When your home isn’t so peaceful but more normal than anything Nancy is describing here.

Remember last week when Nancy Campbell added ‘no phone calls’ to the way to keep your home and table peaceful and quiet? She’s apparently against anything that you might do as a woman that you might find enjoyable and relaxing. Nancy outlines her biggest time wasters on Above Rubies. Unsurprisingly social media and phone calls top the list.

This is ironic considering during my Quiverfull years many of the phone calls I dealt with daily were from friends emotionally beating themselves up for being imperfect, or dealing with other negative emotions while feeling guilty. So now not only is Nancy ordering you to fake your happiness, she’s cutting off any pressure valve or life line, any release of those same negative emotions.

Plus who is Nancy trying to fool here. When you’re on the phone it’s not always an orgy of childhood rebellion. Sometimes kids will deliberately get right under your feet and try to distract you from the call. There are a many reactions to a parent on a phone call by kids as there are stars in the sky. It’s not so cut and dried. What’s wrong with teaching your children to amuse themselves when you’re on the phone?

But here we get to the real hatred. The computer/tablet/Iphone! The very thing that Nancy Campbell herself uses to reach her followers and spread her bad ideas.

Oh, Nancy is fighting a losing battle here I am afraid. Everyone literally walks around with their smart phone in their hand these days. Since moving to Costa Rica I’ve observed some rather risky behaviors around smart phones. The other I saw a guy texting while riding his horse. That I do not worry about, but only because horses sometimes have more common sense that people. The scary one is seeing people texting and driving! If Nancy was carrying on about texting and driving I’d be right behind her, but this silly drivel? Not a chance.

Nancy is perfectly free to make up any rules she wants for her own dinner table, like make everyone wash their hands and show up in proper attire. But like all of her claims that Jesus wants you to have a tablecloth, china and flowers she’d conflating a personal bugaboo as Godly. Like all of the female cultural enforcers do.

I think the real reason Nancy hates it has more to do with her last sentence. She’s upset that people have zoned out during her speaking, preferring to check social media instead of listening to her blathering from a very different time that does not translate well to our era. She does not understand also that there of us out there that must be fiddling with something in our hands to activate active listening.

The rest of her list is just as odd, but nothing else rates more than a couple of sentences. What else does Nancy hate?

TV – no Hallmark movies for her, I guess.
Reading novels – she claims you’ll stay up all night reading them and neglect your kids the next day.
Self pity and worry – and I quote “Thinking about yourself is a deadly timewaster.” Apparently thinking anything about yourself is neglecting your children.
Lack of organization – She’s really reaching here.
Lack of discipline – Another reach.
Trying to do everything at once – in direct opposition to everything else she’s said about doing it all.
Inability to say no – again, another one surprising coming from someone that wants you to do it all
Too much stuff – Nancy has apparently fallen down the Marie Kondo hole, and goes on to state that a child only needs two or three toys.
Inefficiency – Nancy states if you walk into a room and move just one thing, or make multiple trips (and the unmentioned forget why you are there) you are sinning by being inefficient.
Getting sidetracked – Like starting a list bashing media and ended up ranting about housework?

To quote from a hoary old chestnut here, you cannot pour from an empty cup. If you’re feeling burned out, stressed, tired, sick and any number of horrid normal things we all experience at times – take a break! Do that thing that builds you back up, be it read a book, take a nap, or make a phone call. No one is Superwoman and has it together all of the time. Rest, relaxation and breaks are necessary to maintain our mental, emotional and physical health.

As time goes on it seems like the Quiverfull enforcers just all get a touch weirder in their advice. Just love that she has used a stylized image of a housewife wearing pink satin toe shoes, like she’s about to star in the Bolshoi Ballet instead of scrub the toilet.

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