One of my favourite films is My Big Fat Greek Wedding. A Greek father moves his family to the USA and does his utmost to ensure that his children all adopt an American lifestyle whilst maintaining their Greek culture. His youngest daughter falls in love with an American, unlike her siblings. Her father finds this hard to understand but her mother accepts, eventually, that her daughter is in love. As a mother she does her best to please her husband and her daughter, and there is a line from the film that I always repeat verbatim whenever I watch it “The man is the head, but the woman is the neck, and she can turn the head any way she wants”. I love that line, and I’m going to extend it “the woman can turn the head any way she wants because she is also the heartbeat of the home”.
Here’s my favourite part.
As women and mothers, we have an amazing ability to non-verbally change the mood and even the temperature of a room.
How many times have you got home from work having had a hectic day? That person at work (and we’ve all got one) has been getting on your nerves; you forgot to pay a bill and are now thinking about balancing the accounts because of an unexpected bank charge; you’ve started your period or are even perimenopausal; then to make matter worse your battery on your phone dies! You go through the front door and everyone at home is so happy to see you because after all, you are the heartbeat of the home, so the expectation is to bring warmth to the house. However, one of your family members has just unconsciously echoed something someone said to you that triggers off that moron you work with, or the phone charger that is normally in the socket has been moved…
Are you getting the picture?
So what do you do in a situation like that? I’m not saying that we should put our feelings on hold and make sure everyone else in the home is happy first, but the female’s heart tends to set the tone for the home and it’s a responsibility (albeit a heavy one) that we need to take seriously.
When our hearts are beating at “work” speed or even a different speed from everyone else at home it’s like mixing oil and water! Don’t you just know when one of your girlfriends isn’t feeling 100% and you’re not even physically in her presence? Doesn’t your husband or partner know those days when he just needs to step aside – and you haven’t even uttered a word? It’s a loud non-verbal language. It’s a heart language.
Have you checked your heart lately?
How’s it beating?
