7 Ways to be a Mary in a Martha World

Queen.  Girl Boss.  Being a woman in today’s world is very confusing.  First we’re told that women belong in the kitchen.  Then we’re told women belong in the workforce.  Now we’re back to women should stay home and make TikTok videos about being a traditional wife.  Not confusing at all.

So where do we belong?  Biblically, shouldn’t we be home raising the kids and tending to our homes?  But what about after the kids are grown?  What if one income isn’t enough for your family?

The truth is, there are no right answers.  Even when we are trying our best to be a good wife, a good mom, a good employee, we always fall short.

I think for me, I’m always stuck in work mode, even when I’m not actively working. We are taught that we have to always be pursuing a higher purpose, whether it’s at home or work.  So business becomes busyness, especially when our children are young.  

The result is I rush through every activity, especially prayer.  That’s the first thing I do every morning and I always feel pressed for time.  I generally try to get an hour of work in on this website before I go to my full time job, so I’m just impatiently waiting for my prayers to be over so I can start working.

I’ve paid the price for that impatience because my personal life has become very chaotic and I’m not dealing with it well.  The one thing that keeps me focused has gone out of focus and I’m left with a sense of dread over everything in my life.   

Lazarus’s sister Martha was the same way.  When Jesus was visiting she was impatient to wait on him.  Although she had good intentions, she completely missed the point.  She was thinking only of satisfying a material need.  Mary understood that Jesus’s words were more important than a clean home and food on the table.  

If we spend all our time focusing on earthly concerns, we deprive ourselves of the peace that only comes from our relationship with Christ.  Placing Him over everything else actually helps worldly things fall into place.  So we have it backwards, which is no surprise in this backwards world.

So what’s the solution? Stop cooking dinner and say a rosary? Leave the baby crying in his crib while we read the Bible? That’s not a realistic solution either.  Balancing both needs requires a certain amount of finesse, but it’s not impossible.  

Busy moms typically don’t have time to sit down and contemplate their spiritual lives, but we can get creative with our time and make room for both family and faith.

But finding time to pray isn’t enough.  We must also change our mindset about our roles as women in the 21st century.

Be a Leader 

It seems counterproductive to increasing our spiritual life, but there are times in our life where we are called to lead and not to follow.  

I tend to run from this mindset with the belief that women are supposed to be quiet and humble.  That still holds true, but look at the Virgin Mary.  We know that after Christ’s ascension that she remained with the apostles, praying with them to God as they grew the early church.

That’s no coincidence.  Often when we think about the early Christians spreading the gospel we only think about the 12 apostles.  But the women played a large part in growing the early Church too.

Also, it was Mary’s insistence at the wedding of Cana that Jesus perform the miracle of turning water into wine.  That act was instrumental in showing the apostles that Jesus was more than a rabbi.

Mary has also been appearing in apparitions to warn us of terrible suffering if we do not turn back to God.  She is very active in helping humanity reconcile with her Son.

To celebrate her role in the church, in 2019 Pope Francis instituted the feast of Mary, Mother of the Church, which takes place the Monday after Pentecost.

We can be like Mary and quietly lead our families in prayer time.  Leadership doesn’t have to be loud; it just has to be influential.  

Make Room in Your Schedule 

I’m seriously guilty of having extra time and doing absolutely nothing with it.  Like nothing at all.  I think we all have our moments of laziness but if you’re already pressed for time and when you do have downtime you spend it uselessly, you won’t get anywhere in life.

I’m not saying you need to spend every waking moment in activities, because that honestly defeats the purpose of trying to be a Mary.  What I am saying is, when you have free time, try to use it wisely. This might mean picking up a task that you know won’t take very long but you keep putting it off.

For real, how long does it take to dust your living room?  Unless you live in a mansion (in which case you probably can afford a maid), a modest home doesn’t take long to do simple tasks.  I’m not talking about a deep clean, just one task that might take 10-15 minutes.  

We recently got a puppy and I keep telling myself there’s no way to accomplish other tasks anymore and I might as well give up trying.  Then the other day I decided to try to just do one task, dust my living room, while the puppy was awake.  I’m not saying it was easy, as she kept trying to bite my dust rag and play with it.  But it only took me 10 minutes to complete and I felt so much better.  Then when she took a nap I moved into the dining room, which only took 5 minutes.  Then I vacuumed and that took less than 10 minutes.

Doing those small chores freed up some time to write this article.  No stressing over the housework that needs done, my mind wandering towards incomplete tasks.  Taking just a little bit of time here and there to complete that work leaves me feeling more accomplished by the weekend and under less pressure to work on other tasks.

Get Your Family Involved 

This might be a challenge if you have young children at home.  Asking a toddler to give mommy some time to pray probably won’t work out very well.  But asking your husband to give you 15 minutes of prayer time might be more reasonable.  

Too often we think because we’re the mom that everything should fall on us.  But there’s no reason to believe our husbands aren’t capable of managing the kids and home for a little while so we can have some quiet time.  

If your husband is reluctant to participate in this, remind him that prayers help you to remain calm and focused on being a better wife and mom.  I think that’s something he would be on board for.

If your children are a little older, start having them help with household chores.  This not only frees up some of your time, but it teaches them responsibility.  It’s not child abuse to teach children basic household chores.  It’s actually helping them to become more responsible adults.

