Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's!
The school year will be winding up soon, so high school seniors are planning their futures. And the default for many students is university.
Now university is worth it if you’re aiming for a specific job. And learning is certainly a worthy endeavour on its own. Nevertheless, I worry that we’re pushing so many kids into the university stream without giving them other options.
It seems that every parent yearns for that university degree for their child, but I know many credentialed twenty-somethings currently working in Chapters or fast food joints. Not too many jobs exist for History majors or Sociology majors or English literature majors. And meanwhile the kids have spent close to $100,000, and foregone the income they could have earned some other way.
It’s that other way that Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs guy from the TV series, wants people to start thinking seriously about. Dirty jobs can be incredibly rewarding, physically fun, and get us back in touch with the world around us. We live our lives with iPhones and Blackberries, trying to keep connected to each other. But in the meantime we’ve lost touch with the physical side of life; we don’t use our brawn, thinking the brain is all that matters.
And we forget that the brain is actually involved in many dirty jobs. In one video I recently watched of Mike Rowe, he was working on a sheep farm when it came time to castrate the male lambs. The farmer showed him how to do it: you stick the testicles between your teeth and let ‘er rip.
Rowe was appalled. He knew the correct and humane way to do it (based on research he did on his Blackberry) was to put an elastic band around said body part until it swelled up and fell off on its own.
The farmer invited him to do it, and so he banded the lamb. The lamb soon became immobilized with pain and fell down, panting. On the other hand, the lamb who had undergone the bite and rip procedure was already trotting off with his companions, as if nothing had happened.
And Rowe realized that much of what he knew about the world was wrong. He called that moment a turning point. What we have done, he says, is to assume that the people that work in front of computers are smart, while the people who do the real work out in the world are dumb. And in reality, it’s the people who do the real work who actually often understand the world better.
What we need, Rowe says, is a PR campaign for manual labour. We need a PR campaign that says hard work is actually beneficial, and fun, and rewarding. To climb into bed at the end of a day feeling as if you have done a good day’s work isn’t something to be ashamed of; it’s something to be proud of.
Our society seems to believe that hard work is something that one must avoid at all costs. We must have cushy jobs that are inside, in front of a computer screen, accompanied by tons of meetings. For most university students, that is what their futures will be. For many that will be a good life. But not for all.
Our high school students need to know that a life of manual, skilled labour is something that can be very rewarding psychologically, physically, and financially. It isn’t something to steer clear of. And maybe if we began to praise those dirty jobs more, we’d get back to our roots of what’s really important, and we’d stop being such pretentious snobs. It’s worth a try.
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It is Saturday afternoon as I write this, and I am sitting on a dock in eastern Ontario, watching six geese fight it out on a lake. The air is filled with the sounds of birds, and the crystal clear lake seems to be smiling at me. All is peaceful.
And yet my heart was not peaceful for the last week. I know I have written about this before, but I struggle so much between the two extremes of wanting to rest and wanting to work. At times I go on a working jag, and I spend all my free time writing and fixing my blog or setting up Facebook or planning my next speaking campaign.
Other days I just want nothing more than to knit and think up new things to put in my crockpot.
I was having some of those latter days last week. I have been traveling so much this spring that it is wearing on me, and I found myself saying to God, "Can't I just stay home? Can't you let me off the hook sometimes?"
Of course, God just smiled, because it wasn't Him who overcommitted me to so many engagements this spring; that was my own folly and my own pride.
And last Friday I pulled up my bootstraps and got myself in my car as I drove two hours to a retreat where 150 women were awaiting me, excited.
As soon as I arrived I felt convicted. These women were so excited to be together, and for me it seemed like more time away from my family, when I just wanted to knit. And to top it all off, I had forgotten one of the four knitting needles necessary to knit the pair of socks I'm working on at home. So I couldn't even knit in my downtime to relax.
But the first thing that happened as I arrived was we were each asked to take a "blessing"--an inspirational thought printed out. I chose one, and it said,
I have given each of you a gift, for you to use to bless others. Go and bless those I give to you.
I smiled. I had been saying to God, "is it necessary for me to speak? Do I really make a difference? Is this really what you want me to spend my time on?" And He said a big, loud, "Yes!"
I had a wonderful feedback from the weekend, and the idyllic setting helped me to just quiet my heart. I spoke Friday night, and Saturday morning, and Saturday night, and Sunday morning, yet I had all Saturday afternoon to rest and think and pray and type.
It's Saturday now, though this post won't be up until Monday. And again I am struck by God talking to me about purpose. I told the women this morning, as I have mentioned on this blog before, that the two big lies that our culture believes are, "You deserve to be happy", and "you would be happy if you just tried a little harder." And even though I know these things are lies, I tend to fall into them. I tend to think that the purpose of life is for me to relax and have fun, and hence work interferes with my purpose.
But work is our purpose. I am not saying htat we all need to be superwomen, but there is a balance, isn't there? Our lives should mean something. We are put on this earth to get to know God, to learn to serve Him, and to introduce others to Him. There is great joy in that. Everything else is secondary. Part of getting to know God, of course, is also learning to abide in His rest, to appreciate quiet moments, to find joy in solitude. It is not that we need to be super busy all the time. And yet getting to know God also involves finding what we were created to do.
For whatever reason, and I don't mean this in a proud way, I was created to communicate truths about God to people. I feel hopelessly inadequate for the task. I do not spend two hours in contemplation everyday. There are days when my prayer life is rather abysmal. And yet God still pushes me out there, and He still does wonderful things through me--or perhaps I should say despite me.
Others of us have been chosen for different things. I am in awe of some of the mom blogs I read, and the creativity some of you have, especially with large families. You know how to love, and live, and cook, and find joy. Others of you are just so organized, and you teach the world and lead by example. Some of you are born teachers, or born nurses, or whatever it may be.
Don't take that for granted. Don't think "I'm only doing this until retirement," and then I can rest, or "I'm only going to be this buys until the kids grow, and hten I can calm down." Perhaps your life will be less busy, but don't ever let it be less meaningful.
I think we believe too much that we work hard now in order to rest--as if resting is the goal of life. We would be happier and more at peace, I think, if we took periodic rest now so that we could know God, feel God, and thus be energized to live for Him, not just now, but forever. We are not to work ourselves out of work; we are to rest enough that we can focus on God and continue to work, in whatever capacity He calls us, until we go home.
