"Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands." —Proverbs 14:1 KJV
There was a time when comparison had an ending.
A woman might sit in a doctor’s office and flip through a magazine filled with immaculate kitchens, beautifully dressed women, expensive furniture, and homes where apparently nobody had ever dropped toast jelly-side-down on the carpet.
She might momentarily consider her own house and think it looks rather plain by comparison, perhaps even wish she had the wallpaper or dishes she sees on those glossy pages, but eventually the nurse called her name, the magazine went back onto the table, and ordinary life resumed.
The comparison stayed behind.
Now she carries it home in her pocket.
She carries it through the grocery store, into her bedroom, onto the couch beside her husband, and sometimes into bed after everyone else has fallen asleep.
The images never run out because the algorithm we talked about yesterday has learned exactly what catches her eye.
She pauses two seconds longer over a beautifully renovated kitchen and suddenly receives forty more.
She watches a woman organize a pantry into matching glass containers, and before the afternoon is finished she has been shown containers, labels, shelves, baskets, dispensers, drawer organizers, matching spice jars, and a coupon code that expires at midnight.
Nothing about her pantry changed during those fifteen minutes, yet somehow she feels differently about it.
Yesterday it held food.
Today it looks inadequate.
This is where I think the modern woman needs considerably more discernment than generations before us ever required, because consumerism no longer waits for us to walk into a store.
It follows us around all day suggesting deficiencies we had not noticed until somebody showed us the product that could supposedly fix them.
The hand that holds the phone eventually reaches for the card.
And swipes.
Not realizing she is tearing down her home with her hands one unnecessary purchase at a time.
Hebrews 13:5 says, “Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have.”
I find that verse increasingly searching because covetousness has become so ordinary that we rarely recognize it by name anymore.
We call it inspiration.
We create wish lists.
Pinterest boards.
We save reels.
We follow links.
We tell ourselves we are simply getting ideas for the house, though somewhere along the way the house we were thankful for last Tuesday begins feeling embarrassingly behind.
Contentment struggles to survive when we spend several hours every week studying what everyone else owns.
I think back to the houses I remember from the eighties and nineties, and there was something rather wonderful about how different they were from one another.
You might walk into one home and find blue carpet, floral curtains, family photographs covering an entire hallway, a crocheted blanket across the couch, and some strange ceramic goose wearing a seasonal bonnet that the lady of the house absolutely loved.
The house next door would look completely different.
Women decorated with what they had, what they liked, what somebody gave them, what they inherited, and what their budget allowed.
Grandma’s cabinet might sit beside a newer sofa.
Children’s school pictures climbed the wall in mismatched frames.
Somebody’s father had built the coffee table twenty years earlier and everyone still used it because there was nothing wrong with it.
I know nostalgia can make the past look better than it was, and women certainly compared themselves then too, but the comparison did not have this relentless access to us.
Now we have managed to create a culture where everybody desperately wants to express individuality in exactly the same shade of greige.
The same arched mirror.
The same neutral rug.
The same oversized vase with branches.
The same seasonal porch.
The same kitchen fixtures.
The same carefully arranged shelves that somehow contain several books nobody appears to have opened, let alone read.
Then the trend changes.
Suddenly the gray everything we spent thousands of dollars achieving is dated, warmth is back, dark wood has returned, brass has returned, wallpaper has returned, and the woman who finally finished making her house look like the reel from three years ago discovers she has caught up just in time to be behind again.
That is an exhausting way to live.
There is nothing wrong with making a home lovely.
I believe women should care about their homes.
There is goodness in cleaning a room, placing flowers on a table, painting a tired wall, sewing curtains, lighting a candle before supper, or saving for a piece of furniture that will serve the family for years.
A woman can take great pleasure in creating beauty for the people entrusted to her, and I think there is something deeply feminine about wanting home to feel welcoming.
The questions underneath all of that deserve our attention.
Why am I buying this?
Because I genuinely believe it will serve our home?
Because we have saved for it and can afford it?
Because it brings beauty that I personally enjoy?
Or because the woman on my phone made what I already own feel insufficient?
Those motives can become tangled quickly.
Proverbs 31 tells us that the virtuous woman “looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.” Proverbs 31:27.
She is attentive.
She understands what comes into the house and what goes out.
She works with what has been entrusted to her.
Earlier in the chapter we see her seeking wool and flax and working willingly with her hands, considering a field before buying it, planting a vineyard from the fruit of her hands, and making garments.
There is thoughtfulness in the whole passage.
Nothing about her gives the impression of a woman mindlessly consuming because she is bored.
That distinction matters today because shopping itself has become entertainment.
A woman can sit in her pajamas at eleven-thirty at night and spend hundreds of dollars without ever experiencing the tangible sensation of money leaving her hands.
A few taps, Face ID, free shipping, and the purchase disappears into the hazy category of something we will deal with when the statement arrives.
This is one place where Dave Ramsey has always made a point worth hearing.
Plastic creates distance between the purchase and the pain of paying for it.
