Child raising is only part of being married; these years spent raising children are fleeting. Build your marriage as well as build your home (home referring to family life and homemaking) by working with your husband – each in your God-created role – during the child raising years to create a thriving, happy, healthy, whole family. In the years to come you will both enjoy beholding the masterpiece of life that you and he – two halves of an unfathomably intricate whole – have created.
Some women would really like to quit their jobs, but feel that they can’t. Some women have no children and fill hours of their week working for enjoyment. Some women who spent years being homemakers get jobs outside of their homes when their children are grown. Some women are single by choice or situation and work to support themselves. There are all sorts of other reasons that women work outside of their homes and for money from their homes. Though these women work for pay doesn’t mean that they can’t find support, encouragement, and happiness in the pages and teachings of Fascinating Womanhood. Mrs. Andelin wrote FW for all women, and it has helped, and continues to help, all women who apply the teachings as best they can.
While Fascinating Womanhood ~ Alaska offers a lot of writings about full-time homemaking and directed to full-time homemakers, working women can find helpful information in these writings, too. All women have a large part in making their houses homes, and many women enjoy making their homes the best they can be. FW~A writings about feminine beauty, recipes, character, and so forth are very applicable to all women, whether they work for pay or not, too.
Fascinating Womanhood and Fascinating Womanhood ~ Alaska exist for every woman, everywhere in the world, who would like to learn from and share in its teachings.
This post contains “how to” tips for creating a uniquely marvelous world for one’s family. It is the second of a two-part series; click here to read part one, if you’d like.
Have a Plan
Spend time with your husband thinking of the way you’d like for your home to be, then make a plan to make it happen. Key to successful planning is to make this plan realistic, knowing that things can change. Money situations can occur, (job losses or changes, the price of items planned for can increase, etc.) a situation necessitating a move may occur, one’s mind about an item can change, and as is the case for many families when making such plans… implementing them can take longer than expected.
Be Patient
It can take a lot of time, years even, to get one’s home the way one wants it. There’s a lot of work to be done initially, then built upon, perfected, and maintained.
First Things First
Your world’s – family’s – foundation is a loving marriage. You can’t build a lasting world on a damaged, cracked, or broken foundation. Before you get too far into planning, read Fascinating Womanhood and apply its teachings to have the foundation you need for total success.
The Mood of Your World
We have all likely been to grand homes that are marvelous to look upon, but feel cold and unloving, or that evoke cool or negative feelings. To be a happy home world, the mood must be happy. The mood of your home should be positive. Even in times of mourning and troubles, the home should reflect solid strength and comfort and that healing can be found there. While a multitude of things affect the mood of the home: lighting, furniture, its cleanliness, colours, and such, it is the homemaker has the most influence upon it. Fascinating Womanhood contains teachings on setting a wonderful mood in the home, perfectly conducive to creating an amazing family world.
The Spirit of Your Home
Make your home a place in which The Spirit of God can be found. A home with unwholesome things in it such as pornography, illegal items, immoral music and media, and immoral practices is a home that is unwelcoming to The Holy Spirit for any length of time. A home that is wholesome can radiate The Spirit of God and be a real light to the occupants as well as visitors and passersby. This sort of home is a light to a community and world. The more of the homes in America, the better, and the more blessed our nation will be.
Keep Your Children’s Ages and Safety in Mind
Keep your child’s world safe for them and other children who visit. This applies to home, yard, and play furnishings as well as products.
There are many poison plants and household/yard toxins that are best completely avoided while raising little ones. Even some vegetable plants like tomatoes and eggplants are poison if ingested. Take the time to learn about plants and home products that are non-toxic; this makes anyone’s home world even nicer and better.
Mothers and fathers who create safe worlds for their children are nurturing their children and their own peace of mind. Children who grow-up with Dads and Moms who sincerely work to ensure their safety and well-being are children who grow-up with a proper respect for and trust in authority; children earnestly respect and trust those worthy of it, those who have only the best for them in mind, heart, and action – their parents set the mold for this respect and trust. These children grow-up feeling safe in their homes and from the world, and in our family’s worlds, this safety is essential. As they grow older, there are different safety precautions to take as well as more things that were once unsafe that can be safely assumed. This is a good way to live: everyone safe, happy, and properly and age-appropriately cared for.
There are also safety issues to be thought of for all ages of family members and visitors. Keep the home in good repair to avoid accidents and learn about home safety for all ages and apply what you learn to your home. To make our big world a safer place, we must begin with our own worlds – our homes.
In Conclusion
Tomorrow, God willing, a post with links to safe and unsafe plants and products and home safety will be posted.
Discussion - It’s great to learn from each other, so please feel free to ask any questions you have and or share your thoughts on the following or anything else related to this post by commenting:
What have you done for your family that has made your own family world unique and feel good?
Have you anything to add to this post list that you have found helpful in creating your family’s world?
Is there any section of this post that you would like to elaborate further upon or any thoughts you’d like to add to it?
God created the heavens and the earth - the world – and took great delight and pleasure in it, so much so that He took an entire day to rest in the delight and pleasure of His creativity. We can take such pleasure, such delight in doing this for our own families. We can create our own unique worlds in our houses, yards, and gardens (hereafter referred to as “homes” in this post) that bring our families and visitors great delight and pleasure. We can create divine places that resonate with the beauty and marvel of God’s creation for our own families!
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has blessed us with an incalculable number of resources to use and draw upon to create worlds of wonder for our families. It is easy to believe that no human has ever tapped into all of these resources. They are there, waiting to be discovered, and there are no better people on earth to discover them than us – today’s homemakers! We have the time and energy, as homemakers, to explore creativity to great realms, and we are created by The Almighty, Awesome Creator to thrive in creating. The world is a treasure chest that’s barely been opened, and because our Creator has so blessedly, marvelously created us as women, He will give us His Mighty Hand to open the treasure chest for us to take what we need to build our families.
