Why I Choose To Stay Home

Disclaimer : This is not for those who are managing well, working out of the home or from home & being a mother. This is for those who need encouragement that staying home is worthwhile & rewarding.

As my dh often tell people : there were 4 things I said I would never do.

• be a Christian,
• get married,
• have children and
• stay home to look after them.

By the grace & mercy of our Lord, I have done them all!

For the record, I have willingly chosen to stay home unlike some who may have had no choice but to do so. While many women have said “Good for you!” to me, these same women will also in the same breath say that it is not for them. Somehow I have always felt that that was a backhanded compliment

My mother did not have a choice but to stay home to look after me. My parents had no other childcare options. She had to stop working, which she loved (that was the time when many women started going out into the workforce), to look after me, a very strong-willed child And so I remember her telling me in a fit of anger that she had wasted her time looking after me since I was disobedient & did not do as well as she had expected of me in school.

So I told myself that I would never be forced to stay home to look after my child/ren if I should become a mother. I would stay home only because I wanted to do so. Not because I had no choice or that my dh made me do it or worse, because of peer pressure.

In the beginning, I thought I would have the best of both worlds by combining motherhood and career by doing part time work. I did that for about 6mths. Without going into details, we felt that it was not working for us. So I stopped work & took over caring for David fulltime.

So why did I choose to stay home & continue to do so?

I choose to stay home because I believe very strongly that children are blessings given to us by God (yes, even tho’ sometimes they do not act like blessings!). As with all gifts that the Lord gives to us, blessings come with responsibilities. Since He has blessed me with children, I must be responsible & look after them, not pass the buck to someone else. All the other blessings that the Lord gives are for our comfort here on earth. But the blessing of children is an eternal one. These are eternal souls given to us by God!

I choose to stay home because I believe there is no one who can care & love my children as much as I can. That no matter how annoying they get, I am still their mother & will love them. To me paying someone else to care for my children sends out a message that I have something more important/better to do than to look after them. But what can be more important than shaping these eternal souls for the Kingdom of God?

I choose to stay home because I want to influence them for the Kingdom of God. How else can I teach them about God & His Word? If I am out of the house 8 – 12hrs a day, while they remain under the care of someone else, how can I talk about the things of God “when (I) sit at home & when (I) walk along the road, when (I) lie down & when (I) get up? (Deut 6:7b). The Bible says that I am to “impress them upon (my) children” (Deut 6:7a). Not the grandparents, not the childminder, not the childcare teachers, but me! If I work, then all I have are snippets of time with the children. The person/institution that cares for them 8 – 12 hrs a day is the one who is influencing my children! Yes, the person/insittution may be Christian but does she/it believe all you believe?

At the end of the day, I stand accountable to God for how my children turn out. Yes, they may still make foolish decisions that lead to negative consequences, but if I have done all that I can in training them up in the way they should go (Prov 22:6), and have not been careless about their training, I believe God sees my heart & His grace indeed will be sufficient (2 Cor 12:9) for us all.

May this bless you as you shape those arrows that the Lord has blessed you with.