Good Like a Medicine

I’ve been THINKING again. I feel an unnecessarily long post coming on.

Okay, so I have come to the conclusion that I like just about EVERY type of traditional/”quasitraditional” craft, and it’s just plain frustrating. Quilting, sewing, drawing, knitting, decorative painting, floral arranging, photo/scrap-booking, interior decorating, finishing wood projects …… etc., etc. I have tried my hand at all of the aforementioned hobbies, and I want to throw myself down in the floor and have a fit because I want to do them all at once. This is frustrating for 2 reasons. For one thing I am swimming in constant thoughts about “Ooooh, I’d love to do this with this,, etc, etc….” I feel like I’m a big bubble of creative energy that’s about to burst. I love beauty. I love order. I love to pair beauty and order and stand back and bask in their togetherness. I realized a long time ago that there is a delicate line between following Jesus Christ and relishing in this temporary world’s treasures. It’s so easy to cross. No created goods, no matter how worthwhile they may seem, can compare to the eternal majesty of my Savior. So, like Paul said, it really all comes down to the fact that my most artistic effort is quite a piece of rubbish in light of knowing God. Man!

But it’s so much fun to create pretty stuff, and it’s so rewarding to see a big smile on someone’s face when you give them a handmade gift. I would much rather spend twenty hours making something special than spend twenty bucks to have it right now, and I absolutely delight in walking into a room and letting the bright, clean, aesthetic scenery fill the scope of my being. I am forever trying out new ways to make my environment a sanctuary. I have gotten to where almost all of my online time (at least 10-20 mins. per day and sometimes a couple of hours at night) is spent educating myself about some craft or reading some creative website/blog. I usually start out with the news, then a couple of theologically-related sites, and eventually I’m pouring over some “how-to” craft mumbojumbo and looking at my computer clock thinking, “Woa, how did all that time just vanish?” It’s overwhelming, and just when I’m on the brink of finding my satisfaction in some project, God does something to get my attention and prevent me from making these things my idols. (Uh HEM! Enter SIN!) What is the point of making my environment a sanctuary if it hosts some foreign idol? Not that it does always, but sometimes these hobbies tempt me to spend too much time in dreamland when there are millions of other things God would have me to be doing. So I am at odds with my creativity in some respects.

My other frustration stems from the overlapping of what I like to call “life chapters.” I am currently in the “young wife and mother” chapter. I have already lived through the “college” chapter. I thought I was going to be single and head off to Africa or somewhere after dental school to be a dental missionary. Long story short, God showed me that this was Kristi’s dream, not God’s. I surrendered to doing “whatever, whenever,” in my third year of college, and I realized that dental school was not on the agenda. I wanted to be a foreign missionary (and still do!), but I admit it was somewhat hard to swallow the fact that now I had no idea “what” I was going to do. After much prayer and many hours spent with Eric, I knew God would have me marry this man. I could see this “college” chapter ending and a new one beginning. For me, there was a mere WEEK between the two! (This sequence was to honor my father, who said I must graduate college before getting married. So we waited a week! haha) By our first anniversary, I was pregnant, after a year of work / ministry I entered motherhood and life as a minister’s wife very quickly, for which I have no regrets. But I basically went into my marriage knowing how to do the minimal basics - tidy the house and laundry. That was all. Boy did I have a lot to learn!

So here I am. SO HAPPY. In LOVE with my husband, and in sheer awe and gratitude for God blessing me with my complete DREAM JOB! I love being a homemaker, minister’s wife, and mother to three children. And you know what? I think I’m good at it! Not that I’m Flylady or something, but I am confident that God has me doing just what I love to do, and that makes me good at it. We want to have more kids, I want to homeschool, we want to be foreign missionaries someday if God beckons us in that direction . . . All of these are dreams that may or may not happen, but I smile and laugh at the bright future to come (Proverbs 31). Why, then, should I be frustrated? (I use this word “loosely.”) I simply do not feel like I was prepared for all of the needs and interests that take up my time now. I blame no one but myself and this culture in general (in other words, it’s not my mom’s fault).

Our society almost mocks the occupation of homemaker and mother. There is so much time spent on “education” that the necessary life skills for running a family are all but neglected. Creative hobbies (such as crafts) are just icing on the cake of this chapter, but they sure do help with the desire for an outlet every now and then, save money, and make great ways to build character and purpose in sharing with others. How can you have time to put icing on the cake of you don’t even know how to bake the cake yet? I wish so badly that in my youth someone would have wooed me to pursue many of the crafts I so enjoy now. I wish I would not have been faced with the constant rush of activity, “extra-curricular” (sigh) activity, and the pressure to be “Christian superwoman” at the ripe age of 17 or 18 years old. Yes, much of the pressure was my own doing, but that’s because I really thought that was the only purpose for a young woman. What else was there to do? Oh, now I know the answer. So much watching, training, learning!

Where is the “school” for prepping women to do what God calls so many of them to do? Cook a beautiful, nutritious (nutritious! now that takes some heavy research!) meal, entertain guests, train small children, learn the art of the written and spoken gentle word, spend time and money wisely, collaorate on endless goals with the CEO (i.e. -husband!), be a lighthouse to others in need? These are the common (yet crucial) jobs of stay-at-home women of Christian influence.There is nothing wrong with a woman getting formal education or working outside of the home. That is not what I’m saying. Neither is my education in vain. I’m not saying that a wonderful formal education is worthless against a cashmere scarf! But I believe one of my frustrations is that I SO EASILY bought into society’s vision for young women, which is that you go out and wear yourself out to make the best “career” for yourself, and some 10 or 15 years later consider the “secondary” role of wife and mother. (Thank God that I had started having babies in my early twenties because I don’t know how well my body would take it later!) I didn’t have time to learn how to sew, cook, decorate a room, or learn any of those other skills because I was too busy being in twenty after-school clubs, playing my trumpet, cheering for sports, playing softball, attending church, and fitting in my schoolwork somewhere in there (ironically I didn’t have much time for my family)! I do not want that for my daughters. Not that I don’t want them to be involved in some things that suit their interests, but I do not want them to regret the missed chances for domestic endeavors. I want them to at least say to themselves, “I had the opportunity, I had the advice to learn these things while I was young,” so that when they enter this chapter, they aren’t riding in the van beside their husband amidst loud children reading “Sewing for Dummies” (Just kidding. I’m actually reading “Knitting for Dummies.”)

Although I feel confident in my abliites of basic home skills at this point, I don’t have the time or energy to learn more about how to sew, paint, knit, decorate, etc., etc. like I would like to so badly! We have a home where we spend almost every hour of every day together, and I want it to be as heavenly as possible. If I had started earlier, I may not have felt the strain of making up for lost time in educating myself. I should think about this some more because I just wonder if it will always be a struggle for me — you know, to find a balance between duty and creativity, and merging the two while looking out for others ahead of my own interests.How’s that for an earful? What? Wake up!