at home, where it counts

“I’m doing the very best I can, and I’m doing it at home, where it counts.” Psalm 101:2b (Message)

This verse jumped out at me today, and I thought I’d share it with you. I’m a list person. I love to make lists and cross things off as I accomplish them. Recently, a lot of things on my list haven’t been completed. They’ve been left by the wayside as I tended to things at home. This can be a source of disappointment, but reading this verse, I see  what I do at home counts.

My home, my family needs me. Not a babysitter. Not a teacher. But Mama.

What I do at home counts. When I take  the time to sit with my two year old on the floor and chat with him. When I take the time to look in my three week old’s eyes and smile. When I figure out another creative way to pay off the mortgage faster. When I fold the laundry and put it away. When I freeze food in advance for the nights when I won’t feel like making anything. It all counts.

Sometimes it won’t feel like what we do counts because the world doesn’t notice. I love this quote from G.K. Chesterton’s “The Emancipation of Domesticity”:

“To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets cakes. and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it.

How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.”

Perhaps you feel like the things you do within the walls of your house don’t count. But they do. They’re essential. G.K. Chesterton also wrote that “children don’t need to be taught a trade, but introduced  to a world.” Mamas everywhere have a huge undertaking before them, and it’s a valuable one.