So I will keep asking God to make more more excited about work, and to help me take the rest I need when the opportunity presents itself. And I will stop telling myself that my goal in life is to have limitless time to go on vacation and knit. Knitting is wonderful, but I can do that while I work. If only I remember my needles.
What about you? Do you struggle with getting motivated to work? Let me know so I don't feel like the only lazy one!
I have been thinking a lot lately that the majority of my main parenting role is behind me. And I find myself mourning the loss, a little bit.
You see, last week my husband took my daughter out driving for the first time (and she did quite well!). She's turning 16 this week, and she'll be out of the house in two years.
I've found myself waking up in the middle night, dreams of my girls as toddlers (and of the baby boy that I lost) dancing on the edges of my brain. It's really hitting me that they will be launching out on their own soon.
And so perhaps it's been natural that I've been thinking and praying about what to launch them to. Now perhaps the title of my post is not a fair one, for I do feel that children should decide their own future, and not necessarily do what their parents tell them. But at the same time, our job is to advise, and so I am thinking about how to advise them.
When I was growing up, we were so focused on "what you want to be", by which we meant "what job you want to have", as if that was all there was to life. You had to settle on a career, and then other things would fit in around it.
In retrospect, I find that extremely silly. I married a doctor, and we have seen family members and friends also go into medicine, with its at least eight years of training, and nonstop studying and stress, and then find out that they just don't like doing call and being away from their families so much. And so they try to work part-time, or cut back, and find it's really difficult. But how do you give up on a career you spent eight years training for--eight hard years?
What matters to you as an adult is not what career you have as much as the kind of life you have, and where you want to spend your time. Some careers demand much more of you than others. They may also pay more, and let you have a certain material lifestyle, but they eat you up and spit you out, too.
Planning your life based on what career you're suited for, then, doesn't necessarily make you happy or fulfilled. It is so much more important to figure out what your values are, and where you want to spend your time, and what kind of family you will want, and only THEN figure out what job you want. Because for most of us, family will come before job.
Unfortunately, schools and universities spend almost no time talking about how you will build a family and all their time instead preparing kids for entrance tests and pushing them towards certain careers. But what if kids don't want those careers?
And so, coming from a highly educated family, I have begun to ask if I really want my children to be as highly educated--or, if so, what the purpose of education really is. And what do I want to advise them to do?
I'm raising girls, and so my advice list is very different than if I were raising boys. This doesn't seem fair I know, but I think it is reality. Most women want to stay home with their children. Most men do not. When they take surveys of working people and ask, "would you rather work less so that you can have more time with family?", the vast majority of women say yes. The vast majority of men say no. If most working women are unsatisfied, should this not count for something? Should we start asking about why and how we push girls into certain careers, then?
Of course it would be nice if everyone could work less, but practically it doesn't work that way usually. Someone has to make the money, and someone has to stay with the kids, and it's just easier if one person does one thing and the other does the other. I've known couples who have each worked half time, and that's great, too. But it's not that common.
And if most women want to stay home with their kids, and if we agree that a parent at home is superior to day care, then surely this must influence how we raise our girls?
Therefore, I'm considering these factors:
1. My daughters may have to provide for themselves for a time, or perhaps forever if they don't marry. Even if they do marry, they may have to support that husband while he's in training (I did), or be the sole support during times of unemployment or illness. Also, not to be pessimistic, but many women marry believing their husbands will love them forever, only to be abandoned. Therefore, they must have a skill that they could use to make an income. They must be trained in something that they enjoy, that they are suited for, and that matches their Christian values in some way.
2. At the same time, they should not train for a skill that would, if practiced, make it virtually impossible for them to stay home with their children. They should not spend years and years in training for something that they would, by nature of the job, have to quit if they wanted to stay home with their children. Therefore, dentistry, medicine, even teaching aren't necessarily high on the list.
3. Instead, we should steer towards jobs which are flexible and which allow part-time or even at-home work. Things like pharmacy, accounting, optometry, nursing, counseling, speech therapy, clinical psychologist, etc. etc. are closer to what they might do, because all of those jobs have part-time options (you could work a few nights a week if the family needed the income, or you could work from home).
4. University should be seen as a place to make good friends that will likely be lifelong, and so university should thus be chosen based on the type of student that is there far more than the quality of the particular program, since in the long run, who one marries and who one's friends are are of infinite more importance. For instance, I'm looking at universities for my daughter, and we're concentrating on cities with amazing churches for college & career groups, that offer shuttle services for church. We're looking at universities with strong Christian groups on campus. We're looking at places close enough that she could come home occasionally.
5. Any higher education should not assume an inordinate amount of debt, because then you have to devote your first decade of working to paying off that debt, rather than saving for a house so that it's easier to stay home with kids.
6. Entrepreneurial skills are extremely undertaught in schools, and necessary in life. Probably the best option my girls have is to figure out some sort of business they could do from home, so steering them in that direction is another thing I'm doing. We're looking at what skills the kids have, and what interests they have, that could turn into a business (after all, that's what I've done with my writing and speaking).
How would this differ for boys? Because a boy likely won't choose to stay at home as readily as a girl will want to, he could go into other careers like medicine more easily. But the other things are pretty much the same.
One last thing: it pains me to say that I am steering my girls away from certain educational opportunities, simply because they are girls. But my girls also agree. The number one thing they want in life is to marry and have kids. Most girls are the same way. And yet schools, and many parents, tend to turn to these girls and "pooh pooh" these desires and tell them they should aim for the sky anyway in terms of careers.
If my daughter honestly felt called to be a doctor, I would of course encourage her, because how do I know God isn't calling her to that? But since neither feels that calling (perhaps because they see how hard their dad works), I'd rather steer them towards a career goal that will mesh with their desires for a family, and their calling as mothers, which I still believe is different from a calling for fathers. I don't see men wrestling with the question of whether or not to work the way women do. It's time that culture admitted this and helped girls make smarter choices, before they wind up $200,000 in debt to train for a career they ultimately don't want.
