Latest / The Christian Homemaking Podcast: Simply Convivial with Mystie Winckler / I Quit My Career to Stay Home & Hated It (At First) | Lauren Mefford

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I Quit My Career to Stay Home & Hated It (At First) | Lauren Mefford · The Christian Homemaking Podcast: Simply Convivial with Mystie Winckler

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Speaker: welcome to the Christian homemaking podcast, Simply Convivial.
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I'm Misty Winkler, homemaker, homeschooling mom of five,
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grandma, and author of the book Home is for Hospitality: Why
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Your Home and Homemaking Matter.
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Convivial means living together with joy, and that's the kind of home atmosphere
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that we want to create in our homes.
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And today, we're gonna be talking about this with Lauren Mefford.
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Lauren is a Christian wife, homeschooling mom of six, and she helps women manage
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all the moving pieces of the home.
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After moving from the workforce and academia to full-time home life, the
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transition was so difficult as she learned to manage the home, that she
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had to learn to embrace her role with greater joy, and now she helps other women
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do the same with her YouTube channel, The Rooted Rhythms Method Course, and
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The Rooted Homemakers Collective, as well as The Rooted Home podcast, which
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she records with her husband Jeremy, about all things family and home.
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So thank you so much for joining me today, Lauren.
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Speaker 2: Yes, thank you for having me, Misty.
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Speaker: And so I would just love to hear more of that story of, um, having
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the career, the work life, academia, and then, how you decided to leave that
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behind and go full time at home, and then the differences in mindset and
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productivity between those two things.
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I know both of us really enjoy productivity talk, and planning, and
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that kind of thing, but so much of it is geared for work life, and it's
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hard- Mm-hmm â¦ to just know what it's supposed to look like at home.
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So tell us more about your story there.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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It's, so there's definitely a lot I could say about that.
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It's very different going from the workforce to academia.
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Now, I was, or to home.
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But I was in the nursing field, so it is very people centric.
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Um, but it, in a very, very different way.
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So yeah, whenever Iâ¦
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We didn't get married until we were 30, so that means that there was a decent
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amount of life lived before that.
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I was just going to the next thing.
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I, we, I did missions.
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I was very globally minded.
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I was planning on moving to Kenya and- They were just, there was a lot there.
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Uh, nurse for a while, did global disaster nursing, got my PH- or pursued my PhD.
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It just was the next thing.
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I had a lot of people that basically I never would have imagined that
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that's what I would have been doing.
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Um, I was not a Christian until I was 24, and so the Lord did a whole lot.
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Some wonderful people took me under their wing and brought me up, and, uh,
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had a wonderful pastor and his wife who kind of took me under their wing.
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I was in their home every week watching their five kids, um, in between work
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and school every week for five years.
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So got to dabble in home life a little bit, 'cause I really wanted
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to be a wife and a mom, but it wasn't an opportunity at that point.
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So I was just like, all right, well, hopefully I'll get married one day.
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But if not, we'll just keep going.
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So anyway, went to school and kept going.
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So fast-forward to when I'm 30, I am almostâ¦
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I'm about, well, I'm probably three-fourths of the way through
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the program, still working, and we pr- we get married.
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We get married quickly, uh, and then I got pregnant quickly.
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And, um, by the time we had Caleb, our oldest boy, I was almost
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done, and I was just plan- I was like, "I want to finish this now."
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Jeremy was like, "I don't care if you finish it or not."
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Um, but I, I, I was like, I'm, I was determined to just
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finish it, 'cause I wasâ¦
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I'd already done all that work.
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Anyway, I was working part-time at the time.
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Shortly thereafter, we ha- we ended up bringing our girls into our home.
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So we adopted our girls, and it wasâ¦
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That's what brought me home, basically.
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So long story short, we thought my parents were gonna be able to watch
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them while I was working part-time.
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Um, they were gonna move up here, and they ended up not.
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And we were not about to put them in daycare.
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It was already a very traumatic background, and we did not wanna
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put them through any of that.
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So they, they needed me home, and I needed to be home, and I was deep
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down resistant to it initially.
