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Holistic Homemaking

 

women's

MissionsFest Dinner 2006

Holistic Homemaking, by Cindy Judge

 

 

If you missed the Women's MissionsFest Dinner, you will want to read what Cindy Judge, our Global & Local Outreach Director, had to say about "Holistic Homemaking."   

 

"First I’d like to look at the title I gave this talk. Holistic Homemaking…I  like the word “homemaking.” I really do. To me it doesn’t reflect house-work…like making beds or dusting floors. To give you a bit of background, I have had this funny thing in my head for years now, about what we call ourselves as women.

 

Let me take you back, I was single in the early 70’s, some of you remember those years. After college I joined the staff of a campus ministry, Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC). I was with CCC for four years at two university campuses, places where what women were being called was very important. During those years, I met this wonderful medical student in our ministry. We weren’t supposed to date students, you understand, but he was a graduate student. We married and a few years later we had our first daughter and I was able to stay home. That’s when the title for what a woman at home was called became really important to me.

 

One thing I never wanted to be called was a housewife. I would hear that term and wonder, is that something anyone would want to be called? Am I a wife… associated with a house? Am I married to a house? That just didn’t sit well with me.

 

Now there’s that other word… homemaker? Home-making, I would suggest that is a much better term…for all women, not just married ones. We are homemakers. Homemaking….making a house a home. That’s how I took it. It seemed much more honoring. That word is actually talking about an art…making a house a home.

 

The image we carry for certain words differ from woman to woman, maybe generation to generation. I would like us to think about being a homemaker. Homemaking takes lots of energy and creativity to make a house, a home. We can put our energies into it. We need lots of wisdom and insight and God’s direction to make a house…a home.

Making our homes the place that people enjoy coming to.  A place of comfort, a kind-of haven, a refuge or retreat from the craziness of the rest of the world.

 

Homemaking is not something we talk about very often. And some might say it is a lost art, with our busy lifestyles leaving us little time for doing special things to make our homes special places.

 

That’s probably why homemaking as a concept has resurfaced lately everywhere.  Through those shows on home and garden cable TV or home make-over shows or by Martha Stewart, (though we may not like her personality), we often do appreciate the value put into making home a place of beauty, of nice décor, and good cooking. But it’s so much more than that. Home is a safe place for those who live there, a place of much grace, a place where Godly priorities are reflected like joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness. Okay, we’ve moved way beyond Martha Stewart now.

 

If I took a little survey of us here, I would ask you what childhood memories you have that would reflect the atmosphere or the values that were exhibited in your home. There would be both good stories and some very sad and bad stories. We come to the subject of homemaking thinking about our own homes as the places we were formed as children. Most of us recognize quickly that there are things we want to emulate, some things our mothers did for the people in our homes. And when we remember or recognize the negative things, we want to change those things and do some things differently. But one thing is very certain, as women, we hold the key in our homes as to the atmosphere and the values that will shape those who visit there and most of all for those who live in our homes.

 

Making a house a home, where God is welcomed and honored and our view of the world around us is formed will all be reflected by what goes on in our homes and how God’s values are enhanced, taught, reinforced. Those are the things we won’t see on the home makeover shows or on Martha Stewart…The intangibles, the elusive things, those more mysterious or spiritual realities that really produce an atmosphere in our homes, the things that demonstrate that we give God his place as the head of our homes. Things that we live out and that demonstrate that we value the things that He values, that we love what He loves, that we put energy and significance into the things that will be of eternal worth.

 

I want to challenge us to think about the concept of holistic homemaking. Homemaking that goes beyond the physical atmosphere, homemaking that captures the values of a Christian, who understands the real world and has God’s love for the world as part of its values.

 

I just used the terms “Holistic Homemaking.” What do I mean by holistic? Wholism is an important term. It describes something I hear about often as my husband, a family physician, treats the whole person. He is a generalist more than a specialist. He treats the whole person, the whole family. A backache may be caused by stress….he asks those kinds of questions, before he treats the backache. He sees the whole integrated person in a family and diagnoses after understanding the whole story. It’s also a big missionary concept these days. It means that in serving people in a culture, like Jesus, a missionary is interested in the whole person, the needs of the whole, both spiritual and physical, understanding the culture the person lives in, the place he lives. 

 

Now we’re back to the meaning of words because I think words are very important. I’m talking about holistic homemaking, Let’s define holism. Holism means, “The view that an integrated whole has a reality independent of and greater than the sum of its parts.” What is my point in putting the word holistic in front of homemaking?

