The Welcoming of Hearts

There is this part of me that wants to be warmly and graciously hospitable.  I host a weekly playgroup for stay-at-home moms. We have the blessing of bouncing ideas off of one another over a cup of coffee or three, though we sometimes cancel for the (too often) sick, germ-infested kiddos because we mothers take the spreading of germs seriously, you know. For a short period of time, I was also opening up my living room every Wednesday night for women to study a book together, the heart-changing book, Rhinestone Jesus by Kristen Welch
and to just have community with one another, usually over sweet tea and slice ‘n’ bake cookies. Yes, I serve guests slice n bake cookies. My inconsistent culinary skills are a post for a different day! Weekly book studies went well…almost always. It was a huge dose of joy for my heart each week, and I loved being with those women so, so much! However, hospitality comes with a bit of anxiety for me, as well…because my idea of hospitality (enter perfectionism) and my reality don’t always mesh. I think I can explain the larger issue here…and why we eventually moved the book study from my living room to the Sunday School classroom I teach, at church, for the last three weeks. It was still sort of my space in a sense, right?! I feel like my Sunday School room counts as far as hospitality goes. So…there’s that.

Let’s rewind about a decade: I faintly remember this part of my life when I wanted to be the next Martha Stewart, but it turns out I cannot fold a fitted sheet without wrinkles…so, that dream had to die. No, really. In junior college (oh…why am I admitting this?) I occasionally snuck away to the library, away from my education classes and theater scholarship assignments to read…(gulp)…The Emily Post Guide to Etiquette. Yes, that’s a real thing. {Please just try to embrace my inner nerd with grace.} Anyway, apparently I was going to be THAT lady…in my head. I think I also really enjoyed the movie, The Stepford wives for similar, and slightly odd, reasons. If you are still reading at this point, bless you. You must be so forgiving…because I was slightly confused about who I was at that point…or even who I was going to become. Isn’t that what twenty is about? In retrospect, the person I wanted to be is kind of annoying, so let us continue on.

Fast forward again to the present, I am the mother of three littles. My littles are all…little. More significantly, the littles are all male. That’s right. This {not so Emily Post} mother doesn’t have another female in the bunch. My three boys are precious, but they are messy, curious, adventurous, and energetic! Forget shining silverware or writing thank you notes on the prettiest stationary. I do well to send a quick “Thank you! Thank you!” text message to gift-givers, who all realize that I’m trying to survive this frat house, I live in. Correction: I’m not trying to survive the frat house. I am intentionally raising, nurturing, loving, and guiding the frat house…all the while I am being transformed into a version of myself that I couldn’t have ever imagined in my junior-college, Emily Post-reading days. {I used to think the only card worth sending was one from the Hallmark store itself. Um…Whatever, College Courtney.}

Who am I now? I am so human. While I still have the same (mostly) happy personality, I am so much more genuine for being the mother of three little boys. They keep it real. They give me no other choice than to be my most genuine self. Every. Single. Day. One isn’t likely to be eternally pristine while cleaning urine from around the toilet, nor while she makes banana bread in a room of small, testosterone-filled kitchen helpers. {Sidenote: my most wild child is the one who loves the kitchen the most. Bless. God is using that kitchen helper to refine me into a more gracious woman. I am sure of this.} I am learning patience in the kitchen with batter constantly flung against the cabinets. Hand mixers are so much fun for littles. I clean it up immediately and…then we make banana bread again the next week. It’s quite the routine we have going. Thank you, Lord, for Clorox wipes and dish cloths. I love to clean, but I assure you that if I leave the littles downstairs playing plastic dinosaurs while I attempt to clean the upstairs bathroom, there WILL be baking soda spilled on the freshly-mopped kitchen floor when I return downstairs. (The baby really loves the baking soda…and the childproof lock has been faulty for the past couple of years. I don’t know what that is about.) Really, we’re not completely dysfunctional. I have lots of days with a very presentable home…mostly. We are just real. Most days, we are more “real” than I would like to be. The hard truth is that (for me, at least) perfectionism doesn’t equal perfect. It only means that my expectations for myself are unrealistically high and that has been the biggest inner struggle of my twenties, to be completely transparent. Who wouldn’t love to keep the house clean for a few hours once she has completed the cleaning, right? My good friend, Becky, passed on some rather brilliant wisdom about that. If you clean at night, it stays clean until morning! Voila!! Friends with such wisdom are treasures. Really though, when they are awake, I can only accomplish the “hospitality-ready” level of clean if I transition straight from cleaning-mode to entertain the kiddos-mode. That happens sometimes…if I’m not in dinner-making mode, or someone has an emergency-mode, or be a wife and chat with the husband a moment-mode. So, that’s been a struggle for me. I just really like shininess…and so, that has been refining to say the least.

Housekeeping struggles aside, I’ve realized that life is more beautiful than my dreams of pristine, magazine-worthy spaces. I love making pretty spaces in our home. This journey, however, is more fulfilling than a magazine. The Kindergarten artwork, hung by blue painter’s tape, is the most beautiful decoration this Mommy has ever hung. Nonetheless, my real life, in all of its glory, has embraced hospitality in a new way. It is more than pretty spaces and an immaculate shine on my furniture. (More on my battle with excessive pledging later. Apparently, I have a weird relationship with furniture polish.) Hospitality had to be defined in my life in a different way. True hospitality is simply opening up our lives to let another in. This can happen in our home. It can happen in the room where I teach Sunday School (Praise The Lord that someone else cleans that room for me, aside from the littles!). Hospitality can even happen in this blog. It isn’t just about a space that is inviting. No. Hospitality is about a heart that says, “Come on in! You are welcome in my life!”

So, it is with a joyful heart that I invite you in. I promise to be as transparent as my anxiety level will allow. I will keep it real. We will chat. Won’t you join me, with your sweet tea in hand, while we share our hearts with one another? We weren’t meant to journey alone. I’m just like you. I’m just an ordinary person, with a love for people and a very unordinary amount of words in my heart. I don’t know where all of the words come from, but I know I will be very real with you as I share my heart and as I attempt to encourage you, my friend. Let’s laugh, cry, and share in exuberant amounts of joy together. Come along. You are welcome here.
~Courtney