By Contributing Writer, Terry Covey
As women who choose to make home-making our career, our sphere of influence and the place where we take dominion is within our four walls, called home. Over the years, I have grabbed, with gusto, all I could to order my home, teach and train my children, and manage healthy meals, household chores, and family relationships.
Dominion or Micro-Management?
At times, as I’m sure many of you would admit to in your own lives, I became a micro-manager. This might be described as: one who takes too much credit for influence and considers themselves irreplaceable.
Yes, I said it! I thought too highly of myself and possibly, of my position. Now, that’s just a comment of honesty about my lack of balance; not one that lessens the importance of woman’s role as wife, mother, and home organizer.
The position of home manager, wife, and mother brings with it a picture of dominion.
The definition of dominion:
- ruling control (yep, that’s what I was just talking about, but out of balance!)
- sphere of influence ( I love that term)
- land ruled (ahem, I’ve been known to be out of balance on that one, too!)
- self-governing territory (our home and family)
So, as powerful and old fashioned as the word dominion sounds, it is exactly what our role as homemaker entails. We are to control and influence the territory we’ve been given – our home and family. (Now pay attention – not our husbands! 
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So for years, 32 to be exact, I’ve been in the business of caring for and ruling over our home and family. And since my conversion to Christianity 22 years ago, I’ve had an even more exacting definition of this role that gains its specifics from the Holy Scriptures. It is a beautiful, full, demanding, and rewarding job, and we, as women, are best equipped to fulfill it. The most beautiful picture of this dominion is found throughout Proverbs 31.
An excellent wife, who can find?
For her worth is far above jewels……..………Give her the product of her hands,
And let her works praise her in the gates.Proverbs 31: 10 & 31
Dominion Changes As our Children Grow
If you’re anything like me, you’ve gotten caught up in the complexities and busyness of running your home and family, never considering what life (and dominion) would look like in ten or twenty years. Now, factor in the adjustments of physical aging and having children leave the nest – that nest that we’ve worked so hard to create, maintain, and prosper. Suddenly, those children grow up, adding new ideas to our management style and construction ideas to our nest building!
Harumph! What’s this?! I must adjust and learn flexibility? Yep! Life with adult children gives us the opportunity to learn flexibility with a capital ‘F’. But in that adjustment we gain the wonderful adventure of learning new skills and seeing opportunities that, had we just done it our way, we’d have missed.
My older children have brought computer skills, carpentry, home decorating, midwifery, sales and purchasing finesse, beautiful harp music, photography, historical sewing, Civil War reenacting, music, boating (yes, I’ve even done a bit of wake boarding….for a few minutes!), and all manner of adventure to our lives.
If I had demanded that my dominion, my ideas for home management be maintained, I would have squelched my children’s creative genius, and we all would have missed growing and learning so many new things!
So dominion doesn’t just mean doing things our way. Dominion means taking God’s perfect picture, all of life, and the people in our sphere of influence and adding them together to create and uphold the best possible atmosphere for growing, learning, and loving in our home.
And It Changes Again With Grandchildren!
This is the newest part of my adventure as a woman! And yes, we can exercise dominion in this area of our lives as well. When they first came along, to be honest, I didn’t quite know what to do with them!
Well, you have to admit, they’re not quite the same as our own children. We can’t train them the same, and we don’t have the same responsibility for them as our own children – so what does that look like? Well, time has shown me that grand-parenting is just another avenue for taking dominion.
Just because these babes are not our immediate flesh and blood does not mean that we cannot have influence on them. Again, my favorite part of the definition of dominion – sphere of influence. No, we don’t rule over our grandchildren, yet we can offer much influence into their ever-growing lives.
A wonderful example of this in my life, was my Granny. She was a woman of dominion and great influence. She will ever be remembered by all her grandchildren as our favorite Grandma – the one who showed us service, and strength, and generosity. I can still smell her perfume and hear her laugh! And so, like my Granny, I choose to be a positive influence on my newest members of our family – my grandchildren.
For I am mindful of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am sure that it is in you as well. 2 Timothy 1:5
Another part of dominion is self-governing territory. Grandchildren also fit in here. When they’re in our home – our self-governing territory – we don’t give up our standards or style of management. We just include them and offer them an opportunity to learn how other people live and function.
So there it is! Grandchildren offer us another beautiful way in which we can pass on what God has shown us through the sharing of our experience, wisdom, and love.
It’s really a very beautiful and profound way that God designed family. As I grow older and cease childbearing, my children begin that very same venture! I get to continue sharing the wonder and joy of watching the next generation of children live and grow and learn! And my dominion grows along with this process!
So relax and enjoy the ride! Yes, it can often be a roller-coaster ride as we flex and bend to the varying personalities of our own children and of their children – but that’s part of the wonder of God’s dealings and methods of growing us into the very person He desires us to be! And seeing as He’s the author of Dominion Himself, we can trust Him to work it all out for our good and for His Glory!
Amen and amen.
About Terry Covey
Great post, Terry! You know, I think 100 years ago this transition of having young children still at home as well as adult children and grandchildren, was common. After a generation or two of feminist influences and 2.2 children families, this normal transition is now off our radars. For those of us with big families yet all of the kids still at home, it’s hard to imagine having a foot in both worlds! And there are few (yet a growing number, praise the Lord) we can watch who are doing it.
BTW, you and Bruce could have been the parents in that picture instead of the grandparents
Bambi, Thanks for sharing. So true that today’s norm is so off base from what it’s been for literally thousands of years!
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And yes, for some reason God has not ‘blessed’ my husband with grey hair! I’m liking it though! Thanks for the compliment! Unfortunately the bones on the inside don’t always share the same feelings as the body looks on the outside.
Great post mom! Very well stated and completely true! I treasure the fact that I was raised in a home where you did encourage us to be partakers in ‘dominion’ as we learned to run a family. I am always thinking about how my little boy will be a young man in my home and add his qualities to our family to make a fuller picture. It is really exciting!
By the way, I am really looking forward to giving you a 5th grandbaby at the end of summer! It already has a personality all it’s own and is quit the active little thing (even waking me up at night already)!
Thanks Shayna! I’m really loving this next phase of life (now you know after all my years of transition, that statement is quite amazing!) and those precious little ones you all are providing me. Thanks for your support!