 

I feel that as a woman, we who are making a house, a home, a woman who is creating an atmosphere that will nurture and educate and foster a Christian worldview for those who enter that home and influence the next generation, we should be considering what this concept means in the way we think about our homes.

 

As Director of Global and Local Outreach at a missions-minded church, you would expect me to say that our goal should be to look beyond our American borders, to see the bigger world. We have been challenged already to see beyond ourselves at this year’s MissionsFest.

 

There are so many good reasons to think bigger, beyond our ethnocentric American mindset. Here’s an example:

I ran across an article about a National Geographic poll a few years ago. It was a survey of 3000 18-24 year olds from Canada , France , Sweden , Germany , Great Britain , Italy , Japan and the US .  Questions were asked about geography. Among those surveyed the US scored next to last in all categories. Only 11 % of those surveyed from the US could locate the Pacific Ocean . Only 15% could locate Iraq or Israel … though they could answer which Pacific island the last Survivor TV Show was located on. “Particularly humiliating, was that all countries were better able to identify the US population than many young US citizens. Within the US , almost one-third said that US population was between 1-2 billion people. The answer is 290M.” There are 6 billion in the whole world…can you imagine thinking that we are in the US make up almost 1/3 of the population of the world?

 

I am certain that in our culture we will have to work at any effort to help children and ourselves, for that matter, stay informed about the world. To know what is going on in the world and how that is affecting the growth of Christianity around the world is an effort worth making. I believe it is our responsibility to know how current events are affecting the work of God in this world. Yesterday in the Sunday school hour for our children, they learned about an acronym, THUMB…did any of you hear about this? THUMB stands for 5 people groups in our world and their different belief systems…Tribal, Hindu, Unreligious people (or atheistic cultures), Muslim and Buddhist.  As women who teach values in our homes, it is important to inform ourselves about such things. We have people in our neighborhoods, who come from these belief systems. Do we help our families and ourselves connect with them?

 

I would say the answer lies in asking ourselves some simple questions, like 

As women and mothers, we have a great part to play in what is at the center of our attention in our homes. We can ask ourselves some probing questions. Do we only talk about the latest ballgame scores or the big sale going on at The Gap? Is it primarily about what we’re going to do this weekend…those things can consume us. Or do we also value what is going on in our community, our schools, in the news? You might push back and say these two words to me, “Information overload.” It is somewhat of a problem, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s just more comfortable to stay clear of world news. A friend of mine, used to watch the national or world news as a family regularly, or at least once a week, with a globe or a map close by and review what was going on in the world with her family.  A great resource book called, Operation World can really help. It’s the Cliff Notes to every country in the world AND gives you the Christian perspective.

 

So I challenge you to ask yourself, what kind of dinner conversations do we foster? If children have their values pretty well formed by age 7, and it’s true that “more is caught than is taught”, what is it that we can do to foster a bigger worldview, one that brings our thoughts to God’s intention for this world we live in?

 

A few years ago, when my three grown daughters (two of whom are now married, one getting married this summer) were all in the car with me for a road trip, I decided to ask them something that a friend who had high-schoolers asked me to ask them. She wanted to know why they were different than most kids their age and why their values were distinctly Christian. She wanted to know how they survived public high school. I wish I had had a recording of the next couple of hours, the kind of conversation a mom seldom hears. They began to recount their childhood.

 

They talked about things we had done as a family that had instilled some important values in their lives. Things that didn’t seem so important to me at the time, but now, I realized, had been. They talked about overhearing a lot of adult conversation about things to do with ministering to people. They recalled the African Wheaton College students who were a part of our lives and holidays and summer outings for many years. They talked about five-year-old Emily asking a six-foot Nigerian student, who carried her around on his shoulders and would go to pick her up from her children’s department  at our church, all kinds of questions, like if his tongue was black like the rest of him. For her, the color of one’s skin was a curiousity at age five, but at age 12, we would hear about certain friends by name for months, before we would learn that a specific friend was African American or Indian. She was virtually “color blind” by then. The color of someone’s skin was something she did not mention, it was unimportant to her. She had no color prejudices that we ever noticed. The value of people being people was the value that was caught, and taught. Our children grew up where the color of one’s skin meant nothing in relationship to their value.