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I knew in my head that it was the right thing, but it was
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hard because it, I justâ¦
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All I knew was work and school, you know?
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And I wanted, like I said, I wanted to be a mom, but in that, in that
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environment- I mean, you know, the culture right now is very anti-family.
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Speaker: Mm-hmm.
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Speaker 2: And antiâ¦
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It's a very feminist culture, and so that bleeds into academia, as you can imagine.
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Um, even as, for a Christian, like, even if I'm not wanting to believe
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those things, I'm naturally notâ¦
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I'm being affected.
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You know, you're affected by the water you swim in.
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And so the, the idea of being a mom, like, just a mom, uh, from somebody who had
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been in that culture, it just felt wrong, or it felt constricting, or it feltâ¦
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I don't know.
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It was totally crazy now in hindsight, but that's how I felt.
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And so anyway, the Lord was really kind toâ¦
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and He was very patient with me.
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Um, there was an article I read that was really helpful.
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I can't even remember what it was.
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But it, it helped me make that transition, and I'm really glad I did.
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Um, obviously.
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I'm very glad I did now.
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But, uh, there was one book that I read.
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Do you know who Sally Clarkson is?
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Speaker: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so she wrote a book, Mission of Motherhood.
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Yeah.
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And when I was pregnant with Caleb, there was, like, one line that stuck out to me
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and still sticks out to me to this day.
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That she said something about embracing motherhood, and that was when the idea was
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introduced to me of being fully in, and I felt convicted, 'cause I was like, "I
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don't know if I wanna fully embraceâ¦"
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Like, it, it was almost like it was more of a thing on the side-
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Speaker: Mm-hmm
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â¦ Speaker 2: while I was taking care of everything else, you know?
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'Cause that's where all my attention had been.
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So, the Lord has done a drastic mindset shift over the last, since then.
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And, um, I can say by His grace and by a lot of, uh, discipleship and
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repentance for my own attitude, and growth i- in, towards my children, like,
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He has done a really good work at ch- changing me to where I lo- I c- I can
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actually em- I, I embrace motherhood.
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I love motherhood, I love the home, and I would not wanna be anywhere else now.
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So, thanks be to God.
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I think that if, if you're not embracing motherhood, it is gonna be a lot harder.
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But anyway, um, so, but I still didn't know what I was doing at that point for
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a long time, and it was just surviving until nap time for a long time.
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And then surviving until Jeremy got home- â¦ once the kids were up.
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And so I was just so flabbergasted that, you know, you spend all
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this time studying theory and all these lofty things, and you're not
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prepared for the most, like, basicâ¦
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Like, I couldn't even cook dinner very well.
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Like, I could- I didn't know how to manage- It was, uh, I, I had spent all
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that time studying all of these things, and yet I didn't know how to do what
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was right in front of me, you know?
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Mm-hmm.
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It's absurd.
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So once, um, I, I just desperately wanted to learn tho- those things and
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kept-- I sought it out through different means, and little by little grew.
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But, um, I would say it was very hard to love being home until Iâ¦
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It's hard to love what you don't know how to do.
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Yeah.
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You know?
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Speaker: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: And so I think in our c- there's so many women today that are in
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the same boat of, like, really desperately wanting, wanting to love it and wanting
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to be home, but they don't feel equipped, and sometimes they can only think that
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it's just their spiritual depravity.
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And not that there's also practical things to learn that can help-
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Mm-hmm â¦ you know, alongside our need for growth, you know?
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So anyway, I'm, that's why I'm, I'm so glad you're doing what you're doing.
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Mm-hmm.
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And and that's why I'm excited to do what I'm doing.
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Um, I just think that it's so needed,
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Speaker: the, the water you swim in does matter, and even when we, like
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in our heads believe one thing, having that come out our fingertips, come
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out our lives, and knowing what that looks like and being happy with it
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is completely- Mm-hmm â¦ different.
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And, uh, the s- the skills that make us good students and good employees don't
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translate easily at all, if at all-
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Speaker 2: Mm-hmm
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Speaker: to running a home and caring for children.