I have seven years of university behind me, and while I don't exactly regret those years, I also didn't really use that education in what I'm doing now, and I'm not sure how useful much of it was. I met some amazing people (and married one of them), and I learned how to write. But I have learned much more since leaving university (I didn't realize how anti-truth universities really are until I got there and learned that "everything is relative"), and I know so much more about history and culture and literature and life just in my own reading than I ever learned at university. I had so many friends in the Ph.D. programs at those universities, and of them all, I can tell you that the men are still working in their fields, while all the women, with the exception of one, are not. They stopped working to stay home with their kids, and then found they couldn't keep up with the research demands a career in academia had.
I think we push women far too quickly into career decisions without giving enough thought to what kind of life they really want to lead. If a girl wants to stay home, is that so wrong? And should that not be factored in?
And so I am here, thinking about what will happen when my baby is a mother, because, at 16, she is closer to her years of having babies than I am to those years past. This is a strange position to be in--I am closer to my grandchildren as babies than I am to my children as babies, most likely. And so I look ahead, and pray, and plan.
It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up!
What really determines the course of a relationship is not necessarily the big things, like how we handle anniversaries, as it is the little things, like the tone of voice you use to each other, or whether you look up when the other walks into the room. Think about it: how often have you spent the whole day mildly ticked off at your husband for something little that he did? It wasn't huge, but that one little thing has coloured how you judge all other interactions with your husband that day. If that little thing hadn't happened, you likely would have been much more forgiving, much more generous, much more loving.
The little stuff matters, because it's through the lens of the little stuff that we judge our spouse on a day to day basis. Now obviously we should be able to let little things go, but that's not how we work! And I'm not talking about the rightness or wrongness of this state of affairs; I simply mean that it is what it is.
And so if that's the case, why don't we go out of our way to care for those little things? If we took care of them, likely the big things would take care of themselves.
Let me share with you one little thing that you can do that can colour how you and your husband interact throughout the night: consider how you're going to say hello.
Sounds pretty little, doesn't it? But what's the scenario when you and your husband meet at the end of a long day? Let's look at this from two different perspectives:
You're at Home; He Walks in the Door
Welcome to my world! The way this scenario used to unfold was something like this:
After a long day of homeschooling and errands, I finally am able to get on the computer around 4:30 to get some actual work done. Dinner's in the crockpot (I managed to throw that in while we talked about history earlier), and now I have some time to myself. I am trying to make the most of it by typing like crazy and writing like crazy until dinner is ready.
Keith walks in around 5:45. I'm in the middle of a good writing streak. He says "Hi, honey." I look up briefly and say, "Hi, I'll just be a moment."
Another half hour goes by until I just have to stop to get the food on the table. But I'm not ready to stop yet because I was being really productive. So I'm grumpy. Family concerns are eating into the only work time I have. In exasperation I stow away the computer and yell for the kids to set the table. I find Keith in his office, finishing up some work. And I tell him he better get moving or dinner's going to get cold.
Now, I'm not particularly proud of this, but for years that's what his arrival home looked like. Not exactly welcoming, is it? Honestly, I wonder sometimes why he wanted to come home at all.
I have since woken up to my hubby's need to feel appreciated, and have reworked our routine. Here's how:
1. Be available when he comes home.
Realize that 5:45 is one of the most important times of day. Arrange to be non-stressed at that time! Have dinner well underway. Redo your daily schedule so that you're not in the middle of something. In my case, this meant arranging to work from 10-12 in the morning, and setting up the kids to do some work on their own.
2. Greet him
It sounds basic, but how many of us really do this? We may yell, "Hi, honey!", but do we go to the door and give him a kiss? Do we give him the impression that we were actually waiting for him, anticipating him?
Now, when he comes home, I try to get off of my chair or leave the room I'm in and give him a hug. I want him to know that I've been thinking of him!
3. Prepare yourself
I even put on lipstick. Honestly! So often we dress up to see other people, but never to see our own spouse. So now, when I'm about to see him, I make it a point to put on earrings, a little bit of lipstick, and run a brush through my hair.
4. Give him space
Maybe he needs to unwind for half an hour after he gets home. Give him that time! If you're exhausted with the kids, don't consider this his time to take over. Don't greet him at the door, toddlers in hand, ready to hand them off.
Instead, talk to him and reach an agreement that when he gets home, he gets half an hour to himself. But in return, after dinner, you get an hour to do a craft, or watch a movie, or read a book, or take a bubble bath. You get your time, too!
When You're the One Arriving Home
In many families, he's not the one walking through the door with her to greet him. Maybe you're the one coming home after a long day, or after a part-time shift at night. You're tired. You want to relax. What do you do?
1. Greet your husband before you greet your children
Your children are likely to get so excited to see you coming in the door! Make sure your husband gets a hold of you first. Show your kids that he's #1!
2. Take some time to decompress before you come home
If you need some downtime, take some time before you come home. It may sound selfish, but the children are unlikely to leave you alone when you come home, and he's going to need your help, too. So consider going for a fifteen minute walk after your shift. Or maybe grabbing a coffee and reading a chapter of your book. Get in the headspace where you leave work behind and you're ready to go home.
Maybe you think this is hypocritical, because I'm saying that we should give husbands downtime, but not demand the same for ourselves! I'm just being practical, though. Kids tend to hang on to mom more than they hang on to dad, so even if he wanted to give you downtime, it's likely to be difficult. Besides that, if he doesn't want to give it to you, you don't want to get into a fight about it. Better to take it on your own!
3. Ask others about their days
Don't launch into complaints about how your day went; take a minute to ask how your hubby's day went, too.
These are relatively little things, but imagine how much they could change how we relate to each other! If we went out of our way to show our husbands that we thought they were the most important person in the world. Imagine if we showed them that we wanted them to be happy to come home; that we cared about what they thought.
If you're going through a hard time in your marriage, try it. Often these little switches of relatively little things can give your marriage a whole new perspective. And if he doesn't notice right away, don't give up. Keep at it. Change takes time, but as you start to change in the little things, you'll often find the big things taking care of themselves!
Now, what advice do you have for us today? How do you deal with these little things? Or do you have something else to tell us? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
My daughter Rebecca likes to tell the story of how sorry she felt for me the Christmas that she was 5. Rebecca opened her presents and received a whole bunch of "groovy girl" dolls from Mommy, and some Barbies from friends. But I didn't get any dolls. No one gave me Barbies. I had boring old blenders and books and some really nice pots. Rebecca wondered why no one gave me toys.
