So do you practice hospitality? Over at GirlTalk they have a great slew of posts on hospitality…..if you need ideas or just wonder what hospitality might look like…..check out GirlTalk!
Ok, so back to my question….do you “seek to show hospitality”? This is a hard one for me and to be honest I stink at it! People tend to wear me out. Having people in my home is stressful (especially people I don’t know very well). I get a little “Martha-ish” and get consumed with the cooking and cleaning and wondering how my children will possibly be able to behave for 3 or 4 hours.
But in the end I’m always so thankful that we open our home to others.
The two biggest hurdles in practicing hospitality, strangely enough, are: Who to invite and actually getting around to doing the inviting!!
Solving the Who problem!
Last year we decided to invite 12 families….one each month…..over for dinner. Well, we flopped royally! I think we had maybe 3 families over the entire year! So this year we are starting fresh and I have a plan….I love plans! I decided to be slightly more systematic in our invites. Using our church directory as a guide we are inviting two families from the beginning of the alphabet and then switching to the end and inviting two families from the end! Because you know if you always start at the beginning that poor Zimmerman family is never invited over EVER! And by the way, we don’t actually have a family in our church named Zimmerman…..it was the only Z last name I could think of.
Doing the inviting!
I have no idea why this is such a struggle for me….it seems easy enough to pick up the phone, dial the number and set a date on the calendar. But it’s an extra…..one of those little things that seem to get lost in the cracks of my day. About three weeks ago I realized that lots of “extras” were getting lost. So each Sunday night I sit down and make a list of my “extras” for the coming week. I love lists. I love marking stuff off lists. I feel accomplished when I’ve completed the entire list…..ok 75% of the list…..during the week. And so inviting was added to my list and I did it! I made the phone call, got a date on the calendar and hospitality was about to happen at the House of Smooches!
So this past Saturday a lovely couple arrived at our door. I was a little anxious. Even though we’ve been going to church with them for years and we know them by name, we’ve really never had a real conversation with them…..you know “good morning, how are you” as you pass in the hallway is not a real conversation. And hilariously I think they felt slightly suspicious of us too……they asked if we were going to sell Amway!
But we had a wonderful evening. And when we closed the door that night Stephen looked at me and said, “I had such a nice time.” And I agreed.
House of Smooches 