Queen of the Castle Week: 34

For those of you playing along...(if you've just joined us you can get caught up a bit here) we are on week 34 of the book Queen of the Castle: 52 weeks of encouragement for the uninspired, domestically challenged or just plain tired homemaker. 

This week's chapter is "The Job of Queen:  Homemaking As a Profession, Part 1".  Lynne says "Sometimes it feels as though we homemakers are dismissed by the rest of the world.  They don't seem to comprehend that we actually have a job."  This job requires skills and talents!  In 2001, author Ann Crittenden estimated the value of a mother's work at an annual $100,000!!  The work we perform each day in our homes is incredibly valuable."  

I really needed to hear this today.  It was a rough one.  We've all had them, though, and the following excerpt helps us get back on track.

"From the raw material of four walls and a roof, a shelter over our heads, we will have made a home by force of our own personalities.  We will have warmed, cheered, and sustained the head of that house, turned progeny into a family.  We will have learned a dozen skills and enjoyed the fruits of such skills.  For us the baby will have taken his first step, repeated his first word.  We will have heard the schoolchild call "Mommy" as soon as he puts a foot inside the door, not so much to have a reply as to be assured that he is safe, life is ordinary, and that We are there...

Free choice, importance, the prizes as well as the perils of a career -- they are all ours.  What more can one ask of a profession?"

-- Phyllis McGinley,  Sixpence in Her Shoe

"Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.  For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised."  Hebrews 10:35-36