Children play. They play to learn, and to have fun. In some ways, a child's work is to play, because in playing they learn how the world works. They think about how relationships are supposed to work, how to build things, how to organize things. In playing they figure out life.
Animals do this, too. When they playfight, they're practising for real. They're learning valuable skills that they will need one day.
But there comes a time when the species does not need to play to learn anymore. We adults don't need dolls or Tonka trucks, though we may still collect them. We don't sit down on the floor with friends and act out a Barbie & Ken wedding, or set up house for some Polly Pockets, or create an obstacle course for our trucks. We put toys behind us.
It is not, however, because we no longer have fun. It is because other things have become fun.
What is the most fun you have? For me I suppose it depends how one defines fun. I enjoy knitting, and watching the occasional movie, and going for walks. I love playing board games with my family.
But I also find running our youth quizzing program really fun. I love poring over recipe books and coming up with a meal plan for the week. At times, when the urge hits (which I admit is not tremendously often), I even have great fun cleaning up the main floor of our house and purging tons of stuff. I find dropping loads off at thrift stores enormously fun.
I find blogging and speaking and building a little ministry fun, even if at times I have to drag myself out of bed to post for the day.
I find talking with my husband at the end of a long day fun.
The things I find fun, then, often include what people would normally call "work": meal planning, cleaning, building a business. But they're still fun because they're satisfying, and I feel great pride at having accomplished something.
Just as children's play is really "work" for them, and yet it's still fun, so our "work" can also be fun.
The problem is that our society does not understand that. We try to prolong this "play" period that children have, thinking that when the play is over, the fun is over. But we forget two things: play is also children's work, and adult work can also be fun! Children's play is not simply leisure; it's an essential part of what they must do in order to grow and become healthy, independent people. In the same way, when we do things that help us to become healthy, independent people, we will also tend to have fun.
But we won't have that fun if we're forever griping about the fact that we don't get to "play" anymore.
My post earlier this week about the appropriate end of childhood touched on some of these issues in the comments, but it boils down to this: While there should always be room for joy and laughter in a life, and work should never crowd those things out, we should never forget that much of the joy and laughter from life appropriately comes from things we normally think of as work.
As we get older, we stop wanting to play with Barbie's, and we start enjoying dreaming about new businesses to start; new ways to invest our money; new ways to decorate the living room; new crafts to try. These things are not play, but they can be very enjoyable because they combine our innate need for creative outlets, and our need for satisfaction from a job well done.
Work can be fun, if we understand fun to mean an intense feeling of satisfaction, and even a feeling of joy, as we become an active participant in God's plan for our lives. And what is that plan? To make the world reflect more of Him.
Think of it this way: God is creative. He loves beauty. He loves order. He loves people. As we do things that strengthen families, that bring more beauty to the world (even if it's just in a repainted kitchen), that cause others to smile or enjoy the beauty around them, we're bringing more of God into this world. And that is intensely satisfying.
Play always has a role in our lives, whether it's a church softball league or a family games night or Scrabble with Facebook friends. But adult fun is not limited to play. And, I would argue, adult fun is more intense when it isn't just about play, but is also about accomplishing something.
When we ask children to take more responsibility, then, or to start growing up, we're not saying, "the fun is over." Not at all. Instead, we're saying fun will now encompsas more of life. It won't just be about momentary pleasure; it will also be about heart-satisfying work. That's not something we have to apologize for kids for; it's something we should be making them look forward to!
As I have watched my own daughters grow into teenagers, I have seen that the things that they find fun often require effort. They study for Bible quizzing. They play the piano and the guitar, sometimes just sitting down to play and sing "for fun". They write, or create videos, or do a craft. They're not playing, but they still have fun, because fun is now so much bigger!
There is something magical about a child's make believe world, and we should not take that from them or force it to end prematurely. But we also should not try to extend "play" as long as possible, giving the impression that it's all downhill from here, because it's not. I have so much more fun now than I did as a child, and I hope the same for my children.
Let's redefine fun. It's not only about play; it's about finding satisfaction in meeting life's challenges and making this place a better world. Isn't that something to celebrate, rather than to mourn as the ending of childhood?
Ever have one of those days when you just wish you could do absolutely nothing at all?
I think we all do. I had an amazing Christmas. We opened presents in the morning, went in the hot tub, and then I got the turkey in the oven. There really was nothing else to do until closer to dinnertime, so I curled up and read a book for hours. It was bliss.
I love those days where I have nothing at all to do, and God did program us to need rest. I think if we all genuinely took the Sabbath off and realized what it meant to have one day when we didn't need to work, we'd get through life a lot easier.
So I know that rest is important, lovely, and delectable. But what concerns me is that there's a streak in me that wants that rest to go on all the time. It's just laziness, and we all have it, but when I picture the perfect life, I often picture it being work-free. I'm sitting in front of a fun movie, knitting. I'm camping. I'm just enjoying myself.
All that's fine and dandy, but when we concentrate on that so much we forget that work has its own reward, and that we were never really promised a life of leisure. We often work as if that is our goal: to earn enough money so that we can do absolutely nothing. But doing absolutely nothing is not what life is really about.
I read in my devotions today those great verses in Matthew 11:
Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest unto your souls.
It's beautiful. But perhaps we misunderstand it. We often think it's a call to rest: to stop working. I don't think it is. I think it's a call to peace. When we are burdened, and we're overwhelmed, we're to go to Jesus, not so that we will stop working, but so that we shall find rest to our souls. And the way we do that is by taking His yoke on us. In other words, we're just like oxen, where we're yoked together with Him. The reason we find rest is that we're working with Jesus, not because we've stopped working altogether.
If you're overwhelmed and tired right now, God understands. But the solution is not to stop working altogether; it's to focus on Him and let Him lead us AS we work.
I had an inner struggle with myself yesterday because I wanted so badly to goof off, but I knew I really should exercise and I had to plan my kids' homeschooling for the week. But I didn't get around to either until quite late in the day, when I just made myself.
