Tag Archives: faith

“Just a Wife”

Posted on by under country life, Writing

This has been heavy on my heart for a long time. A persistent conversation in my head. I’ve had so many one sided debates, hashing this out. I’ve written about it a little, here and there, but I can’t ever seem to find the words, or to feel that I have cohesively said my say. I have spent a lot of time in prayer and reflection on this topic. It saddens me. It confuses me. It brings a lump to my throat sometimes, and leaves little knots in my stomach.

Other times, it excites me, especially when I see the Biblical pattern for marriage so clearly and beautifully defined. And it never ceases to amaze me. How, in approximately 50 years, have women let themselves be convinced that being a wife and a homemaker is a lesser occupation than any other occupation? What used to be a woman’s goal and role in society, one that was viewed with pride, was the role of being a homemaker – of being a help to her husband, of cultivating skills that led to a beautiful home and nourishing meals and a contented life.

How did we let this go? And not just let it go, but turn on it so negatively?

Culturally, we have spent a lot of air time trying to prove that women can do everything men can do, fighting against nature to force women into a traditional workplace environment. But the irony is that women in general are so wired to be invested within their homes and families, the only way we’ve accomplished this culturally is by stripping the beauty and meaning from work within the home, convincing women that it is degrading and unworthy to be what women have been for hundreds of years.

And, frankly, I’m sick of sitting by, watching and listening and not saying anything as the role of the wife within the home is demeaned.

Because this topic touches me. It moves me. It weighs on me.

We have fielded so many questions about “whether we’re working,” and have smiled in response to the skeptical looks when we say we gave up a career for marriage. We have shed private tears because of the pressure to do what society wants versus what God wants, the pressure to do that which goes entirely against our nature and good desires, versus the desires God has put on our hearts. We have hoped for understanding from others. We have tried to defend ourselves and validate our work.

There are many women who have been speaking up with louder and sweeter voices lately about being stay-at-home mothers, but there aren’t a lot of women who speak up about being homemakers. Because sometimes the family-growing is delayed. But that doesn’t take away from the beauty and the need of the homemaking wife.

My husband and I were at a supper recently, and a sweet Christian woman we know but haven’t seen in awhile asked if I was still with the fire department and working as a paramedic, to which I gladly replied that I was not. Her response: “So, you’re just…a wife?” I was surprised, and I wasn’t. And then I was a little indignant. And then a little sad.

My initial response was to want to justify myself. To tell her how busy I am. How glad I am to be doing what I’m doing. But I don’t need to justify myself. Fifty years ago, the surprising thing was for a woman to leave her home to work. Now, the surprising thing is for a woman to want to build a home and work within her home.

How fast things changed.

“No!” I wanted to say. “I’m not ‘just a wife!’ I am a homemaker.”

A keeper of the home.

A domestic engineer.

A homemaking professional.

I’m a professional cleaner, and launderer, and cook. A home decorator. A hostess.

I care for my husband.

I am a homemaker.

If it is legitimate to dream of owning one’s own cleaning business, taking care of patients in a hospital, catering meals, then it is legitimate to have a homemaking dream. It is legitimate for a woman to want her best energy to go towards the building of a home and serving of a husband, rather than doing those things with what’s left of her energy after she gave the best of it to someone else.

I’m there when he needs my help with various projects. Whether that is working cows, fixing fence, taking a vehicle to the shop if we couldn’t fix it ourselves, re-roofing our house, re-siding our house, cooking meals, helping neighbors, and my list could go on.

I garden, and can, and bake, and sew, and sell eggs, and bring in side incomes with my writing, photography, and piano lessons.

And I am not unique. Maybe unseen, but there are many, many women like myself. Maybe we don’t all look the same, or do all the same things. But I’m certainly not unique.

I’m a wife. I’m not “just” anything.

How fast we have let ourselves get conned into thinking of being a wife as being “just” anything! How many women over the centuries have come alongside their husbands performing tasks similar or identical to the tasks I listed above? The homemaking idea isn’t a new idea. The help-meet wife isn’t a new idea. The husband and wife partnering in the building of a life isn’t new. What is new is taking the wife outside the home, telling her that the meeting of her potential will only happen outside her home, teaching her that her work within the home is lesser and illegitimate and isn’t really work, and that she is better off giving her best energy to someone else. And it is women who have done this to women.

Yes, sometimes necessity does dictate that a wife work outside the home to provide an income. Of course I understand that, and that’s absolutely not what I’m talking about in this article! I’m talking about how we as women have allowed this beautiful work to be demeaned, relegated to the inconvenience of what can be accomplished on a Saturday morning before the real weekend begins. We have allowed ourselves to think of being a housewife as a drudgery, as a snuffing out of our “potential,” and don’t even let me get started on the pet peeve of “potential!”

