What do you do?

I work.
Outside the home.
I teach.
Lessons, and plans, and papers to grade.  Meetings.  With colleagues and parents and students.  Reading and learning and continually searching for the ways to be better for those who are my responsibility.
Inside the home.
I do what is needful.  I do what is wanted.  Plan meals.  Cook meals.  Serve meals.  Clean up after meals.  Wash.  Scrub.  Polish.  Mop.  Plant.  Water.  Harvest.  Pay those who must be paid.  Keep the medications straight.  Entertain.  Anything else?  Yes, of course.
I do what is wanted.  Make love.  Get spanked.  Spank.

Some believe that one who serves must do so "full time."  Some believe that it is important, imperative, that the one who serves must be "wholly dedicated."  Some believe that such dedication is possible only when the one who serves remains inside the home.  Kept there.  Kept.  Some believe that to work outside dilutes the focus; allows too much independence; creates divided loyalties; undermines the power structure.  How, they ask, can one who serves do so when there is required absence each day at appointed times.  Good question.

I believe that there are times during the day, when I am at work -- and He must fetch His own coffee.  The coffee that I set up for Him in the early hours of the morning ... always before I leave for work.  I believe that there are times during the day, when I am at work, that He takes out the trash, and shops for the groceries that we need.  I could do these things.  I have done these things.  If He does these things, does it change who He is; or who we are?  If He does these things, He chooses this work, and in doing it for me, He gives us the gift of time when we have time.  I believe that there are times when the salary I earn makes His life and mine better and easier.  Do I not serve in this as much as I might with a scrub brush in my hand?

My focus is divided.  I live inside and outside.  When I go out into the world, I do that with all my attention and all my mind and all my heart.  When I come home, I come home with a full and willing heart, and I bring with me the fruits of my own labor, giving that into His hands as I give everything I am.

swan