I find that I have certain periods of energy in the day: 7:00-9:00 a.m., and then 2:00-5:00. Unfortunately, during those key work hours from 9-2, I'm often quite lazy. What I need to do is to take advantage of the 7-9 period a little bit better and get my day off right. And when I realize that rest is not the goal, perhaps I'll do a better job of it!
The truth is that we often feel better when we do get that to-do list taken care of. We feel so proud of ourselves; we feel energized; we feel happy. But it's getting over that hurdle to move from the lazy mode to the work mode that's such a challenge for me. I need to keep my eyes on the truth: that work is a beautiful and rewarding thing, not something to be avoided if possible. And then the rest seems even more sweet!
A while back we had a long conversation on this blog about the cost of working. If you've got little kids, we asked, and you have to pay for childcare, then does working outside the home even contribute to your income in a substantial way?
For instance, one of the things that stay at home moms can do is to figure out how to live on less. We do have more time to do things like cook from scratch, make our own gifts, spend more time shopping for bargains, etc. We can only have one car, even though that may mean chauffeuring hubby to work so we can keep it for the day. I also find that when I'm tremendously busy, either because of speaking or because of events with the kids, it's harder to make dinner. That's when we go out or eat prepared foods, which adds to the budget. I know if I were working full-time I'd do the take-out thing more often, and so that would become more expensive.
Therefore, I'm not sure it always pays to work, depending on your potential income. But what do you do when you just really need money? I want to throw this question out there, because several of my long-term readers really need answers, and I thought together we could come up with something.
So here's the scenario. You aren't highly educated, and the maximum you could probably make would be $15/hour, and that's if you hit the jackpot. But you really need to bring home about $1500 a month just to make ends meet. So what do you do? Here are some choices that I see:
1. Work part-time. It sounds silly, but part-time work may be able to bring in more money. When you're not paying for childcare because your husband has the kids, and when you can still live on one vehicle, part-time work may actually leave more money in the wallet. Work two nights a week and Saturdays. Be a waitress, or work at a call centre or something. The disadvantage: you never see your husband. You don't really have family time. So I'm not a big fan of this one.
2. Sell Mary Kay/Tupperware. I'm not an overly big fan of this one, either. I've gone down that route briefly, and gone to all the sales conferences, and gotten all pumped up to sell stuff, and become a leader, and have people work under me, but it just doesn't work that well. You can work so hard at it for a few years and still have little to show for it. It works great for some--but for the majority it doesn't. And you spend your life out at nights and trying to convince women who don't really want to go to parties to go to just one more. Let me know if you think differently, but I know one of the women who needs money advice has already tried this and won't do it again.
3. Become a foster parent. Don't balk at this one right away. I'm not saying we should do it for the money. I don't know what all jurisdictions pay, but in mine, if you take in two kids you make up that monetary gap we were talking about. It's a lot of work. It's a big sacrifice. You have to define your boundaries. But if you are willing, it has a lot of upsides. You're really making a difference. You're living out your values. You are still able to stay home and be with your own kids, and if they're in school, you're able to get them on and off of the bus or be there for their field trips and sports games. You have to be careful who you take, but this can be an option for some, and given how desperate they are for good foster parents, perhaps it's one more of us should consider (even forgetting about the money!). Any foster parents out there? I'd love for you to comment on this option!
4. Help your husband to make more money. After all, you need more income. It doesn't really matter who gets it. So how can we help our husbands boost their incomes? Can we help them start a business? Can we help them with that business by doing some of the work at home? Can we support them going back to school for a time to get more training? Any thoughts on this one?
5. Save more money. The other way to make money, of course, is simply not to spend it. If you've got a major shortfall, look at what you can change in how you spend money to perhaps make some of that up. That's not always possible; I know a lot of people are already living pretty close to the bone. It's just a thought.
6. Start your own business. Lots of people are doing it. Sell on e-bay. Turn a hobby into a business. Especially at Christmas it's easier to make some money. Any concrete suggestions here?
So what do you all think? What's the best way to boost income when you want to continue to stay at home with your kids? And if someone absolutely had to get a job, any suggestions on what kind of job to get?
By the way: an anonymous commenter took offense at my post a few days ago, saying that I was denigrating working moms in my "stay at home mom" rant. I addressed that in the comments, but in case she doesn't read them, let me just say again: I didn't mean the post against working moms. I had no idea it would be taken that way. I meant it against PEOPLE in general. In fact, the specific individuals I was thinking of aren't moms at all. Several are male. So I'm sorry if you were offended, but I really think it was just a misunderstanding.
Are you happy? Do you feel successful? Do you feel like a strong woman?
Those questions tend to make me feel defensive. Of course I'm happy! I'm doing what I'm called to do, aren't I? And what does it matter if I'm successful, if I'm living my calling?
And besides that, happiness isn't all it's cracked up to be, as I've written here on previous occasions. The secret to happiness is to not look for it. When we look for it, we're always going to be unhappy, because we'll see all the things we don't have. When we seek instead for purpose and joy in God, we tend to, in the end, find happiness as well. But it's a by-product of a life well-lived.
To me, the main questions that encapsulate the essence of one's life are more these: Do you know what you were called to do? Do you feel a calling on your life? Do you feel energized to live out that calling? Do you experience joy on a regular basis? See how those are quite different? I find this whole quest for happiness and self-fulfillment focused a little too much on the self and not enough on God. The truth is we are not called to be happy as much as we are called to be holy. But as we live out a purpose-driven life, we will experience joy, and our lives will be richer and fuller. The key is to look to God first, and not to our own hearts.
If I have that much trouble with the idea of happiness and feeling successful being the centre of your life, you can imagine how much difficulty I had with a book I was recently sent to review: Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham. I didn't agree with the premise to begin with, and quite honestly, I had a hard time with a women's book that featured a picture of a guy prominently on the cover, even if he had become famous on Oprah.
The book was sent to me, I think, because it is a Christian publisher, and it's about women. Nevertheless, God is nowhere in the book, except in a brief 3-page anecdote that is cute, but does not present the gospel whatsoever. I guess the publisher is trying to branch out.
Then, the beginning of the book was focused on him (again, the self-focus that really turns me off), and it soon became quite clear he was writing from a particular perspective that I do not share. For instance, I was offended by this sentence. After talking about how women can feel stressed at work, he says, on page 38:
The good news is that this isn't stopping women from on-ramping back into work after having kids, in spite of the media stories of a new generation of women choosing to opt out.