I look at the book of Genesis, the first book in the Bible, and I see how God created Adam first, and then Eve, “because there wasn’t a helper suitable to Adam.” Woman’s role from the beginning was to be the role of the helper! I find this inspiring. Adam needed someone to help him accomplish the work God had given him to do. So God gave him a wife. That is amazing. Eve’s role was to help facilitate Adam’s work. To be the support person. To come alongside him and assist in the ways that only a wife can assist. And I don’t know how we have lost the beauty of that! It isn’t lesser work. It is just different.

When you’re a homemaker, when you’re a wife, the work doesn’t stop for the weekends. You see the floors that need to be swept and mopped and the shelves that need dusting and the carpets that need vacuuming, the windows that need shined. You see the laundry to wash and fold and put away, the clothes to mend, the sinks that need to be wiped down, the cabinets that need organized. You see the bread to bake and the pantry items to be restocked and the meals to cook.

It isn’t an inconvenience that should be relegated to “when you have time”, but a beautiful pursuit worthy of pursuing.

Some women see the work of a homemaker and they see tedium. But how many women have jobs outside the home that are amazingly exciting day in and day out? Every single job I have had (I have worked retail, in a greenhouse, for a rancher, as a piano teacher, as a music teacher in a classroom, as a firefighter-paramedic, as a secretary, as a medical scribe), EVERY SINGLE JOB had boring days, days that didn’t stretch me or challenge me. So why do we look at homemaking with a special kind of scrutiny, as if homemaking is a problem because it isn’t exciting every day?

Some will speak of being a wife at home as “not working.” Yet, so many of the jobs wonderfully bound up in the role of being a homemaking wife are jobs that are hired out regularly. Cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, laundry, caring for the sick, and so much more are jobs that are considered legitimate if you’re paying someone to do them or being paid to do them, but they aren’t considered legitimate if you do all of them within the context of your home! How strange.

Women will look disapprovingly on the wife who chooses to joyfully submit herself to her husband and to serve her husband (as all Christians are called to serve one another!), but will willingly go submit themselves to their male bosses in a workplace environment. How is it servitude to submit to one’s own husband, but it isn’t servitude to submit to one’s male bosses?

There is another confusing double-mindedness in the attitude towards being a homemaking wife that I have observed. On the one hand, women will speak of it as if it is “patriarchal,” demeaning, snuffing out women’s true potential, practically slavery. But then on the other hand, women will act as if it a luxury only the privileged can afford. Pardon my bluntness, but it can’t be both. It could be demeaning, or it could be a luxury, but it cannot be both at the same time.

If you really think being a homemaking wife is demeaning, fine, defend that position. But it can’t then also be a luxury you’re unable to afford. If you think it is a luxury you are unable to afford, I’d challenge you to not be able to find a number of optional expenses that could be cut from the monthly budget if you really wanted to be a homemaking wife.

Life is about more than excitement. It is about more than “meeting your potential.” It is about more than “fun” or pleasure or enjoyment. Actually, it isn’t about those things at all. It is about God, and about us glorifying Him in what we do, and in what He puts before us to do!

Maybe you as a wife as being called to a profession outside your home. That is fine! Only you can know that, and this article is not a condemnation of working outside the home, but rather a condemnation of the attitude that there is something innately inferior to the work of a wife. But if you are a wife and a mother, I promise you that He isn’t calling you to neglect your duties at home. Because all of us have duties at home, male or female, and there is a clear need to recognize the triage of responsibility within our lives. God, family, work, in that order, or your life will be a mess. Too many people, men and women, get that order wrong, and if work comes before family it is so easy to say that the pursuit of work is to meet the needs of the family, but if your family is suffering, if your relationships within your family are suffering, check yourself. Are you trying to meet the needs of your family, or are you trying to meet your perceived needs at the expense of your family’s needs?

But maybe He is calling you to a life of service within your home and to your husband with the beautiful mundanity of day-to-day life. And the amazing thing is that a life of service inside the home stretches into your community, if you let it, into your church and your extended family, in ways that a cog-in-the-wheel job does not.

As a wife, I am not just a cog in a wheel. Every single other job I have ever had, I was a cog in the wheel. Because that is what it means to work outside the home, and no, it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman. There is always (always!) someone else to replace you and the work you are doing. Period. It doesn’t matter how specialized you are, or how important you feel your job is in the company for which you are working. There is always (always!) someone else who can be trained to do what you do, can be hired when you leave, and there is always someone who can out-perform you.

