sashes, part one.

Today Ellen and I are teaming up to bring you something that will be an ongoing and continual coming-together-of-like-minded-women. 

Here's Ellen, here are our sashes.

I wonder about us women. Why we don't have more grace for ourselves. Why don't we?

Mostly I've been feeling that tug on my heart about work. Whether we work in or out of the home. Whether we work for real, actual, paper, big girl money or for hearts and souls and blessings for our family or for both. It's all important. I've been a full time working mom and a part time working mom and a full time stay at home and a, well, I don't even know how to describe myself now.

I want us to have grace for ourselves about our working. I want us to learn to be like the excellent wife of Proverbs 31 who "works with her hands with delight" (v.13).

What if we let our working at home and working for home and working from home and working away from home be a delight? A delight but not a definition.

It's going to take understanding that each woman's calling is different. It's going to take saying no to comparison. It's going to take disinviting perfectionism. It's going to take dethroning lists so that they serve us instead of us serving them.

It's going to take the grace of Christ in every inch of our being to find delight in our work. Not another reason we're not good enough or as good as. Not another reason we won't ever get it right. Not another reason for discontent. Not about payment or recognition or worth.

Just a delight. Just a way to bless our families. Just a way to be good stewards of what we have. Just a way to use the gifts we've been given.

Just a delight.

Will you? Will you seek to delight in your God-given, whatever it looks like work with me?