Why is it GOOD news that women are leaving their babies and going back to work? (He later reports it as a success that the majority of women with babies are working). I can understand being neutral about it, but lauding it? That seems very strange. Later in the book he says that we should never feel guilty about choosing to work and sending kids to day care, because in surveys, what kids want is not more time with Mommy, but for Mommy to be happy.
So what? Since when do children know what's good for them? And given the abysmal rate of kids retaining their faith, and the horrible rate of kids being involved in sexual activity at a young age, maybe we need more parents around.
My initial reaction, then, was quite negative. Nevertheless, there were some very good tips in the book, and some excellent strategies to maximize the positive moments in your life, rather than the negative ones. I'm using some of them already, but he put a name to them and explained them in a way I hadn't heard for before, which was helpful. And he reminded me of some other things I haven't been doing. So while I may not agree with the philosophical underpinning of the book (and I definitely don't think it's a Christian book, publisher notwithstanding), there's some good stuff there.
I think, over the next week, I'll point out some of that good stuff, and share it here with you, bit by bit. Let me just leave you today with some of the observations that he has about the state that women find themselves in today, with which I have no argument.
First, over the last few decades, women have become steadily unhappier, while men have become happier. Having more choice has made women unhappy, largely because when we have choice, we always are reminded of what we are not doing well. Too many of us are trying to multitask all the time, and it's stressful. Choice doesn't make you happy, even if you think it's a good thing.
Second, women became unhappier as life goes on, and men become happier. We start off happier, more sure of ourselves, with more hope for our futures. But as we have kids, and move into the work world, we lose that happiness, while men gain it. Why? I think because again we are feeling guilty for what is not being done.
Also, ironically, women with children are more unhappy than women without kids, even married women. And this is true across cultures, in huge surveys, as he has shown, so I do believe him. It is not that we don't love our kids; it is that they give a level of stress to our lives that is really difficult to integrate.
That's where women find ourselves. We are stressed. We are unhappy. We feel like we have too much on our plate. The solution, though, that I would offer that he did not, is to find a purpose outside of yourself. He does this in a secular way, asking women to find what they were born to be, and then to live that out in their career lives and their stay at home lives (there are no real examples in the book of women who have completely stayed at home, though he says the book is for women of all walks of life). And I believe that we should find what we were born to be.
But the question of being born to be something is essentially one of calling. How can we be "born to be" something absent God? The author is himself a Christian, so I think he knows that, he just isn't saying it explicitly in the book. But we need to figure out what God is calling us to, and then rely on Him for peace in that calling. We'll talk later this week how to do that effectively to experience joy, but if you've never had it out with God about what you were called to do, you need to. Without a sense that God is calling you to something, whether it's your family, or your work, or a ministry, or even just how to live your life, then whenever frustrations come you will wonder if you are outside of His will. They will be magnified.
So seek out His calling. Pray with your spouse about it. Talk to your friends about it. And then focus on how to live it out. If we are doing something purposefully, it will always have more joy than if we are just living in the moment.
The difference, I think, is that both take very moral approaches to it. You will never be happy or fulfilled, they say, if you violate moral standards. So you need to think in terms of right and wrong. I didn't get this impression from the book. What he was saying is find those moments when you feel strongest, when you feel everything coming together, and search after those moments. But what if those moments are when you're sitting in front of a slot machine? What if they're when you're with your lover? That's not exactly the recipe for a joyful life, is it? We need to weigh what we want to do in terms of whether or not it's right.
And the other thing that Covey really gets at is that we are called to be meaningful, not happy. And when we are meaningful, when we find our purpose, our lives are better. So he spends so much time talking about what you want to accomplish--not just in terms of what matches your personality (which is what this author says), but in terms of what values you want to see evidenced in your life. And you follow those values even if it means your life is a little more complex and difficult. Do you see the difference? It's starting with values (or God), and then coming to us. This book seems to start with us. So I don't get it. It just doesn't FEEL like a Christian book, regardless of the publisher.
One more thing. Perhaps the reason that women are becoming more unhappy, too, is that we are expecting too much out of life. We are expecting that it will be easy to meld a career and kids. We are expecting to experience happiness all the time, and we don't. And we blame others. But perhaps the problem is not our lives, but our expectations. We can find great joy being at home, and perhaps, if we as women celebrated it more in an honest way (without pretending that being home is always perfect), we would stop having these expectations that at all times we must have a powerful career and a home life and a stock portfolio. Being a mom is a wonderful thing. It is a privilege. You don't have to do it all. And that is a good thing.
A few of my friends are in this all too common situation.
The budget is really tight, and they think they better start working outside the home. Or, in some cases, their husband tells them they better start working!
For some, it's necessary. But before you take that plunge, have you really thought it through?
I think many people don't realize how much working actually costs. If you're making $15/hour, perhaps that job is worth it. But when you factor in all the costs, like a second car, work clothes, eating take out because you have less time to cook, let alone child care, that $15/hour can quickly become $4.50/hour. Then is it still worth it?
It may be, but perhaps it no longer is. Don't make any decisions until you really count the cost!
Today's podcast walks you through this basic financial conundrum, to better equip you to make an informed choice for your family. (UPDATE: Sorry, it's no longer available!)
My book, To Love, Honor and Vacuum, dedicates a whole chapter to this question, with handy charts that can help you figure it out. You have a chance to win that tomorrow in our awesome blog relaunch party! Just fill out the entry form for your chance to win!
Around the blogosphere there's a lot of talk that maybe Palin isn't a good pick because she should be home with her baby.
I'm sympathetic. I really am.
But here's where I see it.
When I look at Palin, I look at almost a Deborah figure.
She didn't set out to go into politics, unlike Hillary Clinton. She didn't have some master plan of her life. She was just a mom who was upset at things at the school, so she joined the PTA and tried to fix them. Then she ran for city council for the same reason, and started to fix things.
Then she was asked to run for mayor, which she did, and she--you've got it--fixed things.
Then it was the Ethics Committee for the Oil & Gas Industry, where she discovered corruption, and reported it. And then it was the governorship.
