Commitment to Hard Work

I am a firm believer that if a task is extremely hard to do, it must be incredibly worth it. The rewards will certainly surpass the time you might spend putting in extra elbow grease to get something done. I am no stranger to hard work. I lived most of my teen years with my mom and two brothers. My home life was unstable, and I often felt responsible for taking care of my siblings. For whatever reason, I was motivated to begin a rigorous cleaning regimen that took over all of my afternoons after school. I'm not sure if the house was always as unorganized as it seemed, or if I was cleaning compulsively to gain control over my life at home and mask my unhappiness. Regardless of the reason, those few years prepared me to work hard in my new home with my husband and son. Despite all of the unrest in my childhood home, I have tried to use it to God's glory as I can provide a neat and warm home for my family. My husband has to do NO housework. None. Nor do I believe that he should have to. I am striving to emulate what is written in Titus, as women are called to "love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their husbands, that the Word of God may not be reviled" (2:4-5). Undoubtedly I need to work on some of those traits, but working at home has always come naturally to me.

I have a difficult time understanding others who refuse to do work or those who ignore a job that needs to be done. I was recently inspired to do the hard things after reading Commitment to Love by Deanna McClary. She details the struggles she and her husband, Clebe, endured after he was severely injured in the Vietnam War. The fight to save his life and rehabilitate him led her to Christ and gave her the motivation to do the work of two people. She speaks of how foolish she was for trying to help Clebe dig several holes with a post hole digger while he was out of town. Despite the heat and the strain, she worked for two days to dig over sixty holes because it was a gift to her husband. I don't think many women would risk the dirt, sweat, tears, and even the hernia that Deanna endured. The look on Clebe's face made it all worth it. She recalls how hard her father worked: "I owe it to my father that I don't shrink from hard work, and there's not a better gift you can give a loved one than to do a difficult task for him" (193). I believe that hard work is important and even necessary for a home, business, or anything else to run smoothly and efficiently. As my hunger for work at home increases, I only hope that other women can see the value in working, and thus, loving their husbands.