the litany of everyday life

the book that i am currently reading is the kind of book that is going to change me, i can feel it. as i was reading it yesterday i could feel my heart softening and my soul crying out, "yes!" it is called Keeping House-The Litany of Everyday Life and it is by Margaret Kim Peterson. a friend from church loaned it to me. i want to own it and i will, soon.

i am only two chapters into it and i want to write down every other paragraph so i can remember. one of the paragraphs that stood out to me was this one;

"Housework is all about bringing order out of chaos. ... In a society dominated by its monetary economy, it is easy to assume that any unpaid activity is either a form of consumption or an oppressive waste of time. But housework, although unpaid (if you do your own), is essentially productive; it is among the ways in which humans can and do participate in God's own work of creation." {bold emphasis by me}

wow that's good! it is so easy to think that my job right now as a stay at home mom, a housewife, isn't important. matt has never made me feel like that, in fact he continuously tells me the opposite, but i think that i have bought into what our society is feeding me. which is that what i am doing right now isn't valuable because i am not contributing to our home "monetarily". i think this is a dangerous mentality. it can foster resentment inside of myself about my "lowly" position in our home. it can also breed a lack of contentment. ...i need to think more about this.

there are days while i am sitting nursing penelope that i start to moan inside my mind. i moan things like, "why do i have to do this? why am i stuck at home? why should i clean the toilets? why do these people have to eat every single day?" it feels monotonous and tedious and redundant. but this book. this book is helping. already only 38 pages in and i can sense that God is saying something to me. He wants me to look at it differently, and though i am not there yet, i am open.

"We all need the patterns of our lives to echo and emulate the patterns of the larger story that we, as Christians, believe is the true story of the world. Daily involvement in the work of housekeeping, the litany of everyday life, is one way of participating in and living out that story."