There’s No Place Like Home!
“When a child leaves their home to stay with friends it is common for them to be homesick. In fact, homesickness can be debilitating and can be painful for some children, even as they get older. We’ve all felt the sickening feeling of homesickness and understand that it is a vey real thing.
“Sometimes we can feel homesick even when we are at home! I think that’s a homesickness for our eternal home. Home is very much tied to our lives.
“Once again, because it is a God breathed thing, the devil hates it. The devil hates everything that is of God. He hates life, family, the home, the womb, and babies. The devil is having a heyday as he has successfully wooed thousands of women out of their homes, away from the God-ordained post, away from their children, and away from the nest where God wants to give them sanctuary and rest.” (Nancy Campbell)
When I was a child, I went to many sleepovers but never lasted past 11:00 pm. I was too homesick so my dad would come and get me. When I was away from home at college and living in the dorm rooms, I was homesick for home and the comforts of home. This is normal and natural. Why do you think there’s a saying such as, “There’s no place like home!”?
Isn’t it wonderful to know that God commands that we be keepers at home? That our job is to look well to the ways of our household? That our ministry to our husbands and children is in the home? We are so blessed to know this! Women write me and tell me excitedly that they are finally leaving the workforce and going home. I rejoice with them!
Most young women are never told that their job and ministry is in the home so they go after what culture tells them to go after: higher education and careers. (No, the Proverbs 31 woman was not a career woman.) They can sense a restlessness in their spirit that something just isn’t right. They miss home. They miss God’s will for their lives. They’re homesick.
Love your home, women. Thank the Lord often for your home no matter how big or small. Thank Him that He’s given you the ministry of the home and a wonderful place to raise your children. God is good and His plan for you is good. I love His ways!
Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established: And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches.
Proverbs 24:3, 4
24 thoughts on “There’s No Place Like Home!”
Hi Lori,
What if it’s God who tells them to go out there and do his work? In a previous comment, I told you that many women in my family are highly educated. One of them is a doctor, she works at NICU and she is a mother of 2 children. She is a Christian and she believes that this is her calling to go to work and save lives. She acknowledges that combining work and motherhood is very challenging but she belives that God is giving her strength to do it. And I was thinking, since God knows everything about our lives even before we are conceived, isn’t it in His plan that a certain child’s life will be saved by this particular woman?
I love this, Ms. Lori. My husband is a believer and a wonderful man, but we both always thought that we needed two incomes to live happily. Seeing as how the Lord has not yet given us children yet (unfortunately), I didn’t mind tooo much because it wasn’t as though I was working and my children were suffering. I felt it kept me busy while I didn’t have children, and the plan was always to resign from my position when the time came that I found I was pregnant. I ended up having a few weeks off of work lately and was able to devote myself at home. Our home was clean, tidy, inviting, and I could cook much better meals because I was not so tired from working. My husband even realized how much better this is!
I put in my resignation at work and am excited to be living my life as a full-time wife and home maker. My husband’s income is much larger than mine was, so luckily we will still be fine to live, but obviously we will not be doing anything too lavish and are committed to saving for when children come. (I am blessed that he is quite successful at a still quite young age). The compromises we will make to live on one will be WELL worth it to have a lovely and godly home. Luckily, even when working, I was deeply committed to serving my husband so it wasn’t as though our marriage was falling apart because of my “career,” but now that I will not have any added pressures besides my marriage/home, I am confident our marriage can be even stronger. Now I just pray that the Lord brings a baby.
That’s wonderful, MJ! Enjoy your life in your home. No, a wife doesn’t have to work outside of the home if she doesn’t have children. In fact, generations ago, women were fired from their jobs once they got married since everyone knew that her life was now to revolve around caring for her husband, home, and eventually children. May the Lord bless you with children soon!
Hi Leslie,
God NEVER calls anyone to do something that contradicts His Word. He calls women to be keepers at home. This woman doctor’s children need and want her full time. This is the ministry the Lord has given to her. How can she keep her marriage strong, her children secure and emotionally stable while raising them in the ways of the Lord, and work hard in her career when her time is so divided? She can’t.
Women weren’t created to do everything. This is why women becoming doctors is a bad idea for most. They accumulate a lot of debt, then with all of the education and time they must spend to become a doctor, they don’t feel they can quit once they have children. All of the doctors that I have talked to personally, regret their career choice once they have children because they feel trapped. They want to be home full time with their children (their most precious treasures) but feel that they can not. They created their own bondage.
Amen to that! Sad a generation of women are taught to escape it..
Childhood zips by so very fast. You turn around and your sweet chubby baby has stretched out into a preteen. Why any mother would want to miss a second in favor of being around people who don’t love them like their babies do is a mystery.
My husband”s older sister is a highly competent OB GYN physician. She is well known in the community as the go-to Dr. for high risk pregnancy. She is married and has one daughter who is now 30.
The girl was very adequately raised by her father, in the best private schools and every imagineable opportunity. But she will tell you she grew up without a mother and to this day does not feel like she knows her.
She has a loneliness and a longing she’s never been able to shake.
Although she really admires her mother, shes had a hard time sorting out that she lost out on the presence and nurturing of a mother, for the sake of other mothers and babies.
MJ…this happened with us, also, but we are empty nesters. We both thought since we had no kids at home, I may as well be working.