She never asked to be on the VP list. But she is determined to do a good job, and from what I hear (though I could be wrong) her husband is home lots with the kids.
She's not running on behalf of women's rights, or downplaying stay-at-home moms, the way a lot of female politicians do. She's not saying that women need to take a more public role in life. She's just been in the right place at the right time in Alaska to get rid of some very entrenched corruption on the part of the Old Boys' Network.
Which is why she reminds me of a Deborah. Or a Margaret Thatcher, for that matter.
I'm uncomfortable with the baby being so young, although I think he's been with her in the office a lot. But I guess you can't help the timing of the election. And I do think that she is the best candidate from McCain's point of view, because she is so big on anti-corruption and on energy.
On the whole I think women should stay at home, although, as a physician's wife myself, I know many female physicians whose husbands stay at home instead, and it works quite well. The children still have a consistent parent for a caregiver.
I think this is a really tough one, for several reasons. Many of us women do feel called to things outside of the home as well as to childrearing. And certainly being a mom has to be a top priority. But what happens when God asks you to do something that isn't ideal for your family?
I think of this a lot with Billy Graham. He wasn't there when his kids were growing up. Certainly Ruth was, but would you take a job that would take you so much away from your kids? I also have a lot of friends in the military, and several who are overseas right now. Being overseas for six months isn't great on your kids, either. But is it wrong? Or is God calling them to something extraordinary, where He will also provide the extra grace for their family?
The truth is that some jobs are not good for families. They really aren't. But somebody has to do them, and some of them are absolutely vital for our well-being as a nation and as a society. So unless we want all of those jobs--police officers, military members, politicians, missionaries, evangelists--to be done by people who don't really love their families, who don't have families, or who don't even love God, then we have to admit that God may ask stuff of some families that doesn't seem fair or right.
It's a tough one, and as a busy speaker I have to balance a lot of this, too. I don't have an answer, but these are the thoughts that have been going through my head.
In the case of all these jobs, I don't think any of them should be taken unless one's whole family feels a definite calling. It's not enough for just one person to feel a calling--the whole family has to feel it, and it has be after a lot of prayer. But there will be times when Christian parents will have to take jobs that require being away from home a lot. And then they're not able to put their number one priority as number one. I do think God provides the grace when He also provides the calling. But it's not just Palin who is doing this. It's all over the Christian church in many different homes.
Even in my own family, when the children were young my husband wasn't home much. He worked about 110 hours a week at the hospital, and he was chronically exhausted. It worked because I was able to be home full time and take on the burden of parenting. And because of that, the kids are still very close to him, because when he as home, I didn't need him to spell me off. We did family things. That's why it has to be a family calling. If I were also working it would have been a disaster. But having Christian pediatricians is an important thing, so I think God called our family so that Keith was away a lot, and didn't parent a lot in the early years, but it was for a greater good.
And, in Palin's case, let's not forget that if she had stuck with two children, as I did, none of this would be an issue. Her oldest two are 19 and 17. But because she went on to have five, and obviously wasn't that enamoured with birth control, she now has two younger ones (and one middle one). In my case, at 44, I'll be fine to be VP if anybody wants to call me. But that's because I didn't have as many children as I probably should have had (more on that some other time when I feel like being especially honest).
So those are my Saturday thoughts. And I must now get to work finishing an article I didn't do at all yesterday because I was glued to the news!
I've been in such a grumpy mood for the last few days because I have an article due tomorrow! It's actually an interesting and challenging article, and I love writing. I was ecstatic to get the assignment. But now that the time has come to write it, I've been stomping around and mumbling under my breath.
What is it about us that hates work? Some forms of work I actually enjoy: I don't mind laundry, and doing dishes while the music is playing softly can be relaxing. But on the whole, give me a book and a bubble bath, and I'd be infinitely happier.
The weird thing is that we often feel great after we've completed something. Work has its rewards, and not just monetary ones. To go to bed, bone tired, after a long day of cooking, or working, or cleaning, is satisfying. You know you have used your time well, and you're proud of yourself.
Why do we disdain that so much? Why do we try to get out of work as much as we can? I know my daughters do whenever there are chores to be done.
And yet work came before the fall. Work was always part of God's intention for us. We're not supposed to just sit around and do nothing. Certainly there are times when we all need rest, but that should be the minority, not the majority.
I know several women who are horrible housekeepers. That's not in and of itself a bad thing. I wasn't a great housekeeper when my kids were little, either. But as some point you have to make an effort or you get depressed. It's terrible living in the midst of chaos.
And it's the same thing with other areas of our work lives. We need things to keep us busy in a productive way.
Of course, right now I am procrastinating doing my final edit on my article by writing this blog post, but I know the article will come, and now that I've spent several hours on it today, I can't figure out why I thought it was worth worrying about all week. It's come along fine, I'm quite happy with it, and I will very much enjoy seeing it in print and receiving the cheque.
So let's be happy when we have work to do! It means we have a task in this world, and that's something to be grateful for, not something to grumble about. Right?
My post on Weekenders going bankrupt has brought a huge number of comments, mostly because several search engines and a post-Mary Kay consultant site picked it up (that's why there are so many anti-Mary Kay comments, I think!).
Anyway, I thought I'd sum up after reading through all the comments (and thanks so much for commenting!). People seem to agree that Weekenders went bankrupt for three reasons:
1. Home Parties are obsolete 2. It was too expensive to be a consultant 3. In home party businesses, you make money by selling to other consultants, not to customers.
So let's go through those, and you can tell me if I got it right.
Weekenders' bankruptcy is hardly unexpected given that people are just too busy to go to home parties today. It worked twenty-five years ago when kids weren't in soccer, women weren't working, and shift work wasn't as common. Today, it's not as if people are simply free on Tuesday night and want to go over to a friend's house to hear a sales pitch.
And people really don't like those sales pitches, or making them to their friends! That's why I quit. It almost got embarrassing. With the internet, we can buy so much online (and if you like Mary Kay or Arbonne or Weekenders, check out ebay. It's all there but much cheaper!). Why would we go to a party?
That being said, there are two products I really like: Epicure, which makes spice blends and amazing salt and peppers, and Norwex, which makes these incredible cleaning cloths and mops that use no chemicals. I buy that stuff constantly, and especially for gifts. But I've never had a party. I just catalogue shop, and I'm happy to not get any hostess benefits. I just want the products!
