What I Hate About Working From Home

Audrea's job is so much harder than mine, and most of her rewards are so intangible.

She spends her whole day serving our family by cooking, cleaning, teaching, organizing, singing, shopping, saving, praying, disciplining, peacemaking, shepherding, crying, remembering, forgetting, suffering, laughing, restraining, preparing, planning, understanding, thinking, praising, rebuking, caring ... shall I go on? I could.

I spend 8 hours of my day serving my family by sitting upstairs at my computer thinking, writing, and coding. I get to listen to music all day, experience mostly peace and quiet, and have a view that is amazing. It's so unfair. It just seems like a crime.

While I truly appreciate the blessing of working from home, I hate having to stay put, do my job, and know that Audrea is doing so much more than I am doing.

This drives me to realize two things:

1. When a husband comes home from work (or in my case, comes downstairs!) to a wife that stays at home with the children, and especially if she is one who also teaches at home, he should do whatever he possibly can to help her in fulfilling her role as wife and mother of her family. This is just as applicable to those families who are unable (or choose not) to have one parent at home: the roles of each partner do not change--the work/ministry (in my mind) would be still there to do, but would need to be done with less time available.


2. A husband (like myself) should be motivated to work as hard as he possibly can at his job in order to honor God in the fulfilling of his role as provider and protector of his family.

One other thing that these impress on me: I love my wife more than you can even know.