Those that know me know that I am domestically impaired. I've never made a secret of it. In fact, my husband thought it was cute and "no big deal" when we were dating. I even have magnets that HE bought me saying "just say 'no' to cooking," "just say no to ironing (which I definitely do)," "just say no to laundry," and "just say no to cleaning." I was always in trouble for having a messy room, messy desk, messy car (though I prefer the term "lived in").
In the real world, these things are occasionally necessities, like you definitelly MUST do laundry at 1 in the morning before your son's baseball game when his uniform has spent a week being covered in mud and grass stains. And cleaning up IS necessary when, say, one's mother is coming to visit. And I do like to cook...but more in the hobby way. NEEDING to do it takes out all the joy.
I've been trying to be more domestic though. We've been wanting to improve how we eat, and I am all too inclined to not have a plan at 4:30 in the afternoon with nothing thawed (If you know me, you might start realizing that ADHD might be a running theme here)...but I've made some observations over the course of this experiment
1. If you cook 3 meals a day, you have 3 meals worth of dishes to wash, 3 meals worth of pans to clean, the table needs cleaned 3 times a day, and if you are like me or have my kids, it might even effect the status of the floor.
2. I've noticed when I clean, I notice a whole plethora of other things that need done. Now, if I hadn't been cleaning, I wouldn't have noticed these other things...but now I can't seem to rest until they are done, and when I deal with those things, I now notice other things.
3. I'm grumpier. It's amazing how working to pick up a living room, and say, having a six year old leave every belonging she has ever owned strewn across the room can cause levels of ire and frustration that I have almost never known.
4. So I'm having a hard time believing that having my act together actually lowers my stress. Thus just doesnt' seem to do it. (There was an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati where Johnny Fever and Venus Flytrap get drunk to show on air how alcohol effects reflexes, only Johnny's actually GOT BETTER the more he drank. Maybe I am an anomoly and just function better in chaos)
5. Not only that, but most of the moms that I know of who actually "have their act together" in this area seem to suffer from the same thing. Now, because things are dusted or vacuumed, they MUST can every tomato in a five mile radius, or they are a complete failure if the tile in their bathroom is not regrouted in a manner that reflects the skill of a man who has been doing nothing but grout for the last 20 years. Not only that, but if you compliment their house, they will wince and point out all the things they "forgot" to do. Very few women ever seem able to vacuum for a few minutes, run a feather duster over some things, throw the dishes in the dishwasher, then say "Okay, I'm happy now, I'm going to go read a book, get a tan, and enjoy life."
So, in conclusion, my main question to myself, I guess is "if eating healthier and trying to be more organized is supposed to make me live longer, do I really want to live longer if it means I spend that time washing dishes and mopping?"
(I know, I'm just whining...but what is a blog for if I can't whine?)
addendum: Now see, I know why I read the beloved Sisters....Rebekah is there to show me what I am doing wrong!!
Showing posts with label vocation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vocation. Show all posts
Monday, August 25, 2008
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Yet Your Desire Will be for Your Husband
"To the woman He said, 'I will greatly multiply yourpain in childbirth. In pain you will bring forth children: Yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." Genesis 3:16
I have heard two interpretations of this from pastors in the last several months. The first was when I stopped and listened to a sermon on the radio from a Calvary Chapel show (I know -- not my usual thing, but it amazed me that as I was scanning that the pastor actually spent five minutes talking about how you can't come to faith unless the Holy Spirit draws you.) Basically, he interpreted this as once a guy and a girl get married, the man starts focusing on work, etc. and she starts wondering "why doesn't he pay more attention to me?"
The other pastor that addressed this text in a Bible class, put the emphasis on "he shall rule over you" and believed that "your desire shall be for your husband" was that woman will desire that power to rule, but in the end, it belongs to man.
This post that I have referred to before on the Concordian Sisters' blog has had me thinking on this for quite a while.
These aren't the first times that I have heard such interpretations of these verses, and the big issue that I see is that in an age of birth control and planned family size -- and subsequent separation of sex and reproduction, we fail to see how really truly powerful this proclamation is, and so we find ourselves reading other things into it rather than letting the text speak for itself.
In Genesis 2, God blessed Adam and Eve and told them to be fruitful and multiply. Having children was something inherently human, even before The Fall. It was integrally part of who we were, and what our purpose was.
Think of what that meant. Having children was an unadulterated blessing. Nothing tainted it. There was no fear of childbirth... no pain, no death, no destruction of figure, no bodily deterioration. Nursing didn't hurt and wasn't complicated or tainted with carnal implications and cultural negativity. Babies inherently trusted and that trust was not in jeopardy from parents who would be tempted to put their own needs first. Exhaustion would not exist. Our children would be without sin and our marriages would be peaceful. Punishment and discipline would not be issues. Fear of harm coming to our children or spouses...death was not in the picture.
Now, look at what the fall into sin meant....Pain, possibility of death in childbirth, infections. Loss of figure, physical problems, c-sections, infertility, etc. Babies crying for hours at a time because of colic, exhaustion, isolation, depression; husbands that weren't supportive or worse yet, weren't there. Breastfeeding problems, formula feeding, the terrible twos -- the worse threes; adolescence. Bickering siblings, disobedience, punishment, frustration, harm, injury, handicaps; death.
