5th Monday: "Investing in Love" - Erin Young

It’s no secret that this world is a mess.  In thinking about what to write for this post, I found myself trying to decide which mess I was going to try to tackle.  I can’t get on social media without being confronted with something new and egregious, so I had a plethora of options from which to choose.  I felt this weird sense of responsibility—I need to share with the readers of this blog post how to solve the problem of gun control versus security in our schools or the biblical response to abortion or why elephants shouldn’t have the same rights as humans or what in the world is wrong with Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, etc.

I found myself thinking back to a conversation from a couple of weeks ago.  One of our boys had heard something about the Depp v Heard trial and asked me and my husband about it.  My husband told them the gist of it but ended with the good news that they would never have to worry about being in a situation like that.  One of them said, “Oh, because we’ll never be rich?”  Well, that too, probably, but there are non-celebrities with chaotic messes of lives too.  Enough to create shows like Jerry Springer, so there must be more to it than just being not-rich.  Ron reminded them that God laid out boundaries and rules for our lives that if followed, would lead to happiness, peace, and fulfillment.  Side note:  This is one of the things that I love about my husband.  He takes advantage of teachable moments and uses them for God’s glory.

T. DeWitt Talmage wrote a sermon entitled “Conjugal Harmony.”  In it, he said, “A church within a church, a republic within a republic, a world within a world, is spelled by four letters: h-o-m-e. If things go right there, they go right everywhere; if things go wrong there, they go wrong everywhere.”  I can’t solve the world’s problems in one blog post or even one million blog posts, but I can do what God has called me to do in my little world called home. 

This looks different for everyone.  For me, it looks different in the summer months than it does during the school year; but the principles stay the same.  In the same sermon, Talmage says, “…to those who would have a happy home…let love preside in it.”  When I was telling Ron about my writer’s block, he encouraged me to write about the balance between being a teacher and a wife and mother, and my first thought was, “What the heck does that look like?  How can I write about that if I don’t know?”  There are so many times that I feel like I’m failing in one or more areas of my life, but I think Talmage got to the root of it.  It’s love. Sometimes love looks like a home-cooked meal and sometimes it looks like Domino’s pizza delivery even though you prefer Papa John’s.  Sometimes love looks like empty laundry baskets and sometimes it looks like overflowing hampers behind closed doors while you play a board game with your family. 

Always love looks like investment. 

Invest in your family by spending time in prayer for them.  One book that has been especially transformative in my life is The Power of a Praying Wife by Stormie Omartian.  She says that “prayer is the ultimate love language.”  Spend time praying for your family.  This is something I’m very passionate about, and if I ever get asked to write for this blog again, maybe that’s what I’ll write about.  For now, wives, you should really read that book!

Invest in your family financially.  I’ve always thought the following statement from the short story “Rip Van Winkle” was one of the saddest lines in literature:  “[Rip’s] children too were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody….  [His son, Rip,] was generally seen…equipped in a pair of his father’s cast of galligaskins, which he had must ado to hold up with one hand….”  Earlier in the story, Washington Irving describes Rip through the eyes of the children of the village:  they would “shout with joy whenever he approached.  He assisted at their sports, made their play things, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories….”   Rip Van Winkle had all the time in the world for the children in the village, while his own children ran around wild in hand-me-downs that didn’t fit.  Take care of your family.  Food and clothing are the obvious and necessary expenses, but education, sports, music lessons, etc.—these are all investments.  Carol Roberts, my principal and friend, says she refuses to call Christian education a sacrifice.  “We don’t call our mortgage payment or our car payment a sacrifice.  They’re investments.”  Our children should be our number one priority when it comes to financial investments.

Invest in your family by spending time with them.  I want to share one more quote from Talmage: 

I advise, also that you make your chief pleasure circle around about that home. It is unfortunate when it is otherwise. If the husband spend most of his nights away from home, of choice, and not of necessity, he is not the head of the household; he is only the cashier. If the wife throw the cares of the household in the servant’s lap, and then spend five nights of the week at the opera or theatre, she may clothe her children with satins and laces and ribbons that would confound a French milliner, but they are orphans. Oh, it is sad when a child has to say its prayers alone because mother has gone off to the evening entertainment! In India they bring children and throw them to the crocodiles, and it seems very cruel; but the jaws of modern American dissipation are swallowing down more little children today than all the monsters that ever crawled upon the banks of the Ganges!

The amount of time will not be the same for every family, but I like the way Talmage puts it:  “make your chief pleasure circle around about that home.”   Do you love to spend time with your family?

Whatever that looks like for you in your season of life, invest in your family.  Make sure you are working to change the only world you really have any semblance of control over: yours.  The world is a mess.  Your home doesn’t have to be.