But as a wife? There isn’t someone to replace me. There isn’t someone else who can do what I do within my home. There isn’t someone else who can bring the love and peace and beauty into our home that I can bring into our home. There isn’t someone else to be there for my husband when he needs help with a task or encouragement or someone to laugh with.

So no, I’m not “just a wife.” I’m a wife.

Little Surprises, Little Dreams

Posted on by under Writing

My handsome man came into the house a few days ago with the mail in hand and a grin on his face. “Guess what came?” he asked, and handed me this beautiful issue of Bella Grace, a delightful magazine I stumbled across about a year ago and immediately loved, and occasionally buy at a local bookstore. This one, though, has been eagerly anticipated, since one of my short pieces was published in it. It won’t hit the newsstands for another two weeks, so this was the pleasantest of surprises!

It is a small piece of writing, and I don’t think it is even as long as the columns I’ve been writing for the newspaper. It is tucked somewhere in the middle of this 160-page magazine among dozens of other beautifully written pieces.

It is a little thing. A small triumph. But it represents dreams that God put on my heart 20 years ago, and that have persisted through all the strange twists and turns of life. Dreams that God has been slowly satisfying in His own good and perfect time.

Ranch Wife Musings | When the Cows Come Home

Posted on by under Agriculture and Ranching, country life

Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle, September 13, 2023

Down in the yard below the house, mama cows with their hale and hearty calves come in to water at the tank in the horse corral. Some do the cow version of a sneak, some run like they’ve got someplace to be, and some chit-chat as they mosey in. It is a pleasant sight, and one we haven’t seen for months. It signals a change.

The springtime branding season closes with cows and calves getting moved into their summer pastures – a bittersweet event but rather a relief to have them out from underfoot. They become obnoxiously like oversized pets, hanging around the yard all calving season and getting into things in significant and irritating ways. They spend the summer dispersed in the pastures farthest away from home, on the periphery of the ranch, or hauled to more remote leases as many ranchers do. The reasonably self-sufficient critters spend the summer eating and fattening, nursing a calf and growing another, with pretty minimal human contact, if they behave themselves, which inevitably they don’t.

Summertime is a constant flurry of activity—by turns exciting, fun, tiresome, defeating, delightful, and harrowing—something always happening, something always needing attention, whether it is the constant need to be flowing water to something somewhere, animal or plant, especially in drier parts of the summer, or the constant, endless tasks around the house and yard, or the constant harvesting from the garden, or working on weeds in the pastures, or cleaning up after a destructive storm. Work ends for the day notwhen there isn’t more work to do, but when you just have to be done. Then there’s the constant cropping up of half days spent fixing problems cows created. They create their share.

Gathering up animals that took a social day with the neighbor’s cows, for instance, or gathering up a neighbor’s animal that took a social day with ours, haphazardly steals anywhere from a few hours to a half day here and there. Working through a remote herd to find the handful that are sick and doctoring them in their summer pastures can easily become a half or a full day of work, if not several. Even regular water checks and patching holes in the fence take up a surprising amount of time. Then there are the bursts of neighborly days helping each other get done the necessary and larger tasks, trailing whole herds of cows in from their summer pastures, rounding them up on horseback and bringing them down to the corrals to vaccinate calves, treat everything for flies, and doctor any sick animals.

But all that shifts at the end of the summer, when the cows are brought home for good.

Summer has been wrapping itself up over the last few weeks, and we’ve had our first truly cool nights of the season, when temps have dipped down into blanket-worthy digits. We’ve been a mere handful of degrees away from a frost out here by Hermosa, and I can see breath on our early morning starts. Fruit is ripening everywhere, and the harvest is getting put up, evidenced by the gleaming jars on the countertops and bags of frozen produce in the freezer. One more time mowing the lawn and that’ll do it for the rest of the year.

We need the seasons. We need the shifting of the weather, the changes in the temperatures, the change in the work, the traditions and customs that come, each in its own time. We need the fire and flurry of summer, just like we need the chill and sleep of winter. We need the waking of springtime, just like we need the slowing down of autumn. Each season brings its own challenges and graces, as the year cycles through periods of renewal, of change, of struggle, of ease. The fiery heat to remind us of the beauty of the snow, and the bitter cold to make us long for the heat. The dry months to make us appreciate the rain. Relentless sun to cause us to enjoy the clouds. Bare trees of winter to make us dream of spring. The shadows have been lengthening out with that strange slant of the light that means chilly mornings, cozy evenings, and fingers warming around mugs of something hot. The Big Dipper has been righted in the northwestern sky, no longer pouring out constantly on a thirsty world. Soon Orion will greet us from his place above the eastern horizon in the later evening. There is that spice in the air, that unmistakable taste of fall. And down at the water tank, cows and their calves are coming in to drink, sleek with a layer of summer fat under their glossy black hides. Summer is coming to an end when the cows are coming home.

