Growth and Purpose and You!

May 26, 2011 by desiringvirtue

As Desiring Virtue grows and the community of sisters gathering here gets larger I feel it is necessary to share my heart for this website with you.

This blog is not my life. My home, my husband, my children, my church, they are my life. Desiring Virtue began as a simple extension of my life, a way to share what the Lord is doing and teaching me with so many precious sisters around the world (crazy!). This still makes up for the majority of content here, but something more is beginning to happen that I am very excited about.

I have this “vision” for Desiring Virtue that continues to grow and morph as I ask God how I can glorify him most through this particular aspect of my life. As I have added contributors, Julie and Savannah, to Desiring Virtue, I have begun to envision something very special for this blog.

None of us personally personify the Virtuous Woman in Proverbs 31, hence the title of my blog being Desiring Virtue rather than Virtuous, but we all have our strengths and weaknesses, our personal talents and our own desire to grow in certain areas of homemaking. Opening up Desiring Virtue to contributing authors gives others, who are more qualified in specific areas, the opportunity to encourage all of us in a way that I alone may not be able to.

My desire is to have a wide variety of contributing authors at Desiring Virtue who each specialize in a certain area of homemaking, whether it be organization, cleaning, gardening, menu planning, book reviews, product reviews, spiritual cultivation, homeschooling, creating a loving environment, gospel centered living, decorating,… the list could go on and on!

My vision for Desiring Virtue is for it to be a place where women can be encouraged to excellence in all areas of homemaking by women who are especially gifted in or passionate  about certain areas of homemaking.

In other words, my long term goal is for this blog to be a God-centered resource for homemakers.

Which leads me to my next point, the new logo. You might not have even noticed, but just a little while ago I made a slight addition to the Desiring Virtue logo. Why did I add the phrase “Homemaking for the Theologian”? Today I am going to tell you!

I find that there aren’t very many women’s blogs that have both theological depth and practical, day to day homemaking inspiration. Many times you have one or the other. Some blogs focus beautifully on theology and others focus beautifully on homemaking. I really want to strive to have both here. Theology (studying God through his revealed Word) is the foundation of all other aspects of our lives. We are all theologians, as wives we just happen to be homemakers who are theologians.

There is a great temptation to seperate our physical lives from our spiritual lives. It is easy to see ourselves worshipping God when we are at church singing praises or when we are on our knees in prayer before the day begins, but it is harder to see ourselves worshipping as we wash the dishes or fold laundry or change a dirty diaper. These mundane tasks are beautiful to the Lord when we do them as acts of service for his glory. And so, my desire is not to seperate the two, but instead feature a post about cleaning toilets and a post about the beautiful atonement of our Lord all in the same week.

Adding “Homemaking for the Theologian” to the Desiring Virtue logo helps to drive home the point that this is a place for women who desire to work harder for the Lord by growing closer to the Lord through the knowledge of the Lord. That is my heart and I trust yours as well!

How can you get involved?

Pray for me. I know it seems kind of trivial to put a blog on your prayer list, but I would really appreciate it-especially if you know me in real life. I view this as a form of ministry and always want it to bring glory to the Lord and never bring reproach on his name. I would grately appreciate your prayers for wisdom, guidance, and discipline.

One very simple way that you can be more involved in this community is by sharing your thoughts in the comments of posts. I know there are lots of you out there (I have seen the Google Analytics you guys!), but for some reason you don’t normally leave your mark in the comments. I don’t really mind, I am going to keep on writing no matter what, BUT you never know how you might encourage a sister in Christ hundreds of miles away with your personal idea, tip, or thought just by leaving it here.

Share Desiring Virtue with your friends: your friends in real life and you friends on Facebook! If you find a particular post encouraging or interesting or helpful pass it on to others so that they can be blessed by it as well. At the bottom of every post you have the ability to share through various mediums: Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc…

Write a guest post! Do you have something you would like to encourage the readers of Desiring Virtue with? Maybe you would like to share your testimony of salvation, a particular lesson the Lord is teaching you right now, or maybe something as simple as a family recipe that you know others would enjoy. I would love for you to share it with Desiring Virtue’s readers. Email me and we can talk about your idea!

Become a regular contributor. Do you have a passion that you would love to share on this blog? Are you a thrifty shopper who would love to share her tips with the rest of us? Are you an organizational genius who feels the need to help others gain control of their paper piles? I am going to be on the look out for possible contributors from here on out to add to Desiring Virtue’s arsenal of talented homemakers and you might be the next one! Here are some of the areas I am looking for:

Menu Planning

Thrifty, Healthy Grocery Shopping

Cleaning tips and tricks

Organization

Decorating

Etiquette

Hospitality

Home Based Evangelism

Healthy Living

Homeschooling

Gardening

Intentional Parenting

Gospel-Centered Living

Book Reviews

Product Reviews

(Your Idea Here)

You may be a like minded blogger looking to expand your reach through another website or you may not have the time to devote to a personal blog, but desire to contribute to Desiring Virtue once or twice a month. In either case I would love for you to join me in providing a God centered resource for other homemakers out there. Email me if you are interested to see what the exact details are and if you would be a good fit for this blog. Oh and just so you know, unfortunately there is no monetary compensation for contributing to Desiring Virtue… just ask Julie and Savannah

Thank You

I am so thankful for each of you who spend time here and look forward to getting to know you even better as this journey continues. I am very excited to see what the Lord has in store for this blog and how he will use it to encourage our lives as we worship Christ through our homemaking. Would you join me in this pursuit?

Photo Credits: Tree in Richmond Park, Our lovely resident Foodie, Julie, serving our family at Thanksgiving!

If this is your first time to visit Desiring Virtue you may want to join our growing community of passionate homemakers by "liking" DV on Facebook, following DV on Twitter, or subscribing to DV's email delivery via Feedburner.