Handing someone five crisp twenty-dollar bills feels different from tapping a card.
Watching the grocery money physically disappear from an envelope gives the transaction weight.
Credit can make tomorrow’s income feel available for today’s appetite, which becomes especially dangerous when the appetite itself is being continually stimulated by advertising designed specifically for us.
Stores understand this beautifully.
That is why the cashier asks whether you would like to save twenty percent by opening their credit card.
You have barely decided whether you need the sweater and suddenly you are being offered debt to make it cheaper.
The absurdity should bother us more than it does.
A discount is not savings when we had to borrow money to obtain it.
Israel learned something about trying to gather beyond the portion God had provided.
When manna appeared in the wilderness, the people were instructed to gather what they needed for the day.
Some did not trust that tomorrow’s provision would come, so they kept more.
Exodus 16:20 says, “Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto Moses; but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and stank.”
There is an image worth remembering.
Hands reaching for more because enough did not feel safe.
Then discovering rot in what they refused to release.
Our problem today often looks slightly different because we are not hoarding manna against tomorrow’s hunger.
We are reaching into tomorrow’s paycheck to satisfy today’s desire.
We purchase the furniture now.
The vacation now.
The clothes now.
The Christmas gifts now.
The upgraded phone now.
Then tomorrow arrives already owing money to yesterday.
There is very little freedom in that.
And within marriage, continual spending can become an enormous weight.
I thought about this seriously as our sons reached the age where marriage became possible.
Of course, salvation and a godly testimony mattered above everything else, though another question crossed my mind more than once.
Is she high maintenance?
I do not mean whether she likes pretty things or enjoys getting her hair done.
There is nothing inherently godly about looking drab, refusing every pleasure, or pretending a woman should have no preferences.
I mean something deeper.
Can she be happy with ordinary?
Can she receive something without silently grading it against what she would have preferred?
Does she expect the best version of everything?
Can she wear the same dress twice without feeling embarrassed?
Can she make a home lovely without requiring every room to resemble whatever is trending this month?
Can she live within the income God provides through a particular season without making her husband feel that his provision is perpetually inadequate?
Because a woman whose satisfaction requires a constantly rising standard can become terribly heavy millstone around a man’s neck.
He may work faithfully, provide honestly, and give his family a good life, while still coming home to a woman who has spent the day being shown men with larger houses, better vacations, newer kitchens, nicer vehicles, and wives receiving expensive gifts for ordinary Tuesdays.
Eventually he begins competing against a fantasy.
He cannot win that contest because the finish line moves every morning.
There will always be another house.
Another bag.
Another renovation.
Another destination.
Another woman whose life has been carefully framed to make ours appear dull.
I am deeply grateful for the young women our sons have chosen because, while they are human and certainly have preferences like the rest of us, I see gratitude in them.
I see the ability to appreciate what has been given, to work with what they have, and to build a life without constantly demanding that life upgrade itself.
That quality is worth more than a designer kitchen could ever be.
Contentment brings peace into a home.
Paul wrote, “But godliness with contentment is great gain.” 1 Timothy 6:6.
Great gain.
There is wealth in being able to walk through your own front door and genuinely enjoy what God has already given you.
There is wealth in opening a closet and seeing clothing instead of seeing what is missing.
There is wealth in serving supper on dishes you have owned for fifteen years without feeling compelled to replace them because somebody declared another pattern current.
There is wealth in allowing your husband’s paycheck to provide security instead of continually forcing it to chase desire.
There is wealth in teaching children that new is pleasant, gifts are wonderful, beauty is enjoyable, and gratitude keeps all of those things in their proper place.
Perhaps the flip side of this is one of the ways a woman builds her house with her hands.
Sometimes she builds by refusing to swipe.
She closes the app.
She leaves the cart overnight.
She waits thirty days.
She saves cash.
She looks around her home before shopping for it and remembers that much of what surrounds her once existed on a wish list too.
She asks whether she wants the object or simply wants the feeling the advertisement attached to it.
Then she remembers that contentment cannot be shipped to her front porch.
I need this reminder myself because I am just as susceptible to the little thrill of something new as anyone else.
I have clicked because I was bored.
I have seen someone else’s lovely home and suddenly noticed everything wrong with mine.
I have bought things that felt considerably less necessary after the package arrived.
The hand can swipe almost before the heart has considered why.
That is precisely why we need to slow it down.
“Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have.”
Such things as ye have.
There is something beautifully grounding in those words.
The hand that continually reaches for more may eventually discover that all its grasping has cost the home something far more valuable than the things it managed to acquire.
Perhaps before reaching for one more thing, we should spend a little time seeing all of the blessings around us:
A home where people are loved.
Clothes enough to dress the bodies living there.
Food enough for today.
Furniture with scratches from actual family life.
Photographs of people who matter more than anything being sold through the screen.
Look around.
What has God already placed within your hands?
Let’s take the time to lift those hands in praise today for what we already have, instead of tearing down our homes “swiping” for just one more “thing.”
Biblical Womanhood
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