Job Security

I've heard it said that a woman's work is never done. And while that is true I think the reasons are wrong. That little saying is mostly used to describe the amount of work that goes into being a wife and a mother.

But I think it's more about the kind of work we do. The minute we are done with a job it is immediately undone.

We clean a toilet and... someone uses the bathroom.

We do laundry...all the laundry, but we still have clothes on that are dirty, place mats on the table that need washing and towels in the bathroom that belong in the hamper.

We wash our children's bodies only to have them spill juice all over themselves, color on their leg, or take their pizza covered fingers and run them through their hair.

We sweep our floors just in time for our kids to track dirt in from the yard...or our husbands bring in little clumps of freshly mowed grass.

We wash dishes, drying the last glass and putting it away and then a band of thirsty kids come trailing in the house.

At first we don't like it. It drives us crazy, but then we fall into the rhythm of it... enjoying it a little.

Then we realize how much we, as keepers of the home, depend on that rhythm. Our job is temporarily taken away from us, maybe because of sickness or surgery or whatever the reason, and we sit and watch others doing our job for us. We don't like that at all. We long to be back in the place of feeling the rhythm of the repetitiveness of our lives...

And that is when we understand it. We love that clothes are never clean and there are dishes that are never really done. Because we realize we are needed. We are depended on. We realize that it's not "jobs" or "chores" that we are doing. But rather small repetitive acts of love and kindness mostly unnoticed and usually thankless.

And so we smile at the clumps of freshly cut grass and sternly tell our children they are "only to write on paper" all the while giggling inside as we wipe the marker off their faces. It is then that we feel most secure in our post as "homemaker"... it is, in fact, our own form of job security.

We can't be fired... and even though we moan and grown from time to time...

We love it!