Then my husband got sick and I was on leave of absence for several months to take care of him. We both learned how much better home life is when I’m not working. I did not go back to work and have been home over a year now. We both agree its the best thing that has ever happened for our marriage and peace in the home.
Praying for a baby for you and your husband!!
Hi Lori, after much prayer and two christian mentors to guide me for the past two years..the Lord has placed me at home! I studied Pharmacy 23 years ago because I never wanted to depend on a man! I married 17years ago.12 years ago God blessed me with two children. I worked half day and really believed I was fulfilling my role as wife and mother.
At the end of 2018 my employer asked me to work until 7pm each day. My husband told me to resign! I have not worked at all this year! My husband earned one third of our income for 16 years…and we have made many cuts…and I can say that I am happier! I now know what Jesus meant when He said “My yolk is easy and my burden is light” I had to work through many regrets at the beginning of the year. One thing I realised is that I was not getting to everything, and that I did not serve my husband like I should have.
I have also learned that I did not truly listen to my husband and children. I am still being sanctified and am not prefect . All the glory is God’s. I don’t deserve this wonderful life! TONI in South Africa.
That is GREAT news, Toni! His burden is light and His ways are perfect for us. Your family is blessed to have you home!
Way too mothers leave their God-ordained places of ministry to go out into the workforce and do things that God has never called them to do. Something (usually marriages) and someone (usually children) always suffer.
So, so true! I LOVE home! I try to make it a place that my husband and children feel peaceful, safe, nurtured, and loved! ❤ What a wonderful calling to have!
Leslie, you are writing this as if your family member (who I will refer to generically as your sister) is the only one out there that can do this. She is not. The medical field is full of trained doctors, all of whom can do that job. Your sister is not strictly necessary there. Her absence can be, and will be accommodated by the numerous men whom God has called to be there.
If she were not there, it is not as if children are going to go untreated. She has injected herself into that place under the auspices of “saving lives”. Lives that will be saved whether or not she is there. But one thing is certain, while she is there, she is not where God has said she is supposed to be; and God would not command us to do a thing that would cause a contradiction in his Word.
May I add too? Sometimes we can feel like we should go and do a “bigger” work than what we are doing, but we must remember too that God doesn’t see things the way we do. Also, wouldn’t society as a whole be so much more healthy, happy, productive if mothers did the work of a mother? We can always support others, including healthcare work, in the what they do… we can pray and give, then pray some more! But no one can take our places as mothers. No one! I love the verse, “She hath done what she could…”
Here’s the whole passage in fact, cause it’s just so good! This woman, according to some, “wasted” what she had, but she gave it to the Lord, and He was pleased.
“And being in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, as He sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster flask of very costly oil of spikenard. Then she broke the flask and poured it on His head. But there were some who were indignant among themselves, and said, “Why was this fragrant oil wasted? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they criticized her sharply. But Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good work for Me. For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good; but Me you do not have always. She has done what she could. She has come beforehand to anoint My body for burial. Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.” -Mark 14:3-9
Ladies, think of your young children at home, if you have them. When they grow up, and leave home to start lives of their own, do you want them to reflect on their childhood and see a mother who was not part of their lives, whom they were often home without? Or do you want them to recall growing up with a mother that loved them and cared for them. Which of those two memories do you want your children to leave home and go out into the world with?
The post titled reminded me of a show theme called “7th Heaven” and one of the lines from the song goes something like ” Where can go when the world don’t treat you right, the answer is home”.
Oh and I had to look up the phrase 7th Heaven just and it’s totally unbiblical but I think it’s used more as slang. Anyway, home is where we wives and mamas belong. I have a fridge magnet from Dollar Tree that says “Home is Where the Heart Is”. Thank you Lori.
Oh and I get homesick even at the grocery store!
Thank you, Robert, for this wonderful reminder! As Christians, we need to keep an eternal perspective, and as mothers, a long-term mind-set just as you described. What will they remember? Very convicting.
I am going to have to admit that I am conflicted with this. My wife is a SAHM, and even with our last getting ready to start college soon, it won’t be changing. It is, without a doubt, what God has called her to. Where I am less convinced or convicted is that this is the only appropriate path. I have never thought a wife could not work outside the house, although I think she and her family miss out on so much. What I get concerned about is why she is working outside the home. Is it because she and her husband want material things or is it out of necessity? My wife and I haven’t enjoyed the material things, although we now have more than enough (though not so much by the world’s standards), but we are rich beyond compare as we have a blessed family.
Hi Lori,
I understand what you are saying, I am just sharing a different perspective. Maybe there’s more than one way for being a Christian woman, I don’t know. She supports her point of view that God leads her on her path by Ephesians 2:8: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.””
And those good works are clearly stated in God’s Word, Leslie. Women were never called to leave their children for hours every day to serve others. Mothers are commanded to be keepers at home.
God commands that women be keepers at home so they don’t blaspheme His Word (Titus 2:3-5). I would say He’s very clear on His will for women.
Wives who live in small apartments and have grown kids have very little to do at home all day. What should they do? I want to stay busy and be hardworking, but there is so little to do in my home.
I am an older woman, Kathy, and here’s a video about what I do!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfVX3i4dA1Y&t=91s
Kathy, take up a sport or hobby or something where you can meet other wives. i live in a small flat and no kids but i have plenty to do