Martha or Mary?

Who am I going to be today? Martha or Mary?

It’s something I ask myself almost every day. Today, should I be an efficient homemaker who can whip up a tasty dinner in fifteen minutes; who has a garden like Paradise; who irons the children’s clothes the previous night; who will not tolerate dust, cobwebs and disorder of any kind?

Or

Should I be in touch with the latest in music, technology, news; have well-manicured nails; meet my deadlines, listen and not mentally tick off my to-do list while pretending to?


I still haven’t made up my mind. The days I’m Mary, I like it and I feel smart ’n cool but then Martha has to double up the next day. If she doesn’t, the house chews her up and spits her back dismembered the day after.

For a working-at-home mom, it isn’t a simple career woman vs homemaker choice. Most days, I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be choosing between. And that maybe because it isn’t a between, it’s a from; my choice needs to be made from a lot of choices,  a lot of roles; from a lot of personalities who reside in me, from whom I try to piece together the real me.

In the Bible, it was Mary, the girl who just sat and listened, who was shown the thumbs up. To me, that’s a huge deal, especially for that day and age, even if it may have been an exception made for Jesus. Still, my heart goes out to poor Martha who did all the running around and then was told, “Chill, babe!”

A homemaker friend of mine recently confessed to feeling that whether or not she did much of her daily routine, nobody would notice. That sounded really sad to me, so much worse than being underappreciated. Like her work was totally irrelevant, superfluous.
Well, does a sparkling house or a great party deserve a standing ovation? I personally would be ooh-ing and aah-ing a bit but then, I know many who would cock an eyebrow at me and say or think, “Heck, it’s not like …rocket science!”

And it isn’t. It doesn’t earn you big bucks and there definitely is no name or fame in it.

Not that it can’t be pretty satisfying. A spiffy house, for instance, gives me a real high, a soul-high. But then, not that the whole business can’t be deadly boring, not to mention deeply tiring.

It’s all a bit much at times. Neither just Mary nor just Martha seems good enough and being a MarthaMary possibly means reading ‘Computer World’ while combing the child’s hair or manicuring my nails when the chicken is getting microwaved.

I give up.