Spiritual Homemaker

The spiritual homemaker takes the mundane and common things she does each day and applies them to gospel principles or spiritual things. She tries to turn an attitude of indifference to the boring things she does to one of thankfulness for the blessings she has. The spiritual homemaker strives to bless the lives of those in her family. She strives to be pleasant and cheerful.

A spiritual homemaker will strive to take a day, an ordinary day and savor the fulfillment she receives from the labor with her hands.

"A woman began to make bread. She had prepared her own yeast and it was covered with white foam. As she measured the brown flour and added milk, she thought of bread as a blessing, and the making of bread as an ancient and honored art- a brown loaf as the pride of the homemakers since first the pioneer woman had come to the sagebrush valley and turned its wilderness to fields of grain. Breadmaking is not a task, she thought, but a privilege, the blessed symbol of life, the evidence of plenty- food for her family." (V.P.C., 1957)

While I perform my homemaking duties such as washing a sinkful of dirty dishes, or folding the laundry with my children or husband that it is a time that a mundane task becomes a time of insight into my children's or husband's lives. One evening, after my husband came home from work, I asked him to spend time with me and we would cook dinner together while the kids played. He and I made homemade pizza and raspberry brownies together while we talked and teased each other. Side by side we worked on the necessary task of feeding the family, but we also enhanced our marriage and strengthened the bonds of our communication by doing these things together. At times I wash dishes with one or two of my children rinsing and drying. While we work together it becomes a meaningful experience. We have often told each other new jokes or my child will open up and share a problem she is having with a friend or teacher.

A homemaker works with her hands. Have you ever noticed that most tasks that require your hands as in manual labor are often rote or repetitive and require very little thinking? This is actually a blessing. We can often think about solutions to our problems, plan meals, and concentrate on helping a neighbor with something or a child who needs extra attention.

The next time you are performing the homemaking tasks around your house, take time to apply each thing you do with a gospel principle. The homemaker is an example for spiritual things in a temporal world. "And they shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt rise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breech, The restorer of paths to dwell in."

Bibliography

V.P.C. (1957, August). A Day of Doing Common Things. Relief Society Magazine , pp. 508-509.

Isaiah. Bible, King James version 58:12