 

They mentioned that it was the small things like realizing that many people had far less than they had. The girls would go through their closets every six months and we would load up the bags and drive off to an apartment of a Laotian family who had three girls as I did…and walk up the stairs together to personally deliver those clothes. The kids played together. We talked about how they had come to Wheaton from a war-torn country as refugees. Those things all meant something. They became the things we talked about, prayed about. Those relationships shaped our kids’ lives because it was a value that infiltrated their lives.

 

As for understanding the bigger world, we were able to take our kids with us on a mission trip when they were pre-schoolers for three months, as well as a few years later as grade-schoolers for a whole school year. That was huge in forming their perspectives of the world. They would never be the same after spending a school year in Kenya . After the first trip, we came home with a project. The kids decided to save their money so that they could buy some chickens for our neighbors in Kenya , to be able to start an egg business. Years later when we went back, we visited our chicken coop and were told how well the egg business was going. There may be some missionary you meet who could suggest some similar project for your family or your neighbor children or grand-children. Maybe you could support a child through World Vision or Compassion.

 

There are the things we can do around our kitchen tables. Taking a globe or a map and learning about the world and where people you know, who are missionaries, live and work to tell people about Jesus. You can pray for a few missionaries regularly during your dinner prayer. You can use the missionary ring of pictures that is available to you here at church. Taking the time to expand our world, taking our minds out of the smallness of our own concerns and opening up a child’s mind to the rest of the world is a worthy effort. It is all about opening our own minds and hearts to God’s perspective on the rest of the world.

 

This whole vision is captured pretty well by 3 E’s.

I am so happy to be a part of a church that fosters the values of holistic thinking…that creates opportunities for women to get educated and exposed to a hurting world, to get involved serving the whole person, to get involved in things that will nurture our children to grow up seeing God’s values

 

Our church has a great ministry to the immigrants and refugees from countries around the world right here in Wheaton ,  who have found safe haven in our country. Some of you know we host English as a Second Language classes here at church. Some of you help drive them to and from class, you help tutor them, you bring meals to some who have had babies, some of you reach out to single moms.

 

Many of you helped the family that resettled here after Hurricane Katrina. Some of your families go on summer mission trips together…some families drive 13 hours to an Indian reservation in Canada or take their high schoolers to the Dominican Republic and work on the Kids Alive orphanages there.

 

Last Christmas I overheard two mothers talking right outside this door. They were figuring out when they could take their little pre-schoolers to a nursing home over the holidays. One mom said, “I don’t want my kids to think that Christmas is about what they’re going to get, I want them to know that it’s about giving. “

 

Many of you fill the Christmas shoe boxes that are sent all around the world. We, as a church, have the distinction of being among the top ten churches in the country to fill the most Operation Christmas Child boxes. These next few weeks we will be collecting peanut butter, used blue jeans (PB and J) for orphans in Ukraine connected with Little Lambs, Renate Kurz's ministry here in Wheaton. Another very hands-on opportunity is sewing camp shirts for L’Arcada Camp in Spain . I know we would like you to sign up tonight, if you would be willing to sew some camp shirts this spring.  There are so many possibilities in being involved holistically in the needs around the world. It will expand your heart and expand the work of the kingdom.  

 

We realize anew that to reach people for Jesus Christ, we must see them as God sees them…a whole person, with physical and social and spiritual needs.

 

Holistic homemaking…anyone who lives in a home…can be a holistic homemaker, someone who sees her role in her home as so much more than keeping the house clean and food in the fridge. It’s about using your home for God’s purposes, to see your home as a reflection of your heart, one that reflects God’s heart.

 

There are so many ways to grow, whether it’s using the map on the wall that you see when you’re doing laundry or the one that you have in your kids’ room, marked with some locations you pray for, or praying for the children in Kenya with AIDS in Josephine’s Community Center. Whether it’s inviting your foreign-born neighbor over for coffee and learning about her country or whether its writing a short email message to one of the missionaries you have met here tonight….it will bring you closer to the heart of God and His love for the world.

I hope God has impressed something we have talked about tonight on your heart. Let us ask God what we can do.

 

In closing I want you each to take two cards from the center of your table, I would like to challenge us to take a moment and jot down two or three things that God may be impressing on you tonight that you can do in your homemaking. Jot down something that you would like to do in the next few months…that God has stirred in your heart. Jot them down…these are only for you to see. Now, I’d like to ask you to jot down those same words on the other card. Put one card in an envelope at the table and seal it, and write your address on the front and I will commit to send you that envelope in six months as a reminder of some goals you set tonight. Take the other one with you tonight."