Reflections on a distant dream
I angst constantly about the fact that my emails are in much better form than my livejournal posts (which are also much rarer). I don't ever write blog-type entries like I do emails, anyhow; I write snippets here on Tuesday, then rearrange them and write some more on Wednesday, top it off on Thursday and obsessively check for errors, and then send it off at 2 AM on Friday near 8,000 words (late, by the way --- I'm so sorry, Greenie! I didn't mean to, and two weeks in a row!), having neglected my homework all the while. When I write sentences like the previous one, which is quite a lot, I stop giving a damn about grammatical errors. Nowadays I'm of a particularly happy disposition. Every day is a damn good day.
Why am I so happy, I wonder? ... God told me, that day, that I was all right, that I was forgiven, and that I was loved.
Brian tells me all the time that he's sure I don't like him as much as I like -. He, naturally, doesn't understand the distinction between romance and friendship; it makes me smile, and I'm a little happy he's insecure, even if it means he doesn't understand me. What he doesn't understand most is how much of my life is consumed by this dream of becoming a happy housewife. He does not understand this, but neither do most women. That being said, I've been told (by the people who apparently did not ask what my majors are) that I lack ambition. I don't lack ambition at all. I want to be a housewife.
Being a housewife is the most demanding and most skilled job in this world. It requires more education and more intelligence than any occupation in the world. It requires compassion and it requires patience. It is a full-time job, and that does not mean 40 hours a week, it means 168 hours plus another 30 or 40 in overtime. And the housewife is not paid in money. Yes, a housewife works harder than any other man or woman; she has the capability to acheive more than any other, as well.
A housewife is indeed that; a wife of the house. She loves her husband more than anyone in the world except God and her children, though it's a close call on that account. She loves her home, and takes the utmost care to maintain it; she knows the arts of cooking, cleaning, sewing, gardening; she organizes and schedules and learns how to be efficient with her space, time, and money; and to all that she has the exhausting, exhilirating joys of love-making, socializing, and child-raising.
She endures the divine pain of childbirth. While she raises them, she disciplines them with uncompromising love and the utmost ability to understand. She teaches them all she knows - not only letters and numbers but about passion, friendship, and romance. She tends their scrapes and bruises and holds them gently when they weep; she teaches them how to be strong when they must and to depend on others when they cannot be strong. She is the ultimate example to her children, the bastion of faith, courage and love. Her reward, is to endure after so many years of devotion is at last the hell of being parted from her children. Yet she loves them always, and the name of mother can never be taken from her.
And she knows to live her own life. She is what she wishes to be. She sacrifices herself for her family and her children because it is who she is; she has made her choice with unstifled will. Even so, there is nothing that holds her back from pursuing other joys; time has no meaning to her. She knows better than any other how to work and how to find time; therefore she is a writer, a teacher, a nurse, or a lawyer, a scientist, a politician. She is all this, and yet the first career of her heart is that of a housewife. Her life, she knows, is hers to devote; and she chooses to devote it as fully as anyone ever could. Although her joys are wide and varied, she knows that no title holds more glory than that of the wife and mother.
The housewife, therefore, deserves all the respect, the love, and the honor that we can give her. And when we offer her what she is due, she will modestly accept it, smiling, and say that she does not deserve it.
Why am I so happy, I wonder? ... God told me, that day, that I was all right, that I was forgiven, and that I was loved.
Brian tells me all the time that he's sure I don't like him as much as I like -. He, naturally, doesn't understand the distinction between romance and friendship; it makes me smile, and I'm a little happy he's insecure, even if it means he doesn't understand me. What he doesn't understand most is how much of my life is consumed by this dream of becoming a happy housewife. He does not understand this, but neither do most women. That being said, I've been told (by the people who apparently did not ask what my majors are) that I lack ambition. I don't lack ambition at all. I want to be a housewife.
Being a housewife is the most demanding and most skilled job in this world. It requires more education and more intelligence than any occupation in the world. It requires compassion and it requires patience. It is a full-time job, and that does not mean 40 hours a week, it means 168 hours plus another 30 or 40 in overtime. And the housewife is not paid in money. Yes, a housewife works harder than any other man or woman; she has the capability to acheive more than any other, as well.
A housewife is indeed that; a wife of the house. She loves her husband more than anyone in the world except God and her children, though it's a close call on that account. She loves her home, and takes the utmost care to maintain it; she knows the arts of cooking, cleaning, sewing, gardening; she organizes and schedules and learns how to be efficient with her space, time, and money; and to all that she has the exhausting, exhilirating joys of love-making, socializing, and child-raising.
She endures the divine pain of childbirth. While she raises them, she disciplines them with uncompromising love and the utmost ability to understand. She teaches them all she knows - not only letters and numbers but about passion, friendship, and romance. She tends their scrapes and bruises and holds them gently when they weep; she teaches them how to be strong when they must and to depend on others when they cannot be strong. She is the ultimate example to her children, the bastion of faith, courage and love. Her reward, is to endure after so many years of devotion is at last the hell of being parted from her children. Yet she loves them always, and the name of mother can never be taken from her.
And she knows to live her own life. She is what she wishes to be. She sacrifices herself for her family and her children because it is who she is; she has made her choice with unstifled will. Even so, there is nothing that holds her back from pursuing other joys; time has no meaning to her. She knows better than any other how to work and how to find time; therefore she is a writer, a teacher, a nurse, or a lawyer, a scientist, a politician. She is all this, and yet the first career of her heart is that of a housewife. Her life, she knows, is hers to devote; and she chooses to devote it as fully as anyone ever could. Although her joys are wide and varied, she knows that no title holds more glory than that of the wife and mother.
The housewife, therefore, deserves all the respect, the love, and the honor that we can give her. And when we offer her what she is due, she will modestly accept it, smiling, and say that she does not deserve it.