“My son is starting his freshman year in college,” a friend of ours told us recently, “and I don’t think he even knows how to boil water!” Sure, we laughed, but we can both remember some embarrassing early college moments when we realized just how much we didn’t know.
Just days before that, as we were walking into Home Depot with our 15-year-old son (the entrepreneur whose car detailing business we wrote about), he took in a deep breath and said, “I love this place. It has the best smell in the world, but I have no idea how to use most of the tools yet.” Ouch.
If we needed any more reasons to get more intentional about our household economy, we have only to look at the news that grocery prices are up 14.5% over August 2021. The sagging economy impacts our homes, and we can’t help but want to identify ways to grow in the art of managing a household.
So, whether your kids are heading back to school or you’re launching young adults into college, now is a fitting time to focus on Household Economy, Level 3 of your Trinity House: how we’re running our homes…and how well we’re doing at preparing our kids to confidently step into overseeing their own households someday.
Besides working with our own kids in the home, running our ministry’s Trinity House Café + Market is like an unending workshop teaching “Household 101” to the next generation. Since opening day 2014 (our 8th anniversary is around the corner on Oct. 1st), it’s been a privilege to train over 120 staff in the basics of food prep, cooking, baking, cleaning, organizing, inventory, and customer service. Some of our staff have come from homes where this is all second nature—and many others needed to be taught the basics.
Running a café may seem like a far cry from your home, but in fact, both are incubators for preparing youth and young adults for a life of service. So, wherever you are at in your own journey of forming the members of your household, here are a few tools that have been helpful to us:
- Encounter Jesus in his hidden years of Nazareth. By this, we mean to say that the vast majority of Jesus’ earthly life was spent patiently working and learning from Joseph and Mary. As parents today, we need to embrace the “hiddenness” of the quiet hours we invest with our children, teaching them and working alongside them in our homes.
- Start small, and celebrate small wins. In our Instagram-perfect culture, it may feel like we’ll never come close to teaching our children how to use all the tools or cook all the recipes, and that’s 100% fine. Each family’s reflection of God’s own “communion of persons” is absolutely unique, and comparing ourselves to others gets us nowhere.
- Look for daily ways to say, “Come here, let me show you something.” In our own parenting, we’ve often found ourselves doing tasks solo (because we finish them so much more quickly!). But we need to slow down and invite our children to learn from us and share the work of the household—whether that’s how to make a grilled cheese sandwich, use the weed-eater, manage a savings account, or any of the other countless components of a home.
It’s a cliché, but we’ll say it anyway: “The years fly.” When our kids step across the threshold from their own hidden “Nazareth” and into a life of service, will they be ready? Will they know how to boil water, fix things around the house, and have a bit of a handle on the complexity and joy of running one?
We parents are our children’s “first educators” in the faith—and yes, we might say that we’re also their first instructors in how to oversee the gift of their own “little Nazareth” someday.
> To see where “renunciation” fits into a larger framework of deliverance and healing prayer, check out the 5 keys page at Heart of the Father Ministries. Briefly, they are: 1) Repentance & Faith, 2) Forgiveness, 3) Renunciation, 4) Authority, and 5) the Father’s Blessing.
> This “Prayer of Liberation for Our House” is a practical application of the type of prayer mentioned above. Here’s an excerpt: “May all evils be cast out of this place, at this moment, in the name of Jesus, and never again return, because this house now belongs to God and is consecrated to Him!”
> In “How to Fall Asleep,” Soren’s latest Arlington Catholic Herald column, he looks at practical ways we can end the day and also strengthen our faith.
> See you this Saturday! The Heaven in Your Home Gathering returns to St. John the Apostle in Leesburg (Parish Center) on Sat., Sept. 24, with a casual dinner at 6:30 followed by special speaker Fr. Michael Kelly from St. John’s, inviting us to take a closer look at how our families can find renewal in Sunday worship and rest. Learn more here. We assure you that Fr. Kelly will give you and your family some great takeaways on a most important topic! 
> We still have 1-2 openings (each for 15-20 hrs/week) for barista/cook (post-high school) at our award-winning Trinity House Cafe + Market in the heart of old town Leesburg. Join our faith-filled, dedicated, and hard-working team, focused on serving our community with excellence. Learn more, apply online, and spread the word.
“The Heaven in Your Home Workshop was a beautiful opportunity to refocus ourselves on how we can bring our family to holiness by drawing them into the life of the Trinity.”
– Ian Masson, MS, Director of the IPS Center for Psychological Services, Sterling, Va.