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And m- many women have never seen it done at all.
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And so- Yeah â¦ you know, it's wanting this, yeah, something that you've, you
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don't know what it is supposed to look like, so you don't, don't even know
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if you're doing a good job or not.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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And to that point, you know, in the workforce or in
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school, you have all of these,
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objectives.
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Like-
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Speaker: Yeah
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â¦ Speaker 2: m- managers give you exactly, or, or s- uh, professors give you
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exactly what they're expecting of you.
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And in the home, you don't know when e- when enough is enough.
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Speaker: Mm-hmm.
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Speaker 2: You know?
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You don't r- yeah, like you said, you don't know if you're doing it right.
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Um, because even our mothers and grandmothers, a lot, since the
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industrial re- industrial revolution, I do think that that really affected
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generations of women in the home-
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Speaker: Mm-hmm
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Speaker 2: to where we don't have these skills passed down
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nearly as much as we used to.
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At least that's what I'm hearing from a lot of women who are older than me.
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Um, so yeah.
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Speaker: Yeah.
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I went, it was, this was years ago, I had a blog post on, um,
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having your kids help with chores.
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And some internet troll, you know, who's probably just-
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out Googling kid chore stuff and leaving his two cents, um, he said,
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"You don't need to spend years having kids practice do chores."
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Um, it doesn't take that much time or work to train kids to do something
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that anyone can learn in five minutes.
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Speaker 2: Not true.
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Obviously you've never done it.
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Speaker: And that just was so illuminating to me that that is the
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message that we hear, and that's the background idea that we have.
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I know I did when, even though I was homeschooled and my mom stayed
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at home, and I saw, saw it all, I still came into homemaking thinking,
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" This is gonna be a piece of cake.
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Like, anyone can do this."
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And so I get the easy job.
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I'll just, you know, it'll, it'll be fine and easy, and then it was not.
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And I couldn't even- Yeah
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I couldn't even accept that it wasn't easy.
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Like s- yeah, something, I thought something had to be wrong with me-
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Speaker 2: Mm-hmm
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â¦ Speaker: because it was easy work, and I was failing at it,
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so what does that say about me?
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Instead of thinking, like, maybe it's not actually something anyone
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could learn to do in five minutes.
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Speaker 2: No.
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No.
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It's such a process.
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I, I'm still learning.
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Yeah.
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You know?
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It's not something thatâ¦
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'Cause it's not just scrubbing a toilet.
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It's there are so many plates that are spinning, you know?
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Mm-hmm.
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And which plates do you keep spinning, and which do you let go for a season?
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And how do you, how do you nurture souls and care for the people inside the home,
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and not keep the plates spinning over here at the expense of these relationships?
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Like, it's not just, there's just, there's so much that goes into it.
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And to y- your original question too, the latter part of that, I, productivity
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in the academic world and the medical world, oh man, I like, I learned,
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you had to learn how to do it all.
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Like, you had to learn how to juggle.
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It's hard when you have multiple patients that you've gotta take care of and
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they're all needing something, you know?
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But it's, even though it was people-centric, it's still e- easy
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to not really care as much about the people in the way that we ought to.
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So yeah, at home it was easy to carry that.
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I'm still, I, I learned to take care of things, not always very well,
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but still got stuff done kind of, but it was at the expense of people.
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Speaker: Mm-hmm.
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Speaker 2: You know?
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And so learning, that was something that, that one big difference I would say from,
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um, productivity out there and learning to be faithful in the home here is- Learning
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to prioritize what God prioritizes.
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Like, what he says is right and good, which is in Titus 2, love your husband,
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love your children, manage the home.
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Like, there's oth- there's multiple things.
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It's not just the practicals, you know?
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The practi- though the practicals are important, so.
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Speaker: Mm-hmm.
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Speaker 2: Anyway.
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Speaker: So if someone comes and asks for h- you know, they're in
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that kind of same situation as you were, where, where do youâ¦
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where would you have them start?
