A Flower Garden

A mother is like a gardener.

Her responsibility is to nurture her little flowers, to help them to grow.  She can't force it; she can't make them come up faster or sooner or bloom bigger or be a different color.  What she can control is their environment.  She chooses a fertile piece of ground, tills it, weeds it, fertilizes it.  She plants the flowers the proper depth and distance apart.  She waters them, makes sure they get enough sunlight, and takes precautions against animals and insects that could harm them.

And then she waits.  The growing is ultimately up to her little flowers.

It takes an enormous amount of faith to simply do your part and leave the rest to God.  But, oh!  What joy you feel when you see your little seeds sprout, and grow, and eventually flourish and bloom!  Nothing compares.

I've thought a great deal about all the different components of nurturing:  feeding, bathing, comforting, teaching...  And something that I keep coming back to again and again is the fact that homemaking--the acts that comprise the making of a home; the creating and upkeeping of the home environment--are nearly as crucial as the work we do directly with our little ones.

It is so easy to feel not only overwhelmed but even apathetic about housework as a mother.  When I sit and read with my girls I feel so fulfilled.  The benefits seem obvious and almost immediate in terms of building relationships and sparking interest.  But as I contemplate attacking that stack of dishes or pile of laundry, it's far more difficult to imagine the positive outcomes, for they are far more subtle and complex.

I think it is easier to realize the impact we make by our hard work when we consider what would happen if we failed in that regard.  Imagine living in a home where the dishes, the laundry, the cleaning was never done, or else procrastinated to the very limit of what we could stand.  For one thing, your little ones would likely get sick far more often.  For another, your things (whether they be toys, books, movies, electronics,) would pile up, get lost and be useless to you or else end up broken.  Think of the money that would be wasted in your attempts to replace things, or avoid doing work such as paper plates and utensils.  Think of the arguments that would inevitably result from the chaos in the home.  Consider your stress-level in that situation.  How effectively could you teach and raise your children in that environment and atmosphere?

This is obviously an extreme example, but I propose that these negative results come by degrees according to our willingness to be attentive to the cleaning and housework that at times can seem so menial.  In other words, if I do fifty-percent of the work I know I should be doing, I might expect to have half of these negative outcomes.  Maybe we argue half as much, lose half as many toys, waste half as much money...

Now, I'm not promoting perfectionism here.  Life gets messy, and I have no problem with my house looking lived in throughout the day.  But I think that common sense can guide us when it comes to determining what is acceptable and what is not in terms of our household responsibilities and expectations.

For me, housekeeping is equatable to the weeding of my little garden.  No matter how much I focus on my flowers, if I haven't provided them with an environment that is conducive to their growth, my success can only be limited at best.