A Titus 2 Testimony

Well isn’t it lovely to wake up to loads of ideas about our homes. I certainly need the inspiration to help keep me grounded in my work. My home is a place of healing and peaceful solitude for me. My spiritual well being also my mental health can become so easily worn if I’m simply not at home
enough. Not only do I feel it in myself but the evidence within my family is startling.
 
However, when I am at home drifting beautifully from one task to the next my very being is so satisfied. The deep fulfillment brings to me a sense of security that can not be achieved through anything else. It brings a confidence that allows me the strength to care less and less about
other people’s standards or judgments. If other people’s opinions are beginning to get to me or I am becoming more overwhelmed and confused about my own personal direction in life, I can be sure through years of experience now that my homemaking is not as it should be. The greatest balm to life’s traumas for me personally is tending to my home. Like an anchor for my battered soul is tidying up the house, putting on some washing and preparing that days menu. When during the times of severe strife there were many issues to depress me and frighten me that I had little or no control over, tending to my home brought me control and balance. As each day I stumbled on in agony my spirit could be lifted ever so slightly enough to keep breathing it seemed by time out in the garden or making bread. The simple tasks of homemaking that would appear to the uninitiated as completely unrelated to mental health were indeed my all encompassing medication.

This is the place I run to, not from. This is the place for the most satisfying rest of all. This is the place I can legitimately shut the doors and take the phone of the hook. When my children begin to see that I am well within myself, that I am at peace then they also find their own contentment. I am in the most part their security, they have been taught the reasons for obedience and are therefore obedient. In fact I can honestly say they are always obedient they understand the importance of simply doing as I say. I put many hours into that one issue alone, so our home is peaceful. As teenage girls grow up and naturally content with each other, all I need to do is occasionally separate them! Listen well to them and be available.There is authority in our home. They understand the reason for this, and how we all benefit from the calm atmosphere.

Please do not misunderstand me! I learned this the hard way it took me many years to stop contending with my husband. To learned the value of constantly conceding to him, whether I believed I was right or wrong. Eventually I was disciplined by him and learned always to concede and to trust my defense to the Lord and not to myself. I finally learned over time
the peace in our home was worth so much more than justice or vindication.This peace became my power. My children as well as my husband began to understand that I alone welded the power for contentment or strife in our home as I worked to bring peace and understanding between them and over time learned to accept the injustices of life trusting that the Lord would deal with it all.
 

I worked hard to restore my husband’s relationship with his children, honouring him by explaining difficult situations with a pure heart always with the goal of maintaining their father in honour towards them. Eventually he learned to love his children deeply and they became his reason for living, he could not live without them as they loved him and honoured him to his own place of healing. Not that I ever made excuses for him or compromised by saying something was right when it was clearly wrong. I taught my children to distinguish their father from his sins.

 
Now I have the power in my home, yet my husband has all the authority. He knows and will never say a word about it that my love for him and for our children has been and will always be an undeniable force in our home. He could legitimately walk all over me and I would let him, however he is powerless to do that because my children love me and honour me and only because of that do they love and honour him.

 
I write this not because I have all the answers. I have had to learn this because I failed in my marriage. I was put through fire because I was hard headed and arrogant. It was easier for me to blame my husband’s hardheartedness and cruelty on his own past and live like a victim. The
Lord taught me through these past painful years that I was never a victim unless I choose to be. 


Love, Phillipa


May the only wise God grant you His wisdom for every part of your life.