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Like, what's the, the starting point for embracing motherhood and
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growing in faithfulness at home?
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Speaker 2: I think first is prayer.
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That really d- I mean, that really doesâ¦
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It's easy to forget.
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Speaker: Mm-hmm.
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Speaker 2: And it is n- absolutely necessary for the heart to change.
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So prayer, and when you see your own attitude coming, you know, flaring up,
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'cause it does for all of us, it does for me today, I have to repent everyâ¦
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Just get, get in the habit of repenting whenever that pops up, whether
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you're having a bad attitude towards your child, or you're huffing and
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puffing because someone walked in on your floor that you just mopped.
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You know, just all the things that happen in the home.
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Those are divine providences by God.
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We can trust Him with it, you know?
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Like, we gotta learn to, yeah.
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So I would say prayer, asking the Lord to help make you a gracious woman
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who embraces motherhood, the gracious woman who gets honors, who gets honor.
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I pray that t- today, every day.
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Um, so I would say pray, but then also very practically, it is
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important to have a skeleton routine.
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I call it the bare minimum blueprint.
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That's basically, like, bare bones, how do you survive the day and make sure that
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the bare essentials get done, you know?
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So I think imp- it's important to have a plan.
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You know, how do you get food on the table at dinnertime?
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How do you keep clothes on people's backs, people loved, and maybe one
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room reasonably tidy, you know?
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And also while you're getting dressed and taking care of yourself.
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So I'd say very practically, that's usually where I tell people to start, is
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have that very minimal, practical plan.
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Get used to using it.
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Don't be married to it in a way where you're so rigid you can't
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be flexible if something happens.
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And then I think people can learn to layer from there.
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They can not necessarily add on things, but make things more rhythmic or, um, a
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part of m- learn to use the time well in the day, but it's just little by little.
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So I think sometimes we get in trouble when we try to overhaul everything,
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'cause we get so tired and flustered by how cluttered the closet is and
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how, you know, things aren't the way that we want them to be, and I think we
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end up shooting ourselves in the foot.
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Wait, is that right?
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Yeah.
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Speaker: Yes.
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Speaker 2: Analogies.
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Speaker: Yeah.
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I was like- Yeah â¦ pull everything out so then I can make it perfect,
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and then you c- don't have enough time to do that, and every- it's worse
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than it was before 'cause you have-
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Speaker 2: Yeah
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â¦ Speaker: to go through.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and then you don't get in the habit of actually
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maintaining it, and so it's just gonna end up right back where it was, you know?
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So.
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Speaker: Mm-hmm.
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Speaker 2: Gotta, gotta get in the habit of maintaining, I think.
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That's a good one.
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Speaker: That was a hard lesson for me.
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I wanted to have everything just set up, and I figured if I set it up the right
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way- I guess I wouldn't have to main- I don't know what I thought would happen,
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but it would maintain itself, and that's-
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Speaker 2: Yeah
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Speaker: not the way the world works.
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Speaker 2: No.
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That, I know I said this in our podcast when you came onto mine, but, like,
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your book, uh, I, that was such a helpful concept to me when you pointed
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out the rebooting the computer.
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Like, if you look at chores and taking care of the home like you're, you're
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resetting it for life, it's suchâ¦
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It's just such a helpful mindset to have because you can take it when people
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come through those floors with dirty feet after you just mopped it, 'cause
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there, that wasn't the end, you know?
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. You're, you're resetting it for life, and so we don't have to hold
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on to the clean closet, you know?
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Weâ¦
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Anyway, so.
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Speaker: Mm-hmm.
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Yeah.
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It's all for using.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Very helpful.
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Speaker: Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Lauren.
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Where can people find you online and all of that good stuff?
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Speaker 2: You can find most of what I offer and talk about at laurenmefford.com
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or my YouTube channel, which is Lauren Mefford, so.
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Um, M-E-F-F-O-R-D.
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You can just look me up, and that's where you can find me.
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Speaker: Great, and we'll put links and all of that in the description.
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And yes, thank you so much.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for, uh, having me on today, Misty.
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It was great.