"You are serving God in your own useful ways," McDaniel writes of stay-at-home moms and homemakers. (Pexels photo)
Re: “A homemaker’s search for meaning” (B.C. Catholic, Jan. 7):
Thank you, Isadora Liang, for sharing your story. It reminds me of when I was a stay-at-home mum, many times asking myself what else that God wanted me to do. Then, my son, who’s discerning to become a priest, gave me St. Francis de Sales’ book Introduction to the Devout Life. I read it and found the following words:
“Devotion must be exercised in different ways by the gentleman, the worker, the servant, the prince, the widow, the young girl, and the married woman. Not only is this true, but the practice of devotion must also be adapted to the strength, activities, and duties of each particular person. Is it fitting for a bishop to want to live a solitary life like a Carthusian? Or a married man to want to own no more property than a Capuchin, for a skilled woman to spend the whole day in the church like a religious, or for a religious to be constantly subject to every sort of call in his neighbour’s service, as a bishop is? Would not such devotion be laughable, confused, impossible to carry out?”
Saint Francis DeSales also said, “be yourself and be it well” and “bloom where you are planted.”
I’ve discovered that God used the time when I was at home to teach me many things that I now can use as a family adviser at the Gardens of Gethsemani to help the families experiencing the loss of their loved ones.
As you’ve written, you are serving God in your own useful ways. So are those of us who are wives, mothers, and homemakers.
T. Oanh (Mary) McDaniel
West Vancouver