It is always important to keep in mind that creating such places doesn’t mean that a homemaker has to be financially wealthy. Splendid, marvelous houses, yards, and gardens have been created by homemakers for thousands of years with little money. For example, a grandmother on a very limited income can grow a bounty of beautiful flowers to adorn her porch from seeds she has saved and shared with other women over the years. She could take an old worn out pan that is no longer usable in the kitchen and make it into a beautiful flower container. Her grandchildren, sitting on her back porch, can spend hours of time over the summer looking at the flowers and pondering their marvel and existence. A meticulously kept lawn can be a splendor to behold, even if it surrounds a very humble home. A new coat of paint on an old swingset, in a child’s favourite colour, can become a focal point of a yard and bring such a warm, loving, nurturing feeling to all who see it, not to mention the hours of fun children will have on it while engrossed in playing in their own play worlds.
Our children’s worlds are their homes. Our children are only children once in their lives, for a fraction of their lives. Let’s make their worlds as glorious, delightful, and marvelous as they can be before sending them out to live the rest of their lives in the world outside of their childhood homes. Having grown up seeing their world as a beautiful, magnificent place full of opportunities for exploration, development, and goodness, all grounded in reality, will give them a view of the earthly world as such. From such children come tomorrow’s world changers, adults who make the world a better place for they know that yet discovered resources and possibilities, that the world’s greatest creations, have yet to be discovered, drawn upon, and created. Our children deserve the beautiful worlds that we, their Mothers, who hand-in-hand with their earthly Fathers, can create.
Devotedly, enjoyably creating our own unique worlds in our homes is also a tremendous blessing to one’s husband, oneself, and fellow mankind. A husband and wife are co-architects in building this world: he provides the financial resources necessary, his input, manly touches, mechanical skills, and handyman and construction skills to much of it; she uses the financial resources he provides to get the materials she needs to create, such as: fabric for making custom-curtains and pillows, ordering grass seed, paints and canvas to create artwork for the home, flower seeds, etc. The two are a hand and glove in creating their family’s world. They are building their lives together and creating a marvelous home for themselves, their children, and all who are blessed with visiting them. Their love, made manifest by their works, makes even the most seemingly humble of homes look and feel like one of the richest places on earth, because it is. This love shines.
We all create our families own unique worlds whether we realize it or not, there’s no way around it. Whether these homes are destructive or constructive, weak or stong, beautiful, mediocre, or ugly, depends upon what we make of them. Let’s all work to make our homes the very best they can be, let’s reach our hands into the treasure chest God has opened for us and get to work creating marvelous, outstanding worlds for our families ♥!
If you are a woman interested in creating a wonderful world for your family but feel overwhelmed about or unsure of where to start, visit this blog’s home page again on Monday, March 26, 2012 for part two of this series, which contains information on how to create such a fascinating world for one’s family!
Mrs. Helen Andelin, authoress of the best-selling book for wives Fascinating Womanhood wrote of how its teachings are helpful for single mothers on page five of the 2007 (latest) edition, quoted with permission:
“The teachings are also helpful to the single mother who is rearing a family without a father present in the home. She becomes the feminine image for her children to view, as essential to boys in developing their manliness as to girls in developing their womanliness. She should also teach them about masculinity by providing them with a male image to associate with – her father, a brother, or another male person.”
In writing of another male person, of course Mrs. Andelin doesn’t mean intruding on another woman’s marriage and family life, but by finding an excellent, wholesome male role model. Big Brothers and similar groups may be good places to find such men.
Another way that Fascinating Womanhood can help single mothers is by helping them become women that chivalrous, kind men, “good guys” would like to get to know better. A Fascinating Woman is a woman who is a good mother and has proper self-esteem, dignity, excellent character, and femininity and thus will attract men who appreciate these things and treasure her for them.
A Fascinating Single Mother is also chaste, meaning that she lives a sexually pure life. This is actually a big deal. She is free from the worry of catching a life changing and even life-ending sexually transmitted diseases and those whom she dates are free from worry of catching them from her. She and the lucky man who she attracts are free to get to know each other with no sexual pressure. This is also a big deal to her children, for it is respect-worthy and prevents a lot of upset that so often occurs when one’s single mother is sexually promiscuous or active with any, many, or all of the men she dates.
If a woman is a single mother with no interest in remarrying or even dating, this book is still very helpful (see Mrs. Andelin’s quote above).
If you are a single mother, please consider picking-up a copy of Fascinating Womanhood. This book could be exactly what you’ve been looking for or need for inspiration and happiness. The latest, 2007 edition is recommended.
“The benefits of doing creative work can be summed up this way: It brings an inner-satisfaction and a greater feeling of self-worth. This substantially helps a person become more emotionally sound. When a young person reaches this state of emotional stability, it would follow that he is less inclined to resort to unwholesome outlets for satisfaction, outlets such as alcohol, drugs, violence, vandalism and other bad conduct. When he is a creator, he is not apt to be a destroyer.” ~ Mrs. Helen Andelin, from page 291 of her book All About Raising Children, quoted by permission.
Do every thing - great and small – with not only good in mind for the day, but for the future, as well. An example of this would be in the daily grooming and dressing of one’s toddler: bathe her, brush her hair, brush her teeth, dress in her modern, clean, nice looking clothing, put a pretty bow (age appropriate for safety) in her hair, and tell her how beautiful she is. The toddler and her mother will feel good that she is taken well-care of today and her mother will be building her daughter’s self-confidence, as well as her own confidence in being a good mother, which will help both of them for the rest of their lives. Things like these produce loving bonds and are the building blocks of positive relationships, which are life-long treasures that can easily span and grow for generations.
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