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August 18, 2017

Hospitality Lessons

Make yourself at home.

It’s something we let slide off our lips without thinking about what it really means. If we invite someone else to be at home in our space, does it mean they can . . .

leave the toilet seat up?
say whatever they want to without filtering?
eat ice cream right out of the container?

There are so many reasons not to invite people into our homes—we’re busy, they’re busy; we’re insecure about our cooking/cleaning/house in general. Besides, welcoming someone into our space makes us vulnerable. It exposes not only our homes but our hearts. It puts us uncomfortably close to another person . . . and opens the possibility that we could get hurt.

So why bother? Why not just go to our own homes, close the garage door, and eat Chinese takeout while watching Netflix?

For the past several months I’ve been getting hospitality lessons from an unexpected source—one who is currently the size of a jackfruit. (Whatever that is—apparently by 40 weeks, the pregnancy books are running out of comparable produce.) This baby growing inside me may not be able to talk, but already this kid is showing me what it looks like to provide a welcoming space for another person.

I’ve been surprised over these past nine months how much a tiny person requires to make him- or herself at home. Before our child was the size of an olive, this little one had the power to wreak havoc on my entire body. How, I wondered, could someone so small make my usually efficient self ready to fall asleep at every red light?

But even with the roller-coaster hormones, stretching skin, and shrinking bladder, it has been a gift to learn hospitality from my new little tenant. Here are some of the things I’m discovering:

Hospitality isn’t always comfortable, but it brings great joy.

This little person is stretching me, physically and emotionally and spiritually. But it’s a good stretching—the kind that broadens the boundaries of my heart and makes me think beyond myself. And the love that comes out of this hospitable stretching, whether it’s for a baby or a next-door neighbor, is worth every moment of discomfort.

It doesn’t have to be perfect.

If we waited for ideal circumstances before allowing someone in—either a baby or a houseguest—we would never extend the invitation. Our presence is more important than the perfectly themed nursery or the perfect multi-course dinner, so we just have to dive in and trust that God will give us what we need, moment by moment.

Don’t wait until you have room to invite someone in.

Each month I say, “I have no idea where this baby is going to go!” But somehow, miraculously, my body expands to accommodate the growth. And I think the same is true about welcoming people into our homes and our lives: our capacity grows to fit the need.

Hospitality gives us a peek into God’s heart.

Of all the ways God could have made himself known to us, he chose an extraordinarily ordinary entrance: in the form of a baby. He made his home in us , and he gives us the privilege of inviting him in. And one day he will extend the ultimate hospitality—by inviting us into the home he’s prepared for us.

On that day when he welcomes us into our eternal home, I have to wonder if this will be one of the first things he says:

Make yourself at home.

October 29, 2015

Yellow Jacket Invasion, Part 2

[See Yellow Jacket Invasion Part 1 for the first part of this story.]

A month into our home ownership gig, it seemed like Daniel and I were losing: Calamities 2; Daniel and Stephanie Team 0. First there was the flood of epic proportions; now the yellow jackets. We were certainly learning a lot, and we were wrangling our house into a home, but we would be content to stop the plagues at two.

Meanwhile, I was grateful to be on the other side of the glass while the beekeeper worked his disappearing act on two hundred-some yellow jackets.

Daniel and I stood safely outside with our noses pressed to the window while our apian hero vacuumed up hundreds of the stinging little monsters and removed chunk after chunk of the yellow jacket nest. I’m pretty sure I counted to six football-sized pieces before I blacked out.

An hour or so into the removal process, I’d seen all I needed to see. Now that the initial shock had worn off, I was starting to get fidgety as the daylight ticked away and no progress was being made on my to-do list. Vacuum the carpet—nope, couldn’t do that right now. Clean the bathrooms—also an inside job. Shoot, even the to-do list was inside.

The only thing I could do was sit on the back porch. And sit.

Taking the Sting Out

We’d put up a hummingbird bird feeder the day before, but so far the birds had been a little skittish about dropping by. We’d seen a few of them take a sip, drive-thru style, but none of them had stopped to perch.

