Overcoming Resentment in the Home

As women, the majority of us are in the home, home-making. We're the ones in the crux of the diaper field, the ones with our arms elbow-deep in soap suds, the ones with sweat dripping down our brows as we scrub at that weird stain on the bottom of the fridge door. Home is our mission field. It's our domain. And with that domain often comes the little dramas and follies that prove whether we are of the Martha nature or the Mary. It's the ground where we become the Proverbs 31 woman - the woman full of grace, tending to her home, laughing as she looks into the future.

I was led to write about this topic last week as I faced a flood of thoughts tainted with resentment.

The Situation

It'd been a long, hard day. The kids were unusually loud and rambunctious. School was a series of exhausted lectures. Evening came and the kitchen was a disaster, my sister (who usually makes our bread for breakfast) wasn't feeling well, and it seemed like everyone was on their own planet, doing their own thing.

I was in the middle of doing some blog related work when my sister called me over to ask if I wouldn't mind doing the bread. I can't say my reaction (blank-faced stare) was very commendable.

I'd cooked a huge meal for lunch while cleaning out the fridge and supervising my little brother. (And then cleaning the whole mess up.) I'd spent the afternoon attempting to inspire my little humdinger (my 9 year old student of a brother) to apply himself in the learning about Earth's atmospheres - with little success. Four o' clock had come around and I had tiredly dropped in front of the computer, notes in hand, preparing for "my time."

My time, as in, my time to think. My time to work on my blog. My time to write. My time to make something of myself.

The request to make the bread infuriated me. Did I have a target sign painted on my forehead, beckoning for one and all to call on me for absolutely everything? Couldn't she have asked somebody else? Why did everything seem to fall on my shoulders?

What more, looking around me, I found plenty of people to resent for not stepping up to the plate. No one else had done as much that day, of that I was certain. In fact, I could have probably given a running itinerary for everybody in the house, proving how little they did compared to me.
Oh, the self-pity ran deep!

I marched myself back to the computer, sat down with a huff, and stared at my notes. Notes I'd written about blog posts I wanted to write, things I wanted to create - all rooted in Christian theologies and teachings. It shamed me. I sighed and went to the kitchen, surveying the mess that I'd forgotten I was supposed to clean.

In the end, I didn't have to make the bread. My younger sister stepped up to the plate while I wiped down the table, put away the food, and washed all the dishes. But as I was standing there up to my elbows in suds, I realized how intense my resentment was against certain people in the house who I felt weren't doing enough.

It was self-pity and resentment but also anger. And it felt awful. I'm no stranger to it - I've been struggling against this nasty combo since I was a young teenager - but I've come to a place of no longer wanting to indulge in it. My own relationship with the Lord suffers when I do. It's something I desperately want to overcome.

The Key

When the enticing urge to pity yourself arises, allow it no mercy in your life.
I fail here often, but it's an area I'm slowly growing in. Cut it at the quick. The moment it pops up and you recognize it, put the proverbial knife to its throat. A single moment of self-pity is a slippery slide downhill - and getting back up again is hard. Really hard. Silence it before it can wreak much havoc.
From there, change your inner tune.

Stop painting yourself as the victim whilst condemning everyone else, and think about what God is doing in your life at this precise moment. What could God be teaching you? (That's right - what is He teaching you while you stand exhausted at the kitchen sink, covered in soap and sweat, wanting to pass out from exhaustion, while everyone else seems to be doing less... What. Is. He. Teaching. YOU?)

The Lesson

My thoughts went a little something like this:

Well, He must be teaching me about what kind of reaction I shouldn't have when I'm interrupted from doing what I want to be doing. (You see the real root of the issue? I'd "done" my good works for the day; I'd gone above and beyond... and more was required of me? What about MY time? What about the things I had to get done? Despite the earnest appeal in that kind of train of thought, there's a great deal of selfishness involved there as well. A root that God will persistently reach for and dig at in order to uproot.)

In fact, He could be teaching me how to respond with grace and willingness when the call to go the extra mile is made. (Death to self.)

And to take it a step further, if God does indeed have a future for me that includes marriage, motherhood, and home-making, how intensely necessary would a lesson of this sort be to me in those years?

You see, when I take my eyes off self and I consider the eternal purposes of these little moments and lessons, the situation takes on a different colored hue.

If I can just perceive my private troubles and trials as training ground... if I can just look at the process of my stretching as a GIFT and not a curse... how much more of a benefit will I glean from it all?!

It may hurt now but how much grace could abound in me if I only would surrender and stop clinging so desperately to my rights? What kind of vessel could God be training me to be? How can I get out of the way so He can do His job more fully? These are the kinds of questions we must ask ourselves.

The Purpose

God desires to bring forth in us the fruit of the Spirit. Not of the flesh. And He uses these seemingly trite situations to do just that. He cuts away at the ungodly roots; He tills our soil and brings forth the kind of beautiful aromas that will glorify Him.

It's the heart of the Christian walk. Self-denial. Self-sacrifice. Self-forgetfulness.

