A Quiet Moment To Keep

Here I am at the keyboard once again. The house is quiet and no one needs anything. I'm looking forward to going downstairs in a few minutes and warming up some Pepperoni and Sausage Pizza I made yesterday and eating it along with a warm piece of pumpkin pie.
Can you tell I'm relishing the moments? I am, and do you know why? Because my children and husband have left to grandma's house to visit for the rest of the day and I alone am left to keep it.

I can't say that I'm an exemplary keeper of the home. I would fall short of some people's standards, I suppose. I look at the house sometimes and I have to make choices throughout my day. I have to choose whether to spend time really talking to my children or cleaning my room. Having reading time with them or mopping and scrubbing the floors. There doesn't seem to be time to do it all. At least not for me, so I have to choose. Some days, my home is clean-but some days well....I'm off somewhere perhaps making a memory, or homeschooling, or making dinner, folding laundry.... This is no excuse for not doing the task at hand, but for me I have come to a great compromise. I will be content to do what I can with my time and make a home for my family by keeping it.

So how do you keep the home? I can't say that I'm an expert either, because I've only been married 16 yrs. and well...we can all learn something new, right? But I think keeping the home is this:

To love those that it holds with your heart.
To nourish it by feeding it Words of Life.
To make it a place where the heart is touched.
To keep it from that which would seek to harm.
To make memories that will echo through time.

There's probably more explicit things that could be put on that list, but those are just common sense things that I don't need to mention. I will say this though, you can't keep the home if your heart is not in it. You can't keep the home if you're not there. You can't nourish the home if you have nothing to give to it. It will not be a home where the heart is touched if your heart is hard and untouchable. You can't keep it from harm if you let harm come in. And finally, the memories won't echo through time if time is not taken to make them.

This is a lot to think about. I started out thinking keeping the home was staying there and keeping it clean.

Keeping a home.
Oh, what a privilege.
To Be the Love Abiding Strand
That holds together in perfect union,
Those that within it would labor in.

Seeking the strength of the Almighty
To guide the keeper's words and ways
This task of keeping is worth the gaining,
and losing of one's own self in it.


Now I guess, I'll go eat my pizza.