So you know the stuff is good. With everything else, I'm not sure the products are that outstanding. Probably a competitor could do just as well, and it would be cheaper.
Now let's look at #2.
With Weekenders, you had to spend a lot every season for new sample clothes. I hear from Mary Kay that you had to put tons of money into samples, too. So being a consultant costs a lot.
And #3?
There is so much pressure to make it to the next level, where you start getting more commissions on your downline. I think that's why people often buy the stuff themselves, just to make it to the next level. If you only have $400 more to go, why not put it in yourself? So you're left with all this product you don't really want and can't sell.
That's why I think most home party businesses do most of their sales to representatives, not customers. And that's not a good business model.
And with most people dropping out within a year, it means you have to replace people constantly. So people are being recruited who don't really have the money to risk, but who believe it's an easy way to get rich. It's not. It changes your relationships, takes you out of the house too much, and makes you buy stuff you don't want.
It's not worth it, in my opinion. If you can represent something like Epicure where there really aren't parties; people just keep ordering from you, then great. Otherwise, people will start avoiding you like the plague.
So that seems to be the summary of the comments. Only one obnoxious commenter came by, and he was dealt with pretty quickly, so thanks for all the discussion! And I hope all the former Weekenders reps and the very mad Mary Kay reps move on to something better for themselves and better for their families!
When the kids were first born we were living in an expensive apartment in downtown Toronto (that's the only kind of apartment that exists in downtown Toronto). Keith worked but I didn't. We didn't have a car. We bought everything second hand. We didn't have cable. I tried to save as much money as I could.
And in those years when we didn't have a lot of income because he was a resident, we still managed to save for the downpayment for a house and tithe.
I think it's all in your attitude. Many of Keith's classmates purchased homes, and had nannies, and went into all kinds of debt because they knew their income would increase one day. They wanted their nice homes now. But we didn't. We bided our time. We didn't think we necessarily deserved anything.
Now, if I talk about saving money, people get mad at me because my husband is a doctor and what do I know? But the truth is I do know. We did live very frugally for a few years.
But here's the kicker: we didn't feel like we were living frugally. We felt like we had everything we wanted. Which shows that what really counts when you're trying to make ends meet is your attitude. How are you going to judge your life? Are you going to hold it up to comparison to other people's, or are you just going to live within your means and feel happy about it?
I know it's different if you're stuck in a low income cycle for decades, rather than just seven years like we were, but I think the principle is the same. Decide that you're going to live for the eternal, not the here and now, and don't push for "things" to make you happy.
Anyway, lest I lecture too much, why not go over to Like Merchant Ships? They're having a great discussion about this topic, by people who are still dealing with it now. And they've decided that attitude is the answer, too.
I think it's also lifestyle choice. When I was pregnant with Rebecca, my first child, I had morning sickness galore. One morning I was feeling extremely nauseated while riding the subway to work, and I asked myself, "why am I doing this?". We didn't actually need the money. So I quit. I ended up getting some work to do from home, which was closer to the toilet should I need it, so the income didn't stop completely. But the hassle sure did.
I know many professional women who have worked right up until their due date. Some have even done call at the hospital like that, and I just don't understand it. Maybe they can take more than I could, but when I was 9 months' pregnant, I wouldn't have been able to handle no sleep for a few nights running, let alone physically exhausting work. But they push themselves anyway.
I don't think it's worth it. I really don't. Of course, I can't make those decisions for anybody else, but I still marvel that women would put themselves through that IF THEY DON'T HAVE TO.
And I think that's the issue here: when it comes to work, for some of us it still is optional. We can survive, although perhaps not as well as we might like, on one income. It's all in your attitude.
Terry at Ornaments of Grace has her druthers up because she just read an article saying that only elite women are able to stay at home. Their husbands are rich, and these women are basically living off their men, who will one day leave them for more interesting women they have found at the workplace.
Give. Me. A. Break.
Terry goes on to document how UN-elitist she is. She certainly doesn't live a glamorous life!
Now, it's hard for me to talk right now because my husband is a doctor. We do have more than most people, for which I am eternally grateful, and with which I feel we must share, which is why we take our kids to an orphanage in Africa quite frequently.
But I digress.
When the kids were little and Keith was in school we had very little, too. We bought second hand clothes at Goodwill. We bought second hand baby furniture and toys. I bought second hand clothes for myself (you could never tell, anyway).
We didn't have cable. Well, we still don't.
What we did have was the knowledge that the kids needed me, and we wanted to create a close-knit family.
Terry deals with all these aspects well, but something else I was thinking about was how much money it actually costs to work. You need a second vehicle, you need to pay for childcare, you need different clothes. Chances are you eat out and grab coffees more often. You probably buy take out for dinner more often, too, because you're too tired to cook.
But when you're home you CAN make money by saving money. When you clip coupons, sew some clothes (I've even been making cloth menstrual pads, but that's another story), get to the library, cook in bulk, make your own meals, do your own housework, and more, you can make a significant contribution financially to the family, even if you don't have an income.
I think if people truly totalled up how much it costs to work, they would find that they maybe only make $3.00 an hour. It may be worth it to work for $15, but is it worth it to work for $3? Because after you subtract everything, that may be what you're getting.
Any of you ever feel like your day is getting sucked away from you by the lure of the computer? I have.
Blissfully Domestic has a post up on how to stay productive when you're working at home.
One of her rules is this:
No turning on the computer for a quick email check or to do one little thing until you’ve gotten “ready for work”
I agree with that! I have been writing at home for 8 years now (4 books published; syndicated column; dozens of articles), but I do find the computer sucks me in.
We also homeschool, and trying to make that my priority is really difficult, especially when a big idea strikes me.
The only thing that works is giving myself office hours: 7:30-8:30 a.m., a big break at lunch, and then 4-5:30. The crockpot is a saver for that, because I put dinner on early in the day while I'm schooling the kids, and then use the time I'd traditionally be cooking dinner to work.
But even right now I'm not sticking to my office hours because it's 8:41. Better get moving...
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
Stumble It!
by Stephen Covey and 
by Scott Peck. Both have to do with how to find peace in everyday life, and how to find meaning in life.