If Jesus calls us to walk as He walked... to do as He did... to pick up our crosses and follow Him... then we must realize that such a walk is a blood-spattered road. We will not always enjoy refinement. We will not always want to abase ourselves.

But we have this hope: that God does a great work in us and through us. That we are His workmanship, the vessels of His HOLY Spirit. Our lives are not our own.

Embrace wherever God has you - in whatever phase of life He has you. And fret not: He is doing His work in you right now, in this very moment. Trust Him. Let go. Bow down. Relinquish. The resentment washes away. The exhaustion is forgotten. Joy takes it's place.

And fruit awaits you!

My Great Tragedy

“Grief is like the ocean; it comes in waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.”

- Vicki Harrison 

My Past

I have narrated the tragedies of my life on so many occasions that it almost wearies me to talk of them now.

There was being evicted from our home at nine. That was the first time CPS tried to actively remove us kids from our parents' custody. They failed. Then there was the actual removal, which happened five months later. There was a visit from two social workers in the morning and then twenty-seven police officers that night and the sound of my siblings sobbing.

Fifty-three days later we were returned home. Sick. Reeling. Forever scarred.

Five months after that, my eight year old brother died.

Our story hit the press. There were cameramen and reporters at our gate and horrible stories in the newspapers. Every day we faced the fear that they would take us again. Two more babies came along. The sickness that had come home with us (impetigo) had infected my "step" mother while she was pregnant.

Her baby - my brother - died at five weeks old, only three months after we lost Matthew.

Two months later - after repeated attempts - CPS came and took me and my siblings once more.
We were taken to a group home ("the institution," as we called it) on the other side of the island. We spent ten months there.

They tried to charge my father and step mother with negligent homicide - this for not taking the baby to the ER soon enough. They were eventually proven not guilty.

There was the rise and fall of brief fame. The shocking exposure and then the inevitable obscurity. The putting back of our family was documented but not followed. The pieces of our life had been thrown into the air and when the pieces fell, we found them jagged, broken, and misfitted.

Nothing is the same. This was ten years ago but in some ways, we're still recovering.

This was the Great Tragedy of my life, and yet tragedy has followed us through the passing of the years - some just as severe as the original.

Why Do We Suffer?

I have come to the conclusion that although our experiences seem strange and jarring - and were inexplicably painful to undergo - this is the life of a Christian. This is the walk we were called to.

To suffer for Christ's sake is our ministry. It is the life to which we should be accustomed. His grace proves sufficient in the gravest and darkest of times and He always sees us through. Although I would never wish to relive the things we were made to undergo, I understand that there was a purpose for them, a purpose that will one day be made clear to me.

A Successive Heartbreak

In recent months, I have had to experience a different kind of heartbreak. The kind I thought couldn't touch my family - the kind rooted in estrangement, betrayal, abandonment, and accusations. It is a totally different kind of brokenness.

It wakes up with me every day. It follows me into bed at night. It's darkness - a soul darkness in which I clutch blindly at Jesus, wondering if there can even be relief. The doubt that tears at me - dear God, do I even know You? Would this have happened if we had done something different - if we were different?

It was a successive heartbreak. Every day. Every moment. My faith - that which had not been touched before - was beaten with what felt like iron rods. I was crumbling - dying, it felt like - and it didn't stop. It wouldn't stop.

What could I do? Succumb to it? No! I clung all the tighter to Jesus. Lord, deliver me lest I fall! was my cry. The darkness was bewildering - overwhelming. I was reeling, and felt like I was being dragged through the valley of the shadow of death by my hair. Every new accusation - every rumor - was a fresh stab through my already bleeding chest.

Have the accusations stopped? No, they reached a horrifying peak before the Lord gently pulled us over the hurdle. Have they become fewer and less shocking? Yes... But the weight of these months presses on me. It's a burden almost too great too bear.

Jesus, help us, Jesus, help us, I have pleaded.

And He does.

Moment by moment. Bit by bit. A little extra grace and strength. The comfort of His presence. The proof of little prayers being answered. The long, uneventful days that slowly wash away the pain.

"And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience..." 

Romans 5:3

I think that a true man or woman of God is one acquainted with much suffering. You may know a few of them. They are the broken ones with heads bowed, faces creased with grief, and yet alive with the truth. They are the trusting, the meek, and the faithful.

When the dust has settled, I can almost kiss the cross that weighs so heavily on my back. I may be bleeding from my wounds, but if it His hands that will tend me, then I will bleed gladly.  If this cross will draw me closer to the One who carried the Cross of all crosses, then I will not cast it to the side.

Though He slay me, yet will I praise Him.

The Desire for Independence

At twenty-two years old, my life does not compare to the average young woman's.

I'm not in college, studying for a degree. I'm not working a job, supporting myself. I'm not married, having my first kid. I am not entrenched in foreign lands, doing missionary work.