I admired the birds’ beauty and delicate wings, but it made me weary to see them flittering and skittering, never pausing to rest. Don’t you guys need to gear up for a super-long migration to Mexico? I asked them silently as they flitted by. We provided this rest stop just for you, with homemade food and everything. Don’t you want to stop and rest for a while?

And then the irony hit me with such force that I laughed at loud. “Okay, God, I get it.”

Ceasing Our Fluttering

It was the Sabbath, and I’d been flitting around like a little hummingbird all day long. Lots of motion . . . but for what?

God seemed to be telling me, not so subtly, that there was nothing else to do in that moment except sit rest. It was time to forget about my to-do list for a while and embrace the rest he was giving me (forcing on me?) on that sacred day. The vacuuming could wait. The to-do list could wait. For now, my job number one was to sit and enjoy the world he’d made. Hummingbirds and yellow jackets included.

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
—Leo Tolstoy

***

In case you’re wondering, the yellow jackets were all taken care of, and I didn’t see another one until the next morning, when Daniel donned his yellow cycling jersey (an odd choice for professional work attire, I thought). He kept looking at me expectantly after he got dressed, as if waiting for me to catch a punch line.

Finally it hit me: sure enough, it was another yellow jacket.

October 27, 2015

Yellow Jacket Invasion, Part 1

On a Sunday not long ago, I woke up with my mind buzzing, making a mental list of all the things I needed to do that day. We’d recently moved into our new home, and we were getting ready for six houseguests and a dozen or so dinner guests later that week.

This meant it was probably time to locate the floor of the guest bedroom, which had been strewn with all manner of Things I Don’t Know What to Do With since we moved.

But I had a deadline, and I was motivated. I’d vacuum, mop floors, scrub toilets, organize, unpack—nothing was going to stop me. I was pretty sure I would put Martha Stewart to shame.

The Best-Laid Plans of Critters and Women

Around 6 p.m., I was making some progress on my ambitious to-do list, if not as big of a dent as I’d hoped. That’s when I walked into the living room and heard a strange humming sound. I headed toward the corner where the noise seemed to be coming from . . . and promptly went into cardiac arrest.

The windows were covered with yellow jackets. ON THE INSIDE.

I looked up to see the tiniest hole in the ceiling where the devilish little creatures were filing into the living room, one after the other. It was like a horror movie, minus the popcorn.

At that point I did what every independent, self-sufficient modern woman does: I ran outside to find my husband.

Daniel looked at my face and immediately stopped what he was doing. “Are you okay?”

I nodded automatically. “Yes . . .”

And then it hit me: NO, I AM NOT OKAY. There are hundreds of large flying insects with stingers on them, and they are INSIDE OUR HOUSE. I will never sleep here again. On second thought, I may never sleep again, period.

Thankfully Daniel came up with a plan, because my brain couldn’t get past “GET OUT!” and “LOCK THE DOOR BEHIND YOU!”

Here was the plan: Daniel would scope out the situation in the living room and see if he could duct-tape over the yellow jackets’ Gateway to Paradise while I went online to look for the nearest beekeeper/environmentally friendly insect remover/who-am-I-kidding, someone to fumigate the entire zip code.

I made a beeline (sorry, couldn’t pass that one up) for the computer upstairs, slamming doors behind me and lying to myself that surely those flimsy slabs of wood would keep the critters out, despite the glaring fact that not even drywall could stop them.

Count Your Yellow Jackets; Name Them One by One

After about five phone calls to no avail (apparently it’s wise to schedule your bee-related emergencies for non-weekend hours), I finally got ahold of someone who was willing to leave his dinner on the table and come to our assistance. (There’s a teeny chance I sounded a little deranged by this point, so he might not have felt like he had much of a choice.)

The beekeeper arrived in his head-to-toe bee suit and confirmed our suspicions. “Yep, you’ve got yellow jackets. Probably two to three hundred in your house, and that’s a lowball.”

