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.