I'm living at home, helping raise my siblings. I'm homeschooling my little brother and helping my mother manage the rest. I'm waiting, and learning to live in the waiting, surrendering to the refining.

"Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him who has all things safely in His hands."

Seasons

Last night, it suddenly occurred to me that I must learn to enjoy every season of the life that God has given me.

I often do this. I fantasize about alternate realities. I dream of easier days. I paint the kind of future I want in my mind and I breeze about life in the now, only partially present, putting off true happiness and fulfillment until everything looks the way I want it to.

In the same token, I realized that I often refuse myself the joy of truly loving and embracing my current circumstances because society has vilified it so extensively. Society says that I should be doing very different things at this stage of my life. Society says that I'm not where I should be. Society has taught me that my age is a window, which time is dragging me by all too quickly. Hurry, hurry, hurry, society cries. You are losing time.

Society

Silencing society's oppressive voice has been particularly difficult for me. I have a sensitive nature. I take very seriously - too seriously - what others think about me. I am crippled by criticism and I take accusations (which one of a more secure personality would probably dismiss) whether founded or not to heart.

It's oppression cleverly shrouded in a cloak of seeming truths. Selfishness and self-pity rear their ugly heads in time with the doubts and seek to overwhelm me. And I must resist them. I must overcome.
The Lord stands on His high hill and beckons me - "Come up higher." He waits, hand outstretched, for me to forsake the worldly voices that threaten reproach and revilement. "We'll reject you," they tell me. "You will be an outcast."

And Beauty, that traitor, taps insistently on my shoulder: "Youth can only be yours so long. You'll lose your chances of making anything of yourself the longer you wait on this God of yours. Surely He can't expect you to sit there forever while age and time ravage you. God helps those who help themselves..."

The voices of loved ones long gone echo in my mind as I survey their curse's seeming fulfillment: "You'll never do anything with your life. You'll never be anyone. You'll wile away your days on a bed with a book. And what good are you to the world that way?"

Dear Lord, my heart cries. How long? 

"When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love him."

Trusting God

I wait on You, do I not? I trust in You. My life is Yours. And You have chosen this "standstill." You have chosen this time for quietness and servitude. You have kept from me the typical reins of independence afforded so many women my age these days and You have kept me dependent. Dependent on You.

You are losing time, society tells me. I am the Keeper of time, You say. I will not always be young and beautiful, I say. Beauty is fleeting, You remind. I want independence! I cry. But I want you dependent on Me, You proclaim.

The war goes on and yet my Lord always wins. I have you here, He tells me. This life I have given you is one of joy and blessing, can't you see? Or are your eyes so blinded by the world's expectations? 

Do you see in the eyes of these little ones the happiness your presence gives? Do you hear in their marked comments how they dread losing you? Do you see the faults and the sins I once brought you out of now trying to ensnare them? They have ground in need of tending and I have given you them. I have you HERE. For them. For Me. For you. 

My Purpose At Home

God has given me my home as my missionary field. Why should God send me to the unbelievers and the lost when so many precious souls, with whom I daily reside, are as yet not totally won? Why should He thrust me into an ever-darkening world, wholly unprepared and wholly unrefined, when I am not ready? He weaves a tapestry out of my life and every day He threads new purpose, new substance.

And so I lay down my desire for independence and I put to rest my impatient cries. I surrender to His timing and I embrace this season of sisterhood and servitude. I will find joy in the stage at which God holds me and I will stop expecting tomorrow alone to bring fulfillment. There is work to be done in this time - God forbid I should neglect it.

Do with me what Thou wilt, becomes my prayer. To Thee I surrender.

"We never know what God has up His sleeve. You never know what might happen; you only know what you have to do now."

Quotes by Elisabeth Elliot.

Welcome to Sisterly Musings

Hi there :) 

I have tried for a long time to find my niche in the blogging world. I've tried on different hats, all the while feeling terribly uninspired. Why was I writing? What was it I wanted to say? I couldn't tell. 

With time and the influence of several Godly blogs, I've sensed the blossoming of Sisterly Musings. (And if this blog looks a little familiar, I have a very similar "sister" blog over on

Wordpress; the content is the same but I'm trying to decide which hosting platform I like better. Just in case you happen to stumble across either of them!)

I am a sister, a daughter, a teacher, and a friend. At twenty-two, the Lord holds me in a unique stage of life. There are not many blogs written by young women whose lives are so completely invested in that of their families. (Their large, homeschooling, entirely unorthodox families, that is.) I recognize that there is much that could be said on this front. As it is the realm with which I am most familiar, I feel most called to write about it.

Mine is a journey not seasoned with the regular ingredients of the average young woman's life, but sprinkled with those that make a true servant of Christ: trials, sufferings, pains, and sorrows. But also blessing, joy, hope, and truth. The love that I hope is shared through Sisterly Musings is the love of a daughter for her Heavenly Father, the love of a sister for her brethren, and the love of a servant wholly surrendered and accepting of the life that has been given her. I pray that in these pages you might find evidences of Christ to your edifying and growth. May God bless you.