Thank You, Edith Schaeffer

I selected purple stock and variagated magenta and white carnations the other day at the grocery store and happily arranged them in a glass vase when I got home.

I love stock’s scent  and when I stood back to admire the flowers, I thought of Edith Schaeffer.

She died Holy Saturday, March 30, at 98 in Switzerland.

I buy flowers because of her example; a woman who fashioned a comfortable home for her husband and family–not to mention countless visitors.

Edith Schaeffer  taught me about gracious home -making. From her books and articles, I discovered it often is the small touches that can change the atmosphere in a home for the better.

I grew up the daughter of a matter-of-fact teacher more interested in getting the family fed than pausing to make dinner actually look good. Vegetables always went from the stove to the table, still in their pot. Leftovers were stuck in the refrigerator willy–nilly, sometimes still in their original pans and often to be resurrected in their dessicated state the next night for dinner.

It wasn’t my mother didn’t like good food and fine dining. She simply didn’t have time for gracious living while she was trying to make a living.

I had more time than she did when my children were growing up, and I lived in a circle of military wives, many of whom were better versed in making a home than I was.

I could admire their “suites” of furniture (what did that mean?), and their matching dishes (we all had matching dishes the first years of our marriages), but I had never paid any attention to throw cushions or the purpose of crystal.

Besides, shouldn’t Christians be more interested in simple living than extravagant expenditures?

As one of the founders of L’Abri, Edith Schaeffer insisted there was more to life than just making-do. She wrote of putting together a beautiful tray of food for her husband–a tray that included not just the tea cup, but a small pitcher of milk, the tea pot, a lovingly prepared snack, and perhaps a posy.

Life didn’t have to be utilitarian, it could have a simple touch of something special.

At Edith Schaeffer’s instigation, I broke out the cloth napkins- my mother never used anything but paper napkins at home–and put the wedding napkin rings into service. I tossed a table cloth across the table and put the vegetables in an actual serving bowl.

Sure, I had more dishes to wash as my mother would have pointed out, but dining felt more like dining than eating, now. The leftovers went into plastic anyway.

From Edith and her sisters in gracious living, I learned the knack of taking a leftover and turning it into something else. No gnawing on dry hard roast beef for my kids, I chopped the (still moist from the tupperware) leftover meat and turned it into Shepherd’s Pie.

My children grew up never suspecting another way. They always passed serving bowls, not hot pots, at the dinner table and flowers in the house were a part of their childhood.

All because of Edith Schaeffer.

Thanks.

What writers have influenced even simple ways you live? How will you remember Edith Schaeffer?

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