Ranch Wife Musings | The times that make us

Posted on by under Agriculture and Ranching, country life, gratitude

Originally printed in Custer County Chronicle, July 19, 2023

“It is a year for the books,” a lot of people are saying. Looking down from the house towards the barn, the yard is a peaceful chaos of color and activity, a stark contrast to the dull and lifeless landscape of last year. The smell of fresh-cut hay is heavy and sweet, the birds are noisily serenading themselves, and the two roosters down by the henhouse are just full of it and sharing it with everyone else. My little flock of pullets started to lay in the last few days, adding their pretty eggs to the basket and joining the ranks of the laying hens. A robin ruffles his feathers in the spray from the sprinkler watering the flowers, and the vegetable garden is a fruitful jungle: bright yellow dill towering above the hail netting, the zucchini and yellow squash overflowing from the stock tank they’re growing in, zinnias and poppies shining their bright faces up at the sun. The little greenhouse is bursting at the seams. A few of the horses below strike up a heated conversation for a moment, and one of the puppies harasses the steer or barks at a buzzard. A delightful chaos. And there, soft in the background, is the comfortable whirr of the rake and the baler, the hayfield in the distance studded with bale upon bale of hay.

What a sight.

What a year.  

This time a year ago, we were just trying to keep everything alive. A tough calving season was followed by bleak drought, the worst that a lot of folks around here had ever seen. Pastures basically stopped growing in June, if they ever really grew to begin with. Hay crops were devastatingly low, and we didn’t even try mowing half of our hay ground. Driving across the ranch or down Highway 79 left a little knot in the pit of the stomach, seeing the dust and the cured-out grasses. And if it wasn’t tough enough already, the grasshoppers moved in, demolishing gardens and thinning the already thin pastures. The summer became a game of just trying to stave off some of the effects of the drought, struggling to keep water in front of thirsty cows, and at the end of it all there was very little to show for anything. Stackyards were empty, dams were low, herd numbers were forced to dwindle, and pastures were worn out. Winter, then, was the struggle of trying to keep weight on hungry cows, and then trying to keep calves alive in the snowstorms. It was a tough year. A tight year. One of those years where the inputs and outputs were wildly disproportionate, where all the best efforts and the gallons of sweat didn’t mean a thing. Or they sure didn’t seem to.

I love talking to people who have been around the sun a few more times than I have, people who have seen their share of drought and storm and life in general. They have a longer perspective than I often have, a longer perspective than I am able to have. They’re the ones who can say, with the voice of experience, “It’s just what it does.” The ones who have seen the brink of disaster, but who have also seen what followed. They have weathered the worst without breaking.

Because those best efforts and gallons of sweat do mean something.

Maybe the effort felt wasted, or the sweat dried and everything was still the same or even worse, but days, weeks, months, and years of challenge and difficulty prime us for receiving the good years, or months, or weeks, or days. Sometimes, because we have stubborn hearts and blind eyes, we don’t see the good or fully appreciate it, until and unless we have something to compare it to. Last year gave us something to compare to.

So even as I take a break from chores and look down over the greenness and fruitfulness of the garden and hayfields, and see the sleek cows, well-summered, and soak in the peace that is this year, the sense of relief seeing water in Spring Creek and hay in the stackyards and water in the dams, even as I enjoy the satisfaction of a fruitful harvest without a fight, I’m thankful. Thankful for this year, of course, for answered prayers and work that is fruitful. But it isn’t just this year I’m thankful for.  I’m thankful for last year, for the struggle that it was, for the difficulty and challenge that makes this year that much sweeter.

The years like this one might be the pleasantest, and they are certainly the kinds of years we pray for. But it is in those tough years where faith is strengthened, where resilience is born, where endurance is built, where the ability to cling tight to the things that matter is cultivated, and where strong individuals, families, and communities are made. That effort, that sweat, is never wasted. Those are the times that make us.

Custer’s 100th Gold Discover Days

Posted on by under country life, Photography

What a weekend!

Over and done with just like that, Custer’s 100th Gold Discovery Days was a great intro into multi-day vendor events, and I loved meeting and visiting with people, locals and out-of-stater-ers, and sharing my love of photography and the Black Hills! In spite of rain and hail the first day, and soaring temperatures the next two days, the event came off well and I’m definitely glad I took the plunge. It was a low-key enough event that I was able to work out the kinks of my booth setup easily, resulting in a last-minute rearranging of my booth on Saturday morning. I purchased the tent off Amazon, and definitely am happy with how it held up, especially considering the stormy weather we had on Friday!

