Hospitality is a matter of the heart and not the architecture

I am a reluctant renter.
Have been for years.
Our house is small, it has faux bricks that constantly fall off the kitchen walls and carpets that, well, let’s just say we have three kids under the age of six and leave the rest up to your imagination.
For years my small house has stunted my hospitality.
I’ve always loved to have friends over. I’m not awesome with a glue gun and I do not have any real furniture arranging mojo. But I’m generally comfortable in my own skin. And I love lingering over the last of the hot chocolate with friends and leaving the dishes for later.
Give me girlfriends, church friends, grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins – I love to have them in my space.
But since my space has shrunk the last few years it turns out my hospitality has shrunk right along with it. I didn’t realize quite how much until our South African cousins surprised us with the news they were going to be coming through the DC area and were so excited to come and visit – and hopefully stay – with us.
I was elated for 5 minutes before the wave of embarrassed disappointment hit.
The teeny living room, two bedrooms and one bathroom all flashed through my mind. Then there was the not-so-small matter that we only have 4 dining room chairs and no guest bedroom. An inflatable mattress and sofa pillows were the best we had to offer overnight guests.
Five of them and five of us in our house seemed like a recipe for hostess hyperventilation. So I was relieved when they said they’d be happy to stay at a hotel. And astonished when my husband emailed them back and insisted they stay with us.
I was incredulous. I pointed out the obvious. Our. House. Is. Small.
Turned out, however, Peter wasn’t limited by the size of our house, because he had big hospitality in mind.
He said we should give them our master bedroom and we’d take the inflatable mattress in the playroom, even if it was only for a night. The kids could camp out on mattresses and sofa cushions in the living room. He was determined that our homesick boys would get a full dose of family. And that meant sleepovers included.
We made dinner a taco fiesta buffet and everyone ate anywhere they were comfy. We put our best sheets on the bed and fluffed up our favorite pillows for them. The boys rolled out their blankets and stuffed toys and plotted games and snacks and stories.
In the four years we’ve lived here our house has never felt as big as it did the week that the Vercueils visited us.
I learned that big hospitality has nothing to do with the size of your house.
Big hospitality is a matter of the heart and not the architecture.
Once I let go of the obsession with smallness, I was able to embrace the fun of squeezing as much big hospitality as we could manage into a week instead of worrying how it would fit into our four walls.
Maybe you’re like me. Maybe this holiday season has you hyperventilating at the thought of your house being exposed for all to see how small or cramped or imperfect it is.
May I suggest a mental shift? If you see your house as big and welcoming as you feel about the people you’re having over, so will everyone who walks through its doors.
The size of your house, my friends, is entirely in your own hands.
http://www.incourage.me/     

Diana Key - guest blog

Gettin’ Ready for Christmas

12 Dec

It’s official. Christmas is coming. It’s that time of year when we get to bring a tree into our home that was chopped down in the forest (I like to think that ours was chopped down by a handsome lumberjack) and we hang strands of little tiny lights and ornaments shaped like snowflakes on the branches. We get to bake cookies and go to parties and our friends send us cards in the mail. It’s wonderful! I absolutely love Christmastime.
And of course, no one has more holiday spirit than my sweet baby cousin Eva (pictured left)..
Bless her heart. Santa better bring her a puppy to make up for that.
Speaking of holiday spirit, a couple of weeks ago pastor Allen talked about preparing our hearts for Christmas. His message really spoke to me because I so often forget to cultivate my heart for anything really.  I allow fear and doubt and anxiety and feelings of unworthiness to grow within me and that really doesn’t leave room for much else. He said, “there’s no room in our hearts for God when we harbor bitterness and envy and selfish ambition.”  I wrote that down because I struggle with harboring these things in my own heart. It’s a fact that when my thoughts are focused on my worries, I lose sight of all of my blessings. And what’s funny is when I do the opposite of that and focus on my blessings, it’s hard to worry about anything at all. God did not create me to be someone who feels unworthy and worries constantly. He created me to live as a woman whose faith can overcome every worry. He created me to be really good at Super Mario Brothers and dancing the cupid shuffle.
So as we prepare our homes and as some prepare their cars, I’m looking at you minivan with the antlers and red nose, let’s prepare our hearts too. Let’s think about all the things we’re thankful for and all of the great things that happened in 2011. And for the next two weeks leading up to Christmas, I am going to post 3 things I’m thankful for.  Starting now.
1. Family & friends.
2. My job, work that matters.
3. Justin Beiber’s Christmas chart topper, Mistletoe.
XOXO,
Di

Shannon Litton: Do missions trips provide lasting change?

Do missions trips provide lasting change?

December 6th, 2011

Two girls in a rural Haitian orphanage with lunch (two pieces of bread brought by UN soldiers) and wearing new clothes recently given to them from a visiting missions team

I just returned from Haiti after 5 days doing video production work for an amazing organization, KORE Foundation. This year I’ve had the opportunity to travel to Ethiopia and Haiti, seeing extremely rough conditions and unimaginable poverty. With each trip, I get a jolt of reality. While it’s not my reality, I’m faced with the reality that the majority of the world doesn’t know my life. The stats are staggering and we’ve all heard them:

• 22,000 children die each day due to poverty.
• At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.
• Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.
• The average Haitian eats only one meal a day, meaning many do not eat.
• 70% of Haitians do not have electricity.
• 90% of Haitians do not have running water.
• 80% of Haitians lack adequate sanitation.

But as big as the numbers are, the statistics are hard to grasp. We don’t see it, so we can’t believe it. It isn’t until I see it firsthand as I did this week. I don’t get it until I see a child in an orphanage pumping water from a shallow, contaminated well and drinking water that is so dark you can’t see through it. When I hold an orphan who is very sick and has been lying alone for hours on a piece of plywood that is his bed. With no medicine available, no parents to rush him to the ER, he is alone. When I hold that child, I really get the statistic of 147 million orphans in the world. The one face makes the statistic real.

A tiny baby girl at a Haitian orphanage. At 8 months, she was nearly the weight of my newborn babies.

I’ve had these experiences numerous times in life. I come home and I hold my kids close. I give a little extra to my favorite causes. I am truly grateful for what I have. But inevitably, life takes over and I forget. I start to think about the things I want. I feel sorry for myself when I don’t have “enough.” I lose perspective.
I’m always grateful to have a fresh dose of a new reality. But I don’t want to lose it. I want to model for my children what it means to live a selfless life. I want to be grateful that I live a reality that most people will never experience.
How do you keep a perspective of gratitude when the world we live in fights to draw us back to selfishness and entitlement?