What do you do?

For the first 35 years of my life (ok maybe not childhood), this question never impacted me. It was just another question like, “How are you,” or “What’s up”? It wasn’t until I finally got married at age 35 and my husband and I decided that it made more sense for me to stay home then to work 40 hours a week. We were building a home together. We had travel plans and farmstead plans, and just selling our two previous houses and moving everything to one was a full time job. We were combining two households, two daughters and two very independent adults into one home, and that takes energy…and lots of patience.

It has now been four years since we said “I do.” My biological daughter has now entered into her first year of college. Our eleven year old attends a Christian school 50 minutes away and although a full time job would still not make sense for our family as that would put all of the strain of driving on my husband, I could get a part time job. This leads me back to the title of this blog which is “What do you do”? Last month I actually did try out a part time job. It only lasted a couple of weeks because it wasn’t a good fit in my life (not to mention there was zero training for it and I was lost), but it was in my field of Social Work. I graduated from University of Pittsburgh which is ranked one of the top-ranked schools for that in the country. I was 24 when I graduated and during those four and a half years of schooling I managed to work full time and have a child. I was b-u-s-y with a capital B! Not only was I busy, but I was drowning! I was drowning in debt, drowning in lack of time with my daughter, lack of resources, guilt, etc. With sometimes some support of family, I managed to get through college, provided a roof over our heads, had a church home and did my best to have a sense of normalcy and security in our lives…but I didn’t “feel” secure. I didn’t ever “feel” relaxed or to be able to live in the moment and enjoy what I had. I was paralyzed often from fear of the unknown and ridden with anxiety. I was often inward in my thoughts trying to not allow my daughter to feel the heaviness that was suffocating me.

As I bring this story back around, I realize I only took the part time job because of feeling like I need to still be “busy” and was afraid that other people were thinking that I didn’t do enough because I wasn’t working outside the home. I was feeling a lack of importance from myself. When asked now “What do you do”? I have decided to proudly state that “I am a homemaker and a farmsteader.” I don’t even care that farmsteader comes up on my spellcheck and says it is not a word. Just like that word, I have to sometimes make up my days as I go. Everyday is different. Sometimes I shovel goat poop, sometimes I spend 4 hours in the car providing transportation for my step daughter’s schooling, sometimes I provide Bible study for my friends…and sometimes I hop on my four wheeler and cruise around with my husband or my family and friends and enjoy God’s creation.

It is up to me to be prayerful daily and ask the Lord if there is anything he would like me to do or to pray for others. It is up to me to stay disciplined in my daily chores and spiritual life, and it is up to me to allow God to move me in His directions and “prune me” and to not get ahead of Him. So now when someone asks me “What do you do,” I no longer automatically think that I should be “doing” something other than exactly what I am doing. I know in my heart that I remain in God’s will and God’s homestead because that is where he is using me.

John 15:1-8 “I am the vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers ; such branches are picked up, thrown in the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given to you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”