the heart of the home

You know that scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where someone makes reference to the husband being the head of the household but the wife being the neck?

I've run across this phrase "heart of the home" a lot lately.  Its particular context applies to the lady of the household, the wife and mother who tends to the souls entrusted to her -- her husband's and children's.  Part of this soul-tending business involves the temporal care of the bodies the souls inhabit and the environment the bodies live in, but there's a deeper meaning here. 

The heart of the home is where those who live in that home can find love, care, respect, encouragement, nourishment, devotion, understanding, strength, refuge from the outside world's pressures and confusions, and liberal doses of humor and accountability.   She is, for lack of more delicate terms, where the rubber meets the road.  She is in the world but not of it, aware of what the world might be trying to foist upon her loved ones and ready to refute whatever is not of God.

Between the neck and the heart, I'd rather be the heart.   I pray for the grace to be just such a pillar for the people God has placed closest in my midst.