Perfectionism and Keeping It Real

This post is inspired by Shannon's new blog focus. It can be all too easy to give a false impression on a blog that your life is perfect and nothing ever goes wrong. It is quite natural to want to present oneself in the best possible light but in doing so, we risk perpetuating the myth of superwoman and deceiving others.

This is a picture of what our living room currently looks like:

I could explain the reasons for each bit of mess but that would be giving in to perfectionism. Mess means I have been blessed with a family to look after. Of course I intend to get it tidied up but I won't pretend it doesn't happen or that it is always dealt with straight away.

Today I made some bread. (Well I made it yesterday and baked it today.) For some reason I decided to test what would happen if I didn't grease and flour the baking tins first. I have learned from my mistake as this was the result:

My first reaction was, "Oh no! how on earth are we going to be able to use this sliced for sandwiches. This loaf is totally useless." But then I remembered how nice buttered chunks of freshly baked bread are so I took some of the random lumps and buttered them for myself and Little Girl:

It was delicious and I'm convinced that randomly shaped lumps of bread taste nicer than proper neat slices.

It can be easy to read about what other women get done in a day and think, "How come I can't get those things done in a day?" It is important however to remember that nobody does everything. Yes you can always make time for something if you think it is important enough but you have to prioritise as you can't do everything. We all have different talents and different limitations and it is important to accept this. Here are some of things I do and don't do:

I do cook almost all of our food from scratch most of the time. (This is probably the part of home keeping I consistently spend the most time on because I think it is important from a health point of view.) I don't however cook every day - I cook more than enough so I can just reheat on some days. I also freeze portions so that on the days when I just don't feel up to cooking, I have homemade readymeals in the freezer. When we are having company I often cheat and use the food processor to chop the vegetables. I don't grind my own wheat because it is too time consuming and noisy to do it using a coffee mill.

I do exercise but I am not always consistent. I was doing cycling for a while but this is not practical in bad weather because I take Little Girl on the back of my bike. I have bought some exercise videos but I have not got into them as I don't seem to have the coordination required to keep up with the moves.

I rarely go grocery shopping (unless you count popping to the local shop for one or two things which I usually do more because Little Girl enjoys it than because it is necessary). We get fruit, veg and milk delivered weekly from a local farm and I do online shopping from the supermarket every two or three months.

I did attempt to grow some token vegetables this year but they have failed/been decimated by snails.

I don't take Little Girl out to playgroups and such like every day. I do breastfeed, use cloth nappies and do elimination communication. I also make sure we spend time playing together every day.

I don't do the laundry by hand. I did this for a couple of months but even with my husband helping, wringing out the clothes was too much so we ended up buying a washer.

I do try to keep my house clean and organised but I can accept lower standards than I would like. When I was pregnant I was too ill to do anything (seriously - my husband even had to wash my hair for me) which resulted in a serious decline in the state of the house. This was very frustrating as I would be sitting around looking at things I wanted to put away or floors I wanted to vacuum but unable to do anything about it. I can see number of benefits from that time of illness and one of them is that it has made me able to accept not being able to keep things to the standard I would like which is something I would have found very hard without that experience.

I like to sew. I bought a sewing machine and have had all sorts of grand plans about making clothes but I have yet to make anything since my wedding dress three years ago.

I am prone to leaving things on the hob or in the oven and forgetting about them. (I really ought to buy a kitchen timer!)

When I read about all things other people get done which I don't, whilst it can inspire me to try to achieve more, I try to always remember that for everything they do which I don't, there is probably something which they don't do which I do.

If you have not already read it, I recommend this article at Ladies Against Feminism.

Men and Women are different

Some of the comments on my "productive day" post got me thinking about how different men and women are. I enjoyed the process of what I did and had great satisfaction in doing it. Surfing the web I have come across dozens and dozens of websites about homemaking and they have all been written by women. Presumably they would not be writing about these things if they did not enjoy them.

