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Simplify Your Domestic Church

by Elizabeth Foss in Homemaking on Tuesday, April 24, 2012 7:00 AM

There is something about the lazy, hazy days of July that inspire some of us to purge, paint, and putter in our homes. Perhaps it is the heat outside and the light pouring through the windows. Perhaps it is the looming chaos we sense will be inevitable when a new school year begins. Regardless of its genesis, the summer home beautification project has begun in earnest.

Abby Sasscer, author of Simplifying Your Domestic Church and a professional organizer for fifteen years, knows a thing or two about de-cluttering homes. I chatted with Abby by telephone one recent afternoon while both our babies slept. What started as an interview evolved into what Abby calls “Project Martha,” telephone conversations that help women get started in creating orderly domestic churches and ongoing telephone help to enable them to stay the course.

Begin With the Basics

We began with basic definitions. Abby reminded me that the goal is order and not necessarily orderliness. “True order does not always mean orderliness.  True order lies in loving God first, then spouse, then children, then home, and lastly, community,” Abby noted. She said that in some homes, authentically living these priorities will result in a home that might be untidy at times. 

Abby’s e-book, which began as an organizational book, is a spiritual journal. Step by step, the book takes a woman through some soul searching in an effort to grow in the virtues of simplicity and holy detachment and to create in our homes a place of holiness. While there are the typical practical tips one would expect in an organizational book, there are two features that set this book apart from any other:

1. Clear Questions. With every chapter, Abby provides a simple, clean page with lots of white space to answer some very probing questions. Like an examination of conscience, the questions lead women to consider priorities and habits (and any disconnect between the two). The act of writing thoughtful answers to the questions is a proactive step towards meaningful change. Because the book is downloaded to the family computer, these questions can be printed for every member of the family old enough to consider them—a step which will make striving for order a family affair with clear focus. 

2. Words of Wisdom. There is a section for every chapter featuring words of wisdom from the saints. Abby asserts that it is “critical to spend 20 minutes of quiet time every day before the kids get up because we have so much to learn about ourselves and what God has in mind for us. We need to let God fill us with thoughts and ideas on how we’re going to make it today.” Taking the quotes to the Lord in prayer brings holiness to the work at hand. Abby reminded me, “Don’t get so caught up doing the work of the Lord that you neglect the Lord of the work. God needs to be loved like everybody else on our list. If he doesn’t change your circumstance, he’ll change your heart.”

Abby says that the greatest lesson she has learned and the focus of her ministry is that our goal is not perfectly clean, organized empty homes. Our goal is Heaven and we can look at our domestic duties as an opportunity to practice virtue rather than seeing them as mere chores.  Instead of approaching domestic duties with a heavy heart, we are called to see the virtue behind the chore and ask God for strength and grace to meet the challenge of the task.  As wives and mothers, we spend most of our lives inside our homes, inside our domestic churches.  God placed us there because He knows we can attain sanctity there.

Know Your Type
 
Project Martha (Abby’s telephone ministry) and Project Nazareth (a local ministry where she visits homes) have afforded Abby a unique opportunity to note that women who are striving for holiness and striving for order generally fall into two distinct camps. She says, “I have met two extreme organizational personalities and everyone else in between:

“Sanguine Stash and Dash” personalities and the “Melancholic Martha Stewarts.”

The Sanguines are social butterflies and tend to put community in front of domestic duties. A woman with this personality will excuse her mess with a wave of her hand and “Jesus got upset at Martha for being so busy with her work.”  Abby’s response is “Jesus wasn’t necessarily upset at the fact that Martha was doing housework.  It’s just that she lost sight of what was important (loving Jesus) while she was in the middle of her housework.”

The other extreme are “Melancholic Martha Stewarts” who have a very difficult time functioning unless things are in good order. These women can be slaves to orderly, beautiful homes. They tend to neglect important relationships as they manage the environment. Abby encourages melancholics to keep this tendency in check since it can easily lead to the sin of the flesh as their eyes need to be constantly satiated with order and beauty.

To both extremes, Sasscer admonishes that, “Holiness is wholeness and wholeness is balance.  We need to meet in the middle. We are called to be both a Martha and a Mary.”

—Elizabeth Foss is author of Real Learning: Education in the Heart of the Home. Visit her online at ElizabethFoss.com.

[This article originally appeared here, at Faith & Family Live, in 2008]

Resources:

• Graced and Gifted: Biblical Wisdom for the Homemaker’s Heart
• A Mother’s Rule of Life: How to Bring Order to Your Home and Peace to Your Soul
• FlyLady.net

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