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Hey Everybody! I am so excited today to do something a little out of the ordinary but something that will be a lot of fun! I want you guys to meet my friend, a fellow author and homeschooling mom, Sheila Wray Gregoire! I first met Sheila several years ago when we were both speaking at a conference for the National Center for Biblical Parenting way up north in New Jersey! My Canadian friend Sheila thought she was actually going south until I cleared things up for her. You are not "south" in these United States unless you are within three feet of grits and/or sweet iced tea! LOL! But I'm happy to welcome Sheila to my blog and I'm talking with her today about her book, "To Love, Honor and Vacuum"--what a great title! I don't know about other moms, but there have been a few times over the years when I have felt more like a maid than a wife and mother. What about you, Sheila? You betcha! Now I don’t want you to think I had it that bad, because my husband has always been a dream. But sometimes he was more of a dream than at other times—in the sense that I only saw him in my dreams, since he was rarely home. He was in residency in pediatrics, worked 36 hour shifts, and all the work for cleaning up after kids missed the potty fell on me. In fact, I did everything—I organized the finances, did the laundry, bought our insurance, cared for the kids. I kept the house together. When we get married, we think we’re signing up for this glorious relationship, or at the very least, a lovely partnership. But often it doesn’t work out that way. And when you have little kids who don’t sleep through the night, and you’re chronically exhausted, having the heap of the burden of housework tossed on top of you like five loads of dirty laundry doesn’t feel that great. But in those days when I rarely slept and I felt like I never really accomplished anything I did figure out some important things. First, I was expecting too much out of myself. My kids mattered. The size of the dust bunnies came in only a distant fourth, somewhere behind the kids, God, and my husband. And I wasn’t doing what I could to make my marriage great because I was still looking to Keith to be the knight in shining armor he just couldn’t be right then. Sometimes we have to find our own peace with the world and our families, whether or not our husbands are around to do it. And that’s what I hope To Love, Honor and Vacuum can help women do. Sheila, is there a reason we women get so stressed over the state of our homes? What's going on in our hearts?Our homes became status symbols around the turn of the century when all those great cleaning products began to be invented. Companies had to sell the stuff, so they started showing us how gleaming everything was supposed to be! And now that house sizes seem to be almost doubling every thirty years, they’ve really come to reflect something about us which maybe they’re just not supposed to. But it’s not just housework: we still internalize this idea that being incredible mothers means things like being able to create a three-level birthday cake that looks like dump truck, rather than simply being someone who kids want to hug. We’ve learned to look to the outside, not the inside. It’s no wonder that we feel that the state of our homes reflects something about our character, so that if we have crumbs in too many places it means we have no perseverance or work ethic. I just don’t think that’s true. Remember the story of Mary and Martha? Jesus shows up at their door, unannounced (no phones, you see), and Martha immediately freaks and starts dusting and maybe kills a goat or something so they can eat. And Mary? She just listens to Jesus. Martha gets increasingly ticked off until finally she goes to Jesus and demands that He get her sister to help. I can just see Jesus chuckling and saying, “Martha, you are worried about many things, but Mary has chosen what is better, and it won’t be taken away from her.” Now, Martha was making dinner, after all. What she was doing was important. But Jesus said Mary did something better. Why? Because she knew that her house was meant to be a place where people met Jesus. Martha thought it was supposed to be a place where we could impress people. Our homes should be places where we can have people in and they can get to know us, and thus get to know Jesus. That means our homes must be comfortable—no fear of catching a communicable disease in the bathroom—but not perfect. Friendly is better. So relax, put your feet up, eat some chocolate, and invite a friend over! You’ll do a lot more good than worrying about when the last time you cleaned the silver was. As soon as they can walk. I mean it! Kids can start to learn to put toys away at 1 ½. And a 3-year-old can dust a coffee table. In fact, 3-year-olds want to. I think toddlers have an inner sensing device when it comes to mops. Whenever you have the mop out, kids come running. And what do we do? We shoo them away because we don’t want them underfoot. But that’s counterproductive. You’re not here on this earth to pamper your kids; you’re here to raise responsible adults. So teaching them to clean is part of that! I think we don’t make kids clean because it’s more work for us. They might do it wrong, and that’s annoying. But if you can let go of some of your standards, you may realize that getting kids to clean—even if the house isn’t perfect—is probably doing more good than doing it all yourself. After all, the best gift you can give your future daughter-in-law is a son who cleans toilets! And I tell in To Love, Honor and Vacuum how to set up an allowance system to go with chores, so that we teach kids responsibility in contributing to the household work, and responsibility with money at the same time. It’s a win-win, even if your bathroom sink still leaves a little to be desired. What else can we read about in your book? Is it just about housework, or is there more? In the first half of the book, I tackle YOU: what you can do to change your housework standards, prioritize your life, and get housework done more quickly so that you have time for the things that really matter. In the second half of the book I tackle our relationships: how we can encourage kids—and husbands—to participate more in the life of the family! And I talk about some of the hot-button issues that often emerge in marriages, like money issues and even intimacy (that’s the fun chapter)!. In fact, I liked that chapter so much I expanded it into another book called Honey, I Don’t Have a Headache Tonight: Help for women who want to feel more in the mood. But in this book, my goal is to help women see that they can’t wait for other people to change to find peace. Go to God yourself, ask Him to help you change how you think about your home and your role, and you’ll likely find that everyone else responds well. But staying the way you are, and feeling defeated and exhausted, isn’t really a recipe for success in the future. Being honest before God, loving your husband and kids, and finding time for a bubble bath with chocolate probably is! WIN A BUNDLE OF SHEILA’S BOOKS! Sign up for Sheila’s free weekly parenting and family ezine, and you’ll be entered in a draw to win a bunch of Sheila’s books and audio recordings! Sheila’s Reality Check covers everything from flatulence at the dinner table to same sex marriage and the effects of divorce. Sign up here,. She’ll make the draw April 30. |
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