When my youngest went to boot camp he experienced this himself.  He said when it came time to make their beds perfectly and complete the many tasks they were assigned, he could tell who was taught to do chores at home and who wasn’t.  Most of those boys didn’t have a clue how to make a bed, do dishes or scrub a floor.  And it made for a pretty miserable experience for them.

Besides teaching them chores, teach them also to pray.  Make prayer a family activity, such as reading a children’s bible to them, teaching them the rosary, or try doing the Family ACTS Prayer Activity.

These prayer activities will help them grow in their spiritual life by showing them the order of importance it plays in their daily life.  If you don’t make it a priority when they are young, they won’t make it a priority when they’re older.

Get Organized 

I’m a planner girl.  Paper planners, digital planners, task lists, grocery lists, menu plans, you name it.  I’m also guilty of not utilizing the many resources I already have in place.  I’m not great at planning in advance, but when I take the time to do so, everything falls into place so much better.

You don’t have to invest in any new purchases, as almost everyone has paper at home or even their cell phone.  I use an app called AnyList.  This thing is a game changer.  Not only can I track my grocery story list and spending, it can be used for any time of list like packing, chores, or any quick list.

When it comes to work, I prefer a paper weekly calendar.  I use this planner I created for work.  The brain dump section has really helped me prioritize tasks, so I’m using my time better.  

Every Monday morning I start trying to think of every task I need to accomplish for the week and then number them according to importance.  Starting with the most important, I add them to my weekly calendar.  If something comes up during the week, I may need to shift priorities, but this visual reminder has really helped me to keep ahead of critical tasks.

I also love using software to keep track of tasks.  For this blog and at my 9-5 I use a program called SmartSuite.  It’s very customizable and works well for keeping track of the status of my projects.  You may not want to pay a monthly fee, but there are many project management apps that have free versions, such as ClickUp, which I used for years.

Ask for Help 

Pride, it’s a struggle for many of us.  The thought of asking other people to step up for us is something a lot of people try to avoid like the plague.  Especially as adults, we don’t want to inconvenience friends and family by asking them to help us in our lives.

That’s the way society operated for centuries.  This notion of staying to ourselves, locked up in our houses with our idiot boxes (TVs) is a modern problem.  Before the invention of technology, people interacted with their family and neighbors everyday.  That was the building block of society.  

Somewhere along the way we turned to hermits and stopped interacting with others.  As a result, we are less likely to ask for help because we don’t see those people very often.  It’s awkward to ask someone to come over and move furniture when we only talk to them once every couple of months.

Perhaps if we did humble ourselves and start asking more of each other we might grow in those relationships and have a greater appreciation for the people in our lives.  By giving of our own time, we grow in compassion and selflessness.  This is beneficial to both parties.

Let Go of the Small Things 

Keeping the house perfectly neat sounds great, but is it as important as we make it?  There are certain tasks that take the same amount of time regardless of how long in between it’s been.  

Dusting, vacuuming, and cleaning the bathroom take the same amount of effort whether it’s been one week or one month since the last cleaning.  Dishes and laundry, on the other hand, do accumulate and can’t be deferred without consequences.

Look at your current workload and see if there are items that can be eliminated or postponed.  For some, this might not be a reasonable request and will create more anxiety.  But if you really want to free up some time, this might be where to look.

We also need to stop comparing our lives to what we see on social media.  Those restocking videos we love to watch?  They are fabrications with the intention of getting you to buy a product so they make money.  Affiliate marketing has turned ordinary women into “influencers” who are trying to make money off this business model.

I don’t fault anyone for participating in these programs, as many women are just trying to earn extra money to stay home with their kids, get out of a horrible job, payoff debt, or make a little extra money.  Just keep it in perspective that these videos are extensively edited to show you an unrealistic view of their lives.

Just Say No 

It’s easy to tell you to say no, but not so easy to do myself.  Like many other women, I’m a people pleaser.  Always trying to help others, always taking on the burdens at home and work.  Rarely do I tell people no when asked for help, even if I know I can’t handle the additional responsibility.  For some reason, telling others no seems unchristian like.

I’m currently working on trying to implement this process, especially at church.  I volunteered to help with Catechism classes, but it quickly became more than I could handle.  My personal life went up in flames at the same time I said yes to this endeavor, and I didn’t know how to handle it.  

After much praying (and crying), I decided to step back from volunteering to help at church.  It was a painful decision, and I felt an enormous amount of guilt, but the relief was immediate.

As much as I wanted to be an active member of our church, it wasn’t in the cards at this time.  Maybe someday I will have the free time, but it came down to a choice of hands-on at church or hands-on with my family and this blog.  I prayed and prayed about it and decided God called me to serve my family first, then proceed with this project.  THAT was my calling to advance the kingdom of heaven.

It took me a while to realize that the quiet nature of being a wife and mother was just as important spiritually as being there for my church.  Throwing away my vocation at home did not help me to grow in my faith.  For some, there is a call to participate in these activities.  But for me, there was another calling that I had to listen to.  Only God knows our own path to holiness.  When I finally listened, it started to make sense.

Sometimes, we are too hard on Martha, thinking that she was negligent in her faith and acting selfishly.  I firmly believe Martha was acting in good faith and thought she was serving Jesus by attending to Him physically.  She had the right idea, just the wrong execution.

Serving others has more to do with our heart than our hands.  Even the best intentions can hinder us from seeing the real meaning in growing in our faith.  At the end of the day, the housework will remain, but our earthly life will come to an end.  Growing those relationships with Christ and our families will be all that mattered in the end.