Right now I work part-time with Mary Kay Cosmetics (don't laugh!) but most of my full-time work is as a home manager and mother. I'm interested in talk directed towards the role of faith and work in the life of the stay-at-home mother. So far, most is limited in scope, imagination and application.
I have not arrived at any firm conclusions, but the following thoughts and parallels stand out and are written from my Christian worldview:
1. When faith is present, one's identity is not in the type of profession, but in being part of the Church. In other words, I am not a stay-at-home-mom, but a woman who belongs to the body of Christ and who, for now, works in the home. This opens so many doors for learning how to live out the buzz word, "your identity in Christ".
2. Many American Christians have become secularized by adopting the "right to choose" as the most basic and fundamental human value. For a stay-at-home-mom it can mean choosing which activities won't conflict with the family (cultural) goal of rest and recreation. After all, American culture works to play. Work, by and large, is no longer meaningful; meaning is found in recreation with billions of dollars spent on it each year. If I am truly changed by the parable of The Good Samaritan, who stopped to aid an undesirable at great expense to his purse, his reputation, physical safety and time; then I must submit my choices to the interests of Christ.
3. Hyper-regulation of time or the extreme lack of discipline with it can lead to selfish pleasure or comfort living. I know from lots of personal experience. How do I fight against this form of cultural naval-gazing? For one example, I can look at the evangelical church. The older a church gets, the less it tends to engage society and the more it looks inward. Just as a church can become divided the older it gets, so can a family.
Jonathan and I have started out thrilled with the new lives around us. But, how can we use this season of "bunker living" to build a firm foundation in Christ's strength and direction? We could just survive. Somehow blow through these years with some happy memories and avoid the weaknesses exposed in ourselves and in our marriage because of the financial, time and physical pressures involved in raising small children. But, just like the beginning years of the early Church in the book of Acts, these bunker years set the tone for the future.
Back in the late 80's, Tim Keller described American evangelical churches as a bunch of schools. Mostly talking, little doing. Since our home is a little church, are we a lot of talk and little doing? Will the girls learn to talk with an immigrant worker's child in their classroom, or an international student (and future world leader) at their university, or will they just "know" that being friends with such people is good but only know how to engage with those who are anglo, educated and suburban? Will they know how to forgive and ask for forgiveness, how to spend money, how to submit to their husband and in so doing love the connection of that submission with how Christ submitted his will to live for their salvation?
These early, helpless years (for both parents and children), shape the older years. Unlike a young church that later turns inward, sometimes collapsing or dividing, I hope we will counter such trends and I think it begins by learning how to bring faith into the work of building a family. This is where connecting our identity with a church is vital. The church is messy at best, but its identity is connected to God and learning how of His love for the church is a key to learning how to live as a person and a family.
