost to the culture, but God saved me. The fact is, we Christians are losing over 90% of our kids to the culture. Barna and SBC have done a lot of research in this area. If you want the lowdown on how corrupt public schools are, not the teachers, but the system, check out some of the links on my site. Those of us SAHM, homeschooling moms are just looking at these statistics and are, like baby Moses, trying to protect our kids from pharaoh’s soul-killing culture. Deuteronomy 6 is very explicit in this area.
The Bible did not say whether Lydia had children or not, but I suspect that she was a widow or was otherwise unattached. Ruth and Naomi were working to keep from starving, their men had done died. Actually it was Naomi that worked and ran into her man Boaz. In the New Testament, the widows were to be provided for, but Paul said he would prefer that the younger women remarry and make more Christian babies so that they would have more money for widows who truly had no alternative. God wants women taken care of so they can focus on what’s really important. I remember listening to Elizabeth Elliot on the radio comparing Eve and Mary. I will try to find it because it is so good.
The church does not address this issue and as a result we have a nation of wimps and confused women. There is a Toqueville quote somewhere that sums that up, I will try to find it, too.
I couldn’t find the audio, but here’s links to this general idea:
http://paragraphfarmer.blogspot.com/2007/12/comparing-eve-to-mary.html
http://www.elisabethelliot.org/newsletters/march-april-93.pdf
Here is Voddie Baucham summing up this issue in his Legacy series:
Part 1:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1863221767917599647#
Part 2:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1863221767917599647#docid=-2302074809002529791
Lady, you’re quickly becoming my best friend on the interwebs. Thanks for the links!