En Suite

The largest room in the priority stewardship house is the en suite: the private enclave for the woman of the house. Picture a fine lady from years ago, sitting at her morning desk, approving menus and giving special assignments to the housekeeper. Later in the day, quiet reading or needlework would be done in comfortable chairs by the fireplace, with tea service and tasty tidbits close at hand. Fine clothing arrived from side rooms too large to be called closets.

Elegant Efficiency

Overseeing daily details from the comfort of a private sitting space. . . making plans and decisions for the bustling household out there from the tastefully appointed, serene and secluded thinking spot in here. . . unhurried writing in beautiful bound volumes, recording ideas for dinner parties and notes on the preferences of favorite guests. That is the flavor of en suite.

Whether you have anything approaching such a private atmosphere in your home, or whether you share cramped quarters with siblings or roommates, overseeing our responsibilities, our priorities, our assignments, and our dreams requires the flavor of the manor house retreat, if not its reality. The flavor of elegant efficiency.

Quiet Self, Open Mind

I do hope you like it quiet. Our modern world is not very comfortable with hearing a mind think, and does all it can to assure that distracting sound interferes with every original thought. But en suite is best served with warm silence, the kind that makes ideas easy to hear. Like many habits that need culturing, if you are uncomfortable with quiet, begin to build your pleasure and desire for it by allowing yourself to read in quiet for ten minutes at a time, working up to an hour or so. Allow yourself to sit simply quiet for five minutes, once or twice a day. If you can do so with your eyes closed and not fall asleep, you must be getting enough rest!

Writing

I do hope you like to write—at least a bit more than a grocery list. Writing ideas holds them for the future. Our oversight is most effective when we have a tidy notebook brimming with ideas waiting for whenever we want to wander through and select a new habit to build, a new process to develop, a new study to undertake, a new topic to compile information for or to discuss with friends and family members, an idea for a gift or the next home project, an alternative prayer list to use. Just a little writing (or typing) keeps them at your overseeing finger tips.

Thinking

I do hope you like to think. Do you ponder how to make dish doing faster—when you are driving to the store? Do you think about how to explain the laundry process in the shower? Do you form arguments to refute the points you thought were right in a recently read editorial? Do you read articles or books about topics you know nothing about and then think about how to connect them with what you do know? Have you researched how electricity works in case a 3-year-old might ask what happens when the light switch is flipped? Have you thought about how to explain righteousness to a pre-school child?

Reading

I do hope you like to read. Every home is a bit of a desert island, cut off from both prying eyes and helpful advice. Reading can bring home enrichment, contrasting ideas, fresh insight, and challenging positions for consideration. Sometimes it is not so much the ideas themselves, as the exercise you have given yourself by taking time to read and think about areas of life you don’t meet in your own experiences. It is a positive miracle how grand and varied thoughts can be and still be tethered to the narrow foundation of biblical truth. Never forget that narrow foundation is everlastingly deep, and can support thinking miles above the base because of its depth.

A little reading, a bit of writing, some thinking: this is en suite stuff.

En suite focuses on our personal priorities and responsibilities, and is a pleasant mix of spiritual challenges, practical realities, personal refreshment, and personal planning. Lots of possibilities are handled here in en suite.

Personal Self:

The easiest place to start is with our personal selves and the needs we all face:

• Time to prepare our bodies, minds and spirits for the day.
• Time to attend to our personal space before we leave it to attend to other areas.
• Time to attend to the needs our clothing requires.

En suite holds all discussions about our spiritual disciplines, personal Bible study, prayer, sharing Christ, fulfilling our biblical priority to develop a demeanor and character that makes holiness attractive. Here is where we hold ourselves accountable to our authorities and our priorities and values. Here is where we dream about big ideas, and, once in a while, set in motion the steps to bring those dreams to fruition. It holds the rotations that help us to read and write and think on whatever schedule or plan we design for ourselves. It holds practical plans for eating wisely, exercising, building a wardrobe, implementing a routine to maintain our personal space. It is the one area a young person can have fully and firmly developed well before leaving the childhood home for adult home responsibilities.

Personal Priorities and Responsibilities:

En suite is also where Executive Oversight happens, so everything that is part of that special weekly time is also kept here. Spiritual projects for family members, ongoing projects to build cleaning routines, train apprentices,project evaluations, menu plans, research for home projects—these all have a place in en suite because they are reviewed and planned for during Executive Oversight meetings.

Here is where we spend real time preparing behind the scenes for ways to save time, or wisely use time in other areas. Here is where we look at our blueprint to make certain no priority has been neglected for too long, no responsibility given too little attention. Here is where we think about connections between character qualities and life skills. Here is where we confront stereotypical opinions and mindsets and train ourselves to consider all facets of the accurate biblical position. Here is where we think about how we think: is our outlook balanced with biblical truth? Are we employing a variety of ways to keep ourselves motivated and accountable, even though we are essentially our own boss in the home sphere?

In our real homes, we like to keep our living space ready for guests, so we can throw open the door, even on short notice and say, “Welcome to our home. It’s ours to share.” In our stewardship homes, en suite is the room we want to keep ready to throw open the door on short notice and say, “Welcome to my life. It is mine to share.”