Lots of fun ideas are being sparked from this event, including the possibility of teaching photography classes, some new product ideas, and incentive to get an online store set up for selling prints. My little mind is a whirlwind of ideas right now!

It was also great to have company for the weekend, since my friend Hope, with Hope and Health tallow skincare, had a booth right across from mine, and my husband spent Sunday in my booth with me! And once again, the sweetness of the rural community was brought home, as I got to visit with many old friends and neighbors.

I’m getting booked for the remainder of the year, and I’m already looking forward to sharing a booth with Hope and Health at the Buffalo Roundup Arts Festival in Custer State Park in September and getting to do the Winter Popup Market at the Monument Civic Center in November. It is fun to see something I’ve slowly worked at for years starting to bear some fruit! God is good.

Homestead Happenings | What a Summer!

Posted on by under Agriculture and Ranching, country life, gardening, Photography, Writing

Sometimes I just have to pause for a minute and think about everything that is going on, and going on well. Just taking a few steps outside and seeing all the green – incredible green! – is reminder enough of how blessed this summer is. It has been wonderful. It couldn’t be more different than last year, where the grass was basically done growing by the end of June, and we ate dust all summer long. The grasshopper infestation was unreal and our stackyards stood empty of hay. The only reason the garden survived at all is because of the amount of time I spent watering it.

What a different year it has been!

The garden is gorgeous, really just thanks to the heavenly weather. My perennials are thriving, as well as some annuals I started from seed this year, and I’m already scheming to dig up another part of the yard to start planting volunteers and babies, and to rehome plants when I divide them up. A well-kept garden is almost a thing of the past, and I think that is such a loss. Beebalm and catmint and verbena and coneflowers, cosmos and zinnias and poppies…I love the color they add! Taking pride in one’s home and in beautifying the home and yard is a valuable pursuit!

The vegetable garden, though…Oh my. Every few days I’m able to harvest wonderful quantities of greens and herbs – kale, chard, arugula, spinach, lettuce, cilantro, dill, basil…We’ve been eating the most delicious steak salads! But for some reason I didn’t ever write about my greenhouse, when we first built it a couple of months ago. Maybe because I was afraid it would just be a disaster, possibly due to the fact that it blew down within three hours of initially setting it up. It really was quite heartbreaking.

But after my handy husband did a lot of head scratching and dirt work, he designed and executed a frame made out of old railroad ties from a corral my grandpa built, sank the railroad ties in the ground about four feet, and the greenhouse cover (from the one that blew down) perfectly fit over this frame. A lot of 2x4s and screws later and plenty of redneck flair, this greenhouse isn’t going anywhere. It has withstood some pretty heavy winds, a significant hailstorm or three, and the vegetables in it are absolutely thriving. Weekly fertilizing of the entire greenhouse, weekly strip-pruning of the tomatoes, and it is doing better than I ever anticipated. My tomatoes are taller than I am, and I’ve been having to tie the branches to the roof of the greenhouse as they’ve outgrown the cages. The branches are loaded with green fruit and yesterday we ate the first tomatoes of what should be an abundant harvest!

Gardening is so fun when it works the way it is supposed to!

The pullets started laying a few days ago, and it makes me chuckle how much I enjoy finding white eggs from my Leghorns! I am sad and not sad to say that Bernard the rooster got voted off the island a week or so ago, leaving my hens (and myself) much happier and more peaceful, with Big Boy doing all his roosterly duties in a much more respectable and respectful manner. However, Bernard may be joined shortly by Peewee, the jerk of a Leghorn rooster that was supposed to be a pullet. He is tiny, fast, and just mean. Bernard was a jerk, but he never chased me down. Peewee is a whole different story, and he’s only four months old. Yikes.

So we are finally eating meals again entirely produced on this ranch, from the beef to the eggs to the veggies and greens, and how satisfying that is! At any given time I have about a gallon of kombucha brewing, and a half pint to a pint of milk kefir. Bread baking happens on a weekly basis, give or take, whether it is a quick loaf of machine-baked whole wheat, or a carefully tended four-loaf batch of sourdough.

The hay crop is almost entirely rolled up, our fat steer is getting fatter on his daily grain ration, and in short this is just a good summer. They aren’t all like this, and it didn’t take me long being married to a rancher to figure that out…They aren’t all like this, so when we do have a great year, I will savor it. And savor it. And savor it some more. Sometimes I think a little more savoring of the good things would help get all of us through the tough times.