As I darted to the relative safety of the great outdoors, it occurred to me how quickly my priority list had been turned upside down. When my feet hit the ground that morning, my main concern had been having a sparkly-clean home for our guests, but now, suddenly, all I cared about was that it was bee-free.

Toilet scrubbing isn’t a bad thing, of course, but it can be if it becomes all-important. And I had to wonder: What else needs to shift in my priorities so I can keep the main things the main things? One thing was certain: God would go to great lengths to get my attention. And I had two hundred yellow jackets to prove it.

[Stay tuned tomorrow for the rest of the story!]

September 16, 2015

Sometimes you’re the Good Samaritan. Sometimes you’re the guy on the side of the road.

I’ve read the story of the Good Samaritan a number of times, and whenever I do, I insert myself into the story, trying to imagine what part I’d play. Would I be the religious guy, who walks right by the guy in need? Or would I be the Good Samaritan, pulling off to the side of the road to help?

What I’d never really considered before is that sometimes I’m the other guy—the beat-up one who needs medical attention and shelter.

Five days after my husband and I bought our house, we returned home from work and opened the back door to hear the kind of gushing sound typically reserved for a wave pool or, say, Niagara Falls. Not usually an auspicious sign when you’re at an indoor venue.

We opened the basement door to find that water was gushing through one of the windows, creating a pool deep enough (if not clean enough) to swim in.

Welcome to home ownership!

Since this is our first real home, we didn’t have any of the tools or accoutrements you might need to de-swimming-pool a basement. Like it or not, we were officially the guy on the side of the road.

Thankfully, God sent us Good Samaritans—several of them.

Our Good Samaritan looked like my dad, who scrapped the work he needed to do that night to come over with his extra sump pump and wade through the murky waters in our basement.

Our Good Samaritan looked like our new neighbors, who shared all manner of tools and advice. (That wasn’t exactly the way I planned to meet my neighbors: showing up like a drowned rat on their front porch, asking for help!)

Our Good Samaritan looked like my mom, who opened the front door after the rain had cleared to reveal a gorgeous sunset. “This is like your rainbow after the Flood,” she said. “God is reminding you that it’s going to be okay.”

Our Good Samaritan looked like the friend who emailed at 11:02 p.m., just after we returned from a late-night supply run to Walmart, to say that she felt prompted to pray for us and our new house.

This is the other side of grace, I think: the receiving, not just the giving; the getting bandaged, not just the care-taking.

We learn something about ourselves, and about God, when we’re in either pair of shoes (wet and squishy though those shoes may be).

“Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked.

The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.”

Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”

—Luke 10:36-37

***

When have you been the Good Samaritan? When have you been the guy on the side of the road? What did these experiences show you about grace?

August 12, 2015

Nesting

The day after we unloaded a U-haul with all our earthly possessions and deposited everything at our new home, my father-in-law posed this question to Daniel and me: “Hey, do you guys have a chainsaw?”

At that point I wasn’t even sure where I could find two matching shoes, but even if I’d done a better job labeling the boxes, I was pretty sure the answer was no. We’d never had our own yard before, which meant we were pretty lacking in everything power-tool related. Besides, why would we need a chainsaw?

As it turned out, Daniel’s dad had identified a knotty pine tree that was encroaching on the driveway of our new house, and he was ready to take it down. The guys went outside to scope it out, only to return soon than I’d expected.

“No need for a chainsaw now,” Daniel said.

“Really? Why not?”

“Come here. I’ll show you.”

And there, in the lowest branch of the tree, was a dove perched on her nest.

“We can’t take down a tree with a nest in it,” Daniel said.

He was right. We’d spent the past 48 hours packing and unpacking, carrying unwieldy objects up and down stairs, and generally boycotting sleep to get everything settled. We were just beginning to realize how much work is involved in making a house a home. How could we have the heart to evict our feathered tenant?

So we let her stay.

We’ve been causing quite a commotion in the dove’s neighborhood ever since we moved in—hauling in boxes, revving up a borrowed lawnmower to cut the grass, cleaning long-neglected gutters. But Mama Bird just sits on her perch—not squawking at us, but not budging either.

