Do you know those days you just don’t want to go to work? Maybe there’s that coworker you don’t want to see or your boss is extra annoying this week. Maybe there’s a project that you don’t want to do. I have those days a lot, everyone does. The point is that the work still needs to get done, whether we want to do it or not. So how do you get motivated to get to work? A Proverbs 31 woman does her work because she sees the big picture.
A Woman’s Work Was Hard Labor
I have a theory that the ideal Christian wife chapter described in Proverbs 31:10-31 mentions most of the steps she goes through to make fine linen and sell excess to merchants. If I’m right, then this verse talks about all the work that went into taking the flax from a plant into fibers to be made into thread on the distaff in verse 19. She had to take a handful of flax plant and hit it with a paddle to make it less stiff, then turn the handful over and do it again to the root area. She probably had to do that a few times. Then she had to pull her handful through a comb to get rid of the thicker part of the plant that couldn’t be made into thread. The more combs she used, the finer her linen got, the more valuable her final product became. Then she would have had to sit for hours turning the flax into thread before it could take more hours to weave into fabric that she could sew or sell. That means that she spent hours at mindlessly repetitive physical labor each year. Even if this verse isn’t referring to processing flax, a woman’s life was hard labor. How did she stay motivated through it all?
I don’t know a lot about daily life in the time Proverbs was written, but I’m guessing it’s similar to pioneer life in the early U.S. A woman got up early to make a meal, from scratch, for her family. After they went off to work or school, she had to spend hours one day a week washing clothes by hand. She’d have to maintain a clean house, daily farm chores, and caring for younger children amid the hours spent making every meal from scratch. Supper was often started hours before it was eaten so the wife could listen to her kids after school and still have a filling meal for her whole family.
Pioneer life had more technology than women around a thousand years before Christ had so a wife that had strong arms did labor for hours each day. Why did women spend hours each day doing things that had no lasting value (like the hours it took just making food for their family)?
They Kept In Mind The Big Picture To Be Motivated
Wives and mothers in ancient times had bad days, too. I’m sure that there were days that they didn’t want to get up and make breakfast or do the laundry, but the jobs had to get done. Nowadays, we can do things the easy way. Breakfast can be cereal the kids fix themselves and school lunch on a hurried day can be a Lunchables or another prepackaged meal. If we don’t have time to make supper, we can stop for fast food. We can drop our laundry off and pay someone else to do it. Very few people today sew their own clothes and most fabric is made by machine, not by hand. I have trouble imagining doing anything like washing clothes in a bucket for hours, but I understand why they did it.
If they didn’t do their work, it wouldn’t get done. Ancient women know that if they didn’t do the work, their family would suffer. They would be less than their best if they didn’t eat and their family would be less respected if their clothes weren’t clean. All the hours of vigorous work was done because they loved their families and knew that everything they did made their families and God happy. That’s what kept them motivated back then. Not all of us have families to cook for and clean up after or anyone who will benefit less if we don’t do our best. If that’s the case, we can remember that we are using our actions to honor God and help his plan. It’s not always easy to do our best, but it always helps God when we do.
Change Our Mindset
We know the labor needs to get done to help our family and God, but it’s still hard to motivate ourselves. Sometimes we just need to remember what Mary Poppins said and find the fun. There are times when the satisfaction of having the job done will be enough motivation, like doing the dishes from the day. Other times you can add fun, like cleaning the house to get your steps up or getting endorphins from the exercise. Find a way to make any job fun and it’s easier to be motivated and do your best.
