I say to you, dear Sisters in Christ, "It's time now to practice your homemaking."

Dear Sisters,
I have written about so many things that I have learned over the years. It has taken me years to learn some of these things. But how I love to share them with you to save you the time and the trials that it took me to get there. Recently Amy sent this letter to the loop:
~I finally made Laine's banana bread with chocolate chips. It has been less than 24 hours and the bread is down to one small piece. My husband loves it!! Thank you, Laine. My husband has loved everything that I have made that has been one of Laine's recipes.~
I sat and held back the tears after reading Amy's words. Now why would I cry over her letter? Am I experiencing hormone problems? Well, just a bit. ~Smile~ But the real reason I choked back the tears was that I was the worse cook you could imagine when my husband first married me seventeen years ago. So bad that he threw up the very first meal I made him. I couldn't help thinking about that when I read her kind words.
I remember him shaking violently, my running to the neighbors for some aspirin, rushing back into our apartment to hear him moaning in a crouched position. It was awful. Never in all of our 17 years of marriage have I seen my man so sick after eating dinner. He kept asking me for days afterward what I put into that casserole. I didn't know because I had made it up as I went. ~Smile~ Casseroles were forevermore banished from our home. I had to learn to cook without the benefit of them. So I did.
I bought a Betty Crocker's International Cookbook, and I started to learn to cook. We lived in Germany, so everything was different. I didn't have any American neighbors to help me. My family was all back in the states. And I had virtually no cooking knowledge. My oven was really strange. Buying food was an experience all by itself at our local German market. But l practiced, and I practiced, and I practiced. I wrote for help to my mother-in-law who was an experienced Mexican cook. She taught me many things through letters. I made flour tortillas that resembled different states in America. I made steaks that curled up like bowls. Gravy, in my house, was nothing more than a beef boullion cube in hot water. Brownies tended to be overcooked on the outside and liquidy on the inside. And that was from a mix! But I kept trying and trying and trying.
Then we moved to Kansas. I was pregnant with our first child. I remember Kansas specifically because this was the time that I started to make yeast bread. I remember Art hitting the bread on the table and muttering something under his breath about weapons of war.
Nothing came easy for me. Truly. I learned it all from the bottom up. The hard way. What is the hard way? The hard way is no teacher and no family around to help. The hard way is a very tight budget. The hard way is washing clothes in a tub with your feet for an agitator. The hard way is no phone to call someone for help. The hard way is having your man working all the time to come home thoroughly beat. The hard way is not being able to speak the language of the country you live in. The hard way is pushing your two cylinder car up the block just to get it started, then not being quite sure if you would make it back home. The hard way is having a baby far away from everyone you know and love, and hearing that baby cry night and day in a lonely apartment. The hard way brings a lot of tears, but also a lot of back bone. The Father's discipline. Not pleasant at the moment, but, oh, so very profitable later on.

Now when I look back, I realize that the LORD planned it perfectly each and every step of the way. I wouldn't change a thing. For I have never forgotten how difficult it was. The difficulties pulled me closer and closer to my Heavenly Father. And the tight budget necessitated my learning to cook. Without a frugal kitchen, my husband and I would have never made it on his income. God planned it that way. It forced me to learn and to discipline myself in ways I never dreamed possible. Today our home is richer for it. So I have great sympathy for the young bride or the homemaker trying to make a home when she's never been trained to make one. Or the mother trying to love her child when he seems so very agitated so very often. Or the cook trying to make a meal when she hasn't a clue where to begin. I have been there. And I know Someone else Who has been there, and Who is always there. The Father. That is why I had the strength to persevere. It was always the Father's presence which made all the difference in the world.
Why am I telling you all this? Because I want you to understand that all things that we learn take time. No one starts out fabulously in any subject. Even if they do have a gift in that area. It takes practice, practice, and more practice. And cooking a meal, or managing a home, or mothering a child is no exception. Not only that, but it is good to start out simply. For those years of simple learning are not without merit or value. They are the foundation to so much more. Our Beautiful Father knows what He has given to us as gifts, and He knows just what discipline we need to motivate us into persistent practice. This discipline brings out the luster on those gifts. Oh, it is not pleasant at the time. But so very profitable later on to the woman who has been perfected by it.
For example, I recognized early on that my son, Quincy, had an ear for music. I took a picture of him at our piano when he was just a toddler, then I blew it up to show him when he was older that I saw his talent way back then. He loves that picture now. But his talent wouldn't have gone anywhere had we not pursued it through music lessons, taken him weekly to those lessons, and developed in him a discipline to practice at home. For years his playing was simple notes and simple songs. Now it is complex Beethoven and ragtime music. But he had to start out simply and then gradually move to the complex through consistent practice over and over. His hands were disciplined to bring luster to the gift His Creator gave him.
Likewise with homemaking. We are called to be keepers of our homes. A beautiful gift from God. But many of us come into this job without any idea of how to do it. And sometimes when we read of the practices of other women, such as Emile Barnes, who are very good at it, we mutter, "Oh, I could never do all that. I'm too unorganized or not creative enough." But Emile Barnes started somewhere. And she was willing to learn, and to continue learning, as her books exemplify. You and I have to start somewhere, too. It may be from the bottom as I started, but the only way is up from there! As long as we are willing to learn and to practice. Complaining and grumbling gets us no where. Fear of failure gets us no where. Idle hands gets us no where. So as I have said to my son, Quincy, for the past seven years, "It's time now to practice your piano." I say to you, dear Sisters in Christ, "It's time now to practice your homemaking."

So this week I practiced pasta again. Last week it was too thick. This week I hope to get it right.I checked out a book on pasta from the library with beautiful pictures and recipes to encourage me. I will practice it, and practice it, and practice it until I do get it just right. Just like the banana bread. I must have made dozens of banana breads before I adapted the recipe which Amy loved. But practice makes perfect. So I'll keep practicing and practicing that it might be very easy when I am a grandmother. I hope to be "playing" Beethoven and ragtime in my kitchen by then. ~Smile~
"She girds herself with strength; and strengthens her arms." Proverbs 31:17
This was one practicing woman.
Love,
Laine