Does your home speak of hospitality?

Hospitality: the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers.

I like hospitality.  I think it’s a gift – and an often times overlooked gift in our current world.

On our recent excursion north our family was able to be blessed multiple times by shows of incredible hospitality.  I tell you, friends, there are still hospitable people out there.

Just one of those times found us on the end of receiving a generous reception at a very old farmhouse in central New York state.  (Older than our old farm house I’m sure.)

Maybe it was the fact that the farmhouse was old that made me feel right at home.

Maybe, but it was probably more about the people in that lovely home with a porch stretching across the entire length of it that made us feel so welcomed.

Facebook is a bit of a beast, you know – distracting us with quips from other people’s realities or the realties other people wish us to believe.  Drawing us away from the real life in front of us to the fractured life we present to our couple of “watching” friends.

But sometimes that beast is kind of like a hero too – which is why it’s so difficult to shut the machine down in my own life.

Before our trip I requested some information about several New York locations we would be traveling through.

And that request lead to a genuinely generous and kind invitation for our entire clan plus our traveling buddy to stay over for a night at this New York farmhouse.

I can’t really remember the exact number of years, but I’d say it had been at least thirteen years since Kevin or I had seen Steve and Lisa and their family.  Once upon a time the couple had lived and worked at my father’s dairy farm in Virginia for a few years.  They moved back to New York after Virginia and had seven more children to add to their one born in Virginia.  And then more years piled up, Lisa and I reconnected on Facebook and there we are, pulling off some single-laned road in New York for an overnight visit with some long-ago friends.

So – with kids born after we’d known one another and with bringing our friend Tim along, I’d say Lisa and Steve really were meeting the definition of hospitable – showing a friendly and generous reception to guests, visitors or strangers, of which we were all three.

The kids – all thirteen of them – got along splendidly.  Grady and Lincoln and Percy quickly escorted a thrilled Bergen up to the woods to sit upon a special rock before the sun set.  (After showing him one of the boys’ quails or pigeons – I can’t really recall.) Maebel and Eden took London and Mosely under their wings and shared their room for a sleepover.  Shelby and Otto compared their equally filthy and unrecognizable blankets they drag around.

For dinner we had famous Jersey-style pizza and two choices of wonderful desserts and at breakfast we had a delicious casserole and gobs of fruit.

I love that generosity comes in different shaped packages.  It was muddy and wet from excess snow outside and it was the middle of a busy week and the kids had to catch the school bus the next morning, but we were welcomed right in to bring in extra dirt and trouble and work multiplied by eight-strong.  (We’re a lot of people to invite to sleep at your home and serve a meal too.)

I’ve known a lot of women who struggle with hospitality in their homes.  The excuses are many (and often real) – my kitchen is so small.  We’re remodeling the bathroom.  When we get the carpet cleaned, we’ll have people over.  We can’t afford to serve the right meal.   I’m embarrassed about our neighborhood.  I wish we had more space.  Our home is just not as nice as our friends’ homes are.

It’s downright inconvenient to be hospitable.

You’re putting yourself out there – opening yourself for judgment and that’s really really difficult sometimes.  You’re making more work for yourself – cooking or purchasing food, sacrificing your time and eneregies that you know you could use elsewhere.

But goodness, the rewards are just so sweet when you overcome yourself and how you assume people will look at you (which they almost never do) and open wide your front door – or your broken back door – and throw out your arms and say “Welcome to our home.”

Lisa and I shared sweet grown up conversation that morning in her wide-stretched out kitchen over coffee and juice (I cannot appreciate the coffee folks, I’m trying).  It was a lovely kitchen – overflowing with life and the happy chaos of raising many children.  It was tidy but it had the things in it which old farmhouses and funky homes require – a dryer in the kitchen, a computer desk in the corner, a long table for many family members – and love and a cheery welcoming feel.

Your home has it quirks too.  Stuff that makes it endearing and charming and frustrating and unique.

And if you wait until you fix all those issues, until your floor is spotless and your rugs are shampooed – you can guarantee you will miss out entirely on the gift of offering hospitality.

Our children are still talking about the fun they had on that farm – about the trampoline inside the giant barn and about the new friends they made that they can’t wait to begin writing letters with.

We were blessed by hospitality in that home with the sunrise that crept over the edge of the original wavy glass windows and spilled right onto our faces in all its orange New York glory.  We were blessed by the kind and polite children being raised in that house who seemed to truly like one another’s company and to be quick to share and to play with our road-weary kids.   We were blessed by long conversations with old friends rediscovered.

And I was inspired by the hospitality in that home and reminded to be more generous myself and more welcoming to friends and strangers in our leaking bathroom, sagging front porch, small living room kind of space we call home.