I greet her each evening when I get home from work, walking past her home and into mine. She and I have a lot in common, I think. We’re both feathering our nests, trying to make them comfortable and hospitable and conducive to life.

This is the first home my husband and I have bought together, and there’s something special to be said for that. He moved into the condo I’d bought before we got married, and while that was practical and logical and right for that season, it never really felt like ours.

And what I’m learning as we settle into this place together is perhaps the same thing our nesting guest intuitively knows: It’s more about the ones in the nest than how perfect the nest itself is. Our nest is a little messy (there are boxes still to unpack and items flung rather haphazardly in closets), and it certainly isn’t Pinterest worthy, with its mismatched color schemes and kitchen tile that dates to circa 1987.

But that’s okay. I want this place to be a haven—a place where everyone who lives here can recharge and soak up grace and love and get ready to go into the big world. And I want it to be a place of hospitality—a place where everyone who walks through the door feels wrapped in warmth and welcome, a place where they get a taste of grace.

I want to remember that it’s not about the nest; it’s about the ones the nest is there to protect and nurture.

So we still have a knotty pine tree in our front yard—along with one wise bird who has a lot to teach me about feathering my nest.

Home is the nicest word there is.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

July 22, 2015

A Place to Call Home

My husband, Daniel, and I just bought our first house together, which means I’ve been thinking a lot about home lately.

When we started the adventure of scoping out open houses and looking at realtor.com and making our list of would-likes and must-haves, it felt rather daunting. We knew a house is just a bunch of lumber and drywall, but it seemed so much weightier than that. It felt like where we lived said something about our future, our hopes and dreams, our very identity. That’s a lot of pressure for a piece of real estate.

My friend Brooke told me about this quote she heard somewhere: “Our homes are characters in our stories” (more on that here). And my apologies for the terrible pun, but that sentiment really hit home for me. We weren’t just finding a place to put our stuff or go to sleep at night; we were finding a spot that would become a key part of our story for the next undetermined number of years.

If there’s anyone who knows about longing for home, it’s Brooke. Last summer she and her family packed up their essential belongings, rented out their house, and bought a mobile home so they could embark on a yearlong, 48-state tour of the country. Her home has been on wheels for the past year, meaning that in some ways her home is always with her, and in some ways she’s never home. She knows what it’s like to have roots and to tear them up, how freedom is the other side of loneliness, and how home is both the place and the people.

I think God hardwired us to long for home—to want to put pieces of ourselves into the soil of a place, to make memories there, to let the love and the laughter soak so deeply into the walls that they are heavy with moments and days and years.

But here’s something else I’m learning: our desire for an earthly home is never going to be enough to fill the longing in our souls. Even if we manage to find the perfect paint swatches, line the walls with just the right decorations, and fix all the leaky faucets, it won’t be enough. That longing for a haven, a place to truly belong—that only comes when we make ourselves at home in Christ.

I’ve always loved this psalm, but it makes more sense to me now:

Lord, through all the generations
you have been our home!
—Psalm 90:1

It seems appropriate that this psalm was written by Moses, the wanderer. The guy who grew up with a family not his own and in a country not his own, the guy who spent forty years exiled in the desert, the guy who led his people to a Promised Land he never got to enter. I have a hunch this nomad never really had a place to put his feet up and get comfortable in.

But still, he found home. He learned the lesson we all need, whether we’re putting down roots or pulling them up: When you make your dwelling in God, you will always find home.

***

You never know where you’re going if you’re going by faith. If you’re going by faith, you’re always a stranger in this world, because your home is God.
—John Ortberg

Question for today: What’s something you wished you’d known when you moved into a new home? What’s something you learned from moving to a new place?

In honor of my recent move, I’m giving away a copy of Home Is Where My People Are by the talented and charming Sophie Hudson! It’s a wonderful book about the unexpected places and people that make up home, and what God teaches us along the way. To be eligible, tell me about your moving experience in the comment section below. I’ll give a free copy to one randomly selected commenter.