My Sweet Home (Prequel #2)

Our family loves the song “Ho Hey” by the Lumineers.

We sing it at the top of our lungs in our old gold minivan, and even Baby Betsie shouts out the “ho!” and “hey!” parts like a champ.

But watching the Lumineers perform live at the Grammy’s, I grew slightly suspicious and devastated as the camera cut to Taylor Swift singing along in the audience.

Why?

Because…

During my favorite part of the song – the chorus – where the band sings “I belong with you, you belong with me, in my sweet home…”, Taylor, who I am confident is very proficient in memorizing popular song lyrics, was clearly singing “I belong with you, you belong with me, you’re my sweetheart” as she made a heart shape around her heart.

And I knew…

I had the lyrics wrong.

A quick internet search proved this to be true, and I now know that this song is talking about young, unrequited love, and not me and my husband and our kids and our little white farmhouse on the hill.

Bummer.

But then I decided that, since I will never be on the stage or in the audience of the Grammy’s, I can sing the song however I darn well please.

And so I have made it our banner song once more, and I sing it at the top of my lungs and with all the love in my heart…

I belong with you,

You belong with me,

In my sweet home…

There is nothing sweeter than the comforts of home, is there? I grew up in an extremely home-y home. My Mom is gifted at making others feel loved and comfortable, and when I still walk into her house today, my heart relaxes with me, and I feel like I can take on the world.

Though much younger and less experienced than she, this is what I strive to do in my own house today.

Make it a home.

Make it a place where my kids feel brave and content and whole.

But that’s just it…

These things don’t happen naturally or of their own accord, and you can’t be a home-maker without the making; neither can you produce a place of warmth and love by sitting on your bum all day, blogging and eating onion rings. (Sorry, that’s just my guilt talking. I ate one too many…).

I will admit, it took me a few years to get over the fact that I am no longer the recipient of all the home-making and am now the home-maker, but I have found that, though the work is nonstop and very taxing, the entire family benefits from the hard work of my hands and my mind, including…me!

When the house is tidy, and when there are tokens of beauty and love surrounding us, I feel serene and content and happy to be here. On the other hand, when things are a mess and I have been lax in my duties and nothing is organized, well, I feel crummy and uninspired and my attitude pretty much matches my house.

All that to say, homemaking might be work, and it might be nonstop work, and it might be really taxing work, but…it is good work.

Tomorrow, I’ll begin periodically sharing with you some of my favorite components of our home, and some tips I’ve picked up in my 8 years as a homemaker. Some are tiny and obvious, some are sizable and profound, and some would never be noticed if I didn’t take a picture and blog about it.

But together, they are beginning to make  a seamless and fitting backdrop to the place where we live, move, breathe, eat, play, work and sleep.

Our sweet home.

Bathed in the Gospel

The way she lifted her legs in perpendicular fashion as I lifted her out of the bathtub let me know that the way we do bathtime has become routine to her…

Laying a clean, full-sized towel completely out across the bathmat, I always set her down “just so” on her bottom before pulling the back part of the towel up to her neck and then wrapping the rest of it over her shoulders and around her arms. I finish up by swaddling her little legs, feet, and toes, patting her dry as I go.

Once she looks like a little terrycloth burrito, I grasp her by her towel-covered arms, and, lifting her up into my left arm and perching her on my hip, I hold her legs in a sitting position with my right arm.

We go straight to the bathroom vanity where she says “Hi, baby!” to her reflection in the mirror, her hair a riot of wet, dripping curls, her smile exuberant, her skin glowing with health and cleanliness. I then carry her into my bedroom where a laundered set of clothes awaits her on the bed next to a new diaper, Johnson’s baby lotion, and a brush.

This is our routine, and we could both probably perform it with our eyes closed.

She is used to being bathed, my little one, having the yogurt washed out of her hair, the dirt washed out of her fingernails, the living washed out of her day…

She is used to being wrapped up and dried, cuddled and loved, lotioned and combed, diapered and groomed.

She is used to being dressed in fresh, clean clothes.

Just like she is used to raising her legs just right to land on her towel.

And I realized as I dried her today that, what might feel like routine to me…or even sometimes drudgery, if I’m being honest…says something monumental about her life, as well as my role as her mother…

and that, while bathtime is such a common ritual for us that she knows how to hold her body when she emerges from the tub, the very essence of our routine says something.

Something big. Something important. Something eternal.

Because her simplest routines contrast so deeply with those of children all over this fallen world. They have routines, too…

Rocking themselves to sleep at night in orphanages with too many babies and not enough workers.

Hiding food in their highchairs to make sure there will be enough for their next meal.

Moving from foster home to foster home, different bed, different rituals, different guardians.

Pulling dirty and wrinkled clothes out of a pile before dressing themselves and going to school.

Eating whatever they can dig up in the pantry or whatever someone will give them for free.

Getting on a church van to attend worship and learning about who made them from strangers rather than family.

Bearing their own fears and burdens with no one to talk to, no one to comfort them, no one to guide them.

And it should never be lost on me that, in many ways, one of the simplest and most obvious differences between those children and my little girl who sticks her legs up when I lift her out of the bathtub is…me.

The world can very much disparage and downplay the calling of motherhood, and sometimes I am the first one to listen, forgetting that this full-time job I have of caring for children who would be helpless without me is kind of huge, and that, while I may not be changing the world as I prepare their breakfast…

I have at least changed theirs.

When my children are clean, it is because I’ve bathed them. When they are full, it is because I have fed them. When they sing a song from memory, it is because I have sang to them so often that the words have imprinted themselves on their brains. When they are wearing  clean and pressed clothes, it is because I have washed and ironed them. And when they learn how to walk those ancient paths of truth, it will hopefully be because, aided by the Spirit and covered by grace, they are following behind me and their Papa.

The things I do as a mother all day, every day, might be simple gestures…

making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich…

singing hymn after hymn until they fall asleep…

telling them who made the flowers and the rocks and the trees and the sky…

reading them a story…

cleaning up their vomit…

buying them healthy food at the grocery store…

bandaging the tiny cut that made them cry…

taking the time to really listen to them while they talk…

getting the stains out of their clothes…

but they are gospel gestures.

And it hit me with beautiful and convicting clarity today that any amount of passion I have for the sanctity of human life, any compassion I feel for the orphaned or the abused or the hurting, any desire I will ever have to bring the good news to a lost and dying world…

well, it starts here.

At bedtime.

At breakfast, lunch and supper time.

At reading time.

At bathtime.

At home.

And while it may not always feel like I’m doing anything really important in the world and while there are days that I entertain the notion that my life is pretty mundane and that my college degree was a huge waste of time and money, I need to periodically remind myself that I’m doing something pretty big.

And so are you…

Remember that the next time you pull your baby out of the bath and she knows what to do with her legs.