Common sense would say that we should all go the route of Scarlett O'Hara who told Rhett Butler after Bonnie's birth that she was done with sex. But that was exactly the thing that was so inhuman about Scarlett O'Hara. To do so is displaying a blatant lack of trust in God and in marriage, which He created. Despite all of these things that wear us down, ranging from our own vanity (which has its roots in the knowledge that we are heading toward death, and we shouldn't be), to the exhaustion that children bring, to the fear and the grief that come along with them and forever taint whatever joy they bring...our desire is still for our husbands. We still want that love, that intimacy, that ultimate union that until this century, brings more children.
And with all of that, we have to put our trust in a man who is also a sinner, and even if he is a good man, he will hurt us. He will fall short. He will sometimes not understand our burden. And at times, we will hurt him, and hurt because we hurt him. We will fall short. And we will not understand the burden that he is under to care for us like Christ loved the church and gave His life for her, either.
It is a frightening thing being a woman under the curse of sin.
Whether one believes that contraception is good or is sinful or has not thoughts on it whatsoever... as a society, it has taken fertility and made it somewhat more foreign to the human experience, less natural, and has made verses like these a bit more alien to our experience...more unfathomable.
It definitely isn't about wanting a little more attention and an occasional date on Friday night, though it gets lonely when we are not valued and cherished. It isn't about craving power and headship -- though that is always there when sin is there.
Thankfully, God is faithful. Children, all children, are still a blessing from God, even with the sometimes terrifying, exhausting burden and chaos that they can also bring. When He provides the blessing, He also provides the means to care for it, to show more love than we ever knew could be there. More than we ever will, God knows what He is doing, and He gives us the means to bear it.
I have heard two interpretations of this from pastors in the last several months. The first was when I stopped and listened to a sermon on the radio from a Calvary Chapel show (I know -- not my usual thing, but it amazed me that as I was scanning that the pastor actually spent five minutes talking about how you can't come to faith unless the Holy Spirit draws you.) Basically, he interpreted this as once a guy and a girl get married, the man starts focusing on work, etc. and she starts wondering "why doesn't he pay more attention to me?"
The other pastor that addressed this text in a Bible class, put the emphasis on "he shall rule over you" and believed that "your desire shall be for your husband" was that woman will desire that power to rule, but in the end, it belongs to man.
This post that I have referred to before on the Concordian Sisters' blog has had me thinking on this for quite a while.
These aren't the first times that I have heard such interpretations of these verses, and the big issue that I see is that in an age of birth control and planned family size -- and subsequent separation of sex and reproduction, we fail to see how really truly powerful this proclamation is, and so we find ourselves reading other things into it rather than letting the text speak for itself.
In Genesis 2, God blessed Adam and Eve and told them to be fruitful and multiply. Having children was something inherently human, even before The Fall. It was integrally part of who we were, and what our purpose was.
Think of what that meant. Having children was an unadulterated blessing. Nothing tainted it. There was no fear of childbirth... no pain, no death, no destruction of figure, no bodily deterioration. Nursing didn't hurt and wasn't complicated or tainted with carnal implications and cultural negativity. Babies inherently trusted and that trust was not in jeopardy from parents who would be tempted to put their own needs first. Exhaustion would not exist. Our children would be without sin and our marriages would be peaceful. Punishment and discipline would not be issues. Fear of harm coming to our children or spouses...death was not in the picture.
Now, look at what the fall into sin meant....Pain, possibility of death in childbirth, infections. Loss of figure, physical problems, c-sections, infertility, etc. Babies crying for hours at a time because of colic, exhaustion, isolation, depression; husbands that weren't supportive or worse yet, weren't there. Breastfeeding problems, formula feeding, the terrible twos -- the worse threes; adolescence. Bickering siblings, disobedience, punishment, frustration, harm, injury, handicaps; death.
Common sense would say that we should all go the route of Scarlett O'Hara who told Rhett Butler after Bonnie's birth that she was done with sex. But that was exactly the thing that was so inhuman about Scarlett O'Hara. To do so is displaying a blatant lack of trust in God and in marriage, which He created. Despite all of these things that wear us down, ranging from our own vanity (which has its roots in the knowledge that we are heading toward death, and we shouldn't be), to the exhaustion that children bring, to the fear and the grief that come along with them and forever taint whatever joy they bring...our desire is still for our husbands. We still want that love, that intimacy, that ultimate union that until this century, brings more children.
And with all of that, we have to put our trust in a man who is also a sinner, and even if he is a good man, he will hurt us. He will fall short. He will sometimes not understand our burden. And at times, we will hurt him, and hurt because we hurt him. We will fall short. And we will not understand the burden that he is under to care for us like Christ loved the church and gave His life for her, either.
It is a frightening thing being a woman under the curse of sin.
Whether one believes that contraception is good or is sinful or has not thoughts on it whatsoever... as a society, it has taken fertility and made it somewhat more foreign to the human experience, less natural, and has made verses like these a bit more alien to our experience...more unfathomable.
It definitely isn't about wanting a little more attention and an occasional date on Friday night, though it gets lonely when we are not valued and cherished. It isn't about craving power and headship -- though that is always there when sin is there.
Thankfully, God is faithful. Children, all children, are still a blessing from God, even with the sometimes terrifying, exhausting burden and chaos that they can also bring. When He provides the blessing, He also provides the means to care for it, to show more love than we ever knew could be there. More than we ever will, God knows what He is doing, and He gives us the means to bear it.
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