In contrast, if my husband finds it necessary to do some household task, he finds it a chore and whilst he is glad to get it done, he does not take any great satisfaction or pleasure in doing or completing these things. I have never come across a homemaking website written by a man.

Of course I am making generalisations. There may be some men who enjoy these things and some women who don't and even if we do enjoy homemaking as a rule, there are always going to be some things we do not like (washing up in my case) however, this apparent natural tendancy for women to prefer these tasks compared to men seems to me to fit with the Biblical role of women as described in Titus 2 and Proverbs 31.

It's such a shame that our culture in trying to avoid "inequality" trys to pretend that men and women are the same and should therefore fulfill the same roles and have the same aspirations. As far as I can tell, this actually has the opposite of the intended effect as it implies that traditionally female occupations like homemaking are inferior and that women are selling themselves short if they "just" look after the home/children.

Titus 2

"The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed."

Titus 2v3-5

My husband and I are currently considering what exactly the outworking of these verses is. In particular, what is meant by "keepers at home"? The Greek word is οἰκουρούς. I know that οἰκος means home/house and my Greek-English interlinear new testament translates the word literally as "house workers". I have had a brief search on the internet but presumably it is not a word used in modern Greek as everything I found relating to this word was about Titus 2.

The reason we are particularly considering the outworking of these verses is so that we know how we should be raising our daughter in terms of her expectations of her life as an adult.

(I grew up in a non-Christian family and I was expected to leave home and support myself once I had finished my education. After I left home I worked for two years before training as a teacher. I got married just after my teacher training and we intended that I would work as a teacher until we had children. However in God's providence I was unable to gain a post and although I registered as a supply teacher I only got a few days work in the first year we were married and then I became pregnant and was too ill to work. Looking back I can see lots of reasons why it was better that I was not out at work all day and I am glad that things worked out the way they did. However even within the church the expectation seems to be that the wife would work (by which I mean being in paid employment outside the home) until they have children. I can remember getting really fed up that every Sunday I would be asked, "Have you got a job yet Susan?" as if the most significant part of my life was finding a job.)

So the questions we are considering are:

Does this list apply to all young women?

I would say yes but because it talks about loving their husbands and children it could be argued that it is referring to married women with children. However surely it is important to be taught about these things (e.g. that we should love our husbands and what is meant by this) before we are married rather than after? (Like if you were going to paint a room, you wouldn't just set forth and paint it - you would find out how to do it either by asking experienced painters or by reading a book by someone who knows about it.)

What does "keeper at home" or "house worker" mean?

In our discussions so far we have concluded that being a "keeper at home" or "house worker" means that the woman has the home as her priority. In order for this to be the case she would therefore have to be at home for a significant proportion of her time. Based on Proverbs 31 there is nothing wrong with a woman spending time on things which bring in money but this passage implies that such occupation should not take up too much of her time or take her outside of the home too much as this would prevent her from making the home her priority. Also we concluded that she is to be busy. She is "keeping" the home or a house worker. This means that she will be working hard at the aspects of running a household (such as cooking, cleaning, looking after children etc.) - not spending her days at leisure. Although it is possible to run the household with minimal work (and indeed many people who work outside of the home do) the implication is presumably that it is important enough that a significant amount of time should be spent doing it (and of course one can make a much better job of it if one spends more time). (At this point I want to emphasise that I am not attacking anyone who does work fulltime outside of the home but am looking at this in terms of how we should raise our daughter.)

What are the implications of these verses?

If the verses apply to all women, then presumably we should raise our daughter to expect to stay at home until she is married and we should be teaching her how to "keep" a home. It would be reasonable to raise her to expect to do things which would contribute to the household income (whether that is our household while she is unmarried or her husband's household if she marries) but not to expect a "career".

I would appreciate comments which might help in our understanding of these verses and also if anyone knows of any books or websites which go into this in detail that would be helpful too.