I don’t remember all of the ten vows I made to my husband at our wedding 9 years ago, but I do remember promising him to make our home a haven of peace and welcome for all who would come.
The measures to bring peace and welcome to our guests often involves a last-minute scramble to shove clothes in drawers, sweep the confidential papers piling up on the desk into the file box, and at the very least, sweep the crumbs off the kitchen floor from a mad cooking spree. In other words – anything but peace and welcome for those already living in the home.
Tonight I was supposed to organize a scrapbooking workshop, after entertaining back to back the past two days, and with all the kids home – not on holiday, but on sick leave. The multi-tasker in me assured myself I could do it. After all, we’d be assembling after the kids were all in bed. And it is my only source of income, pittance that it is. It would merely involve pulling every stamp set, ink set, paper set, sticker set, plus all the tools off the shelving unit and setting them up in a nicely arranged fashion in our makeshift living room, and then doing the entire procedure in reverse order once it was done. And it would also mean that putting away the clean clothes and dishes, vacuuming, and picking up the toys would have to be pushed off to tomorrow, alongside the preparation for my baby’s first birthday party.
Sigh. One of my poignant early examples of great hospitality (without mentioning my parents’ fabulous and wonderfully prepared dinners) was the cool and laid back college home of Lauren, Grace and Heather. Coming off one of my late night partying sprees, I would walk over to their place to be met with the entire household on the couch in comfy clothing, watching Oprah, most likely, and eating some instant soup or a batch of cookies they had just cut and baked. (How did they get such good grades?) They would motion for me to help myself to whatever was on the stove and then make room for me on the couch underneath the blankets. Eventually the talk would drift over to what was going on with us and I was sure to receive acceptance, comfort and people to laugh with me over my foolishness.
That was a haven of peace. It was not the efforts they made in trying to make me feel welcome, it was the acceptance into a vibrant home that was simply already welcoming to be in. It was an amorphous environment that adapted to its guests as easily as it engulfed them in warmth.
Sometimes I’ll spend time making personalized stamped name-tags for my dinner guests, and push aside the clutter to make room for my project instead of dealing with it first. I lose myself in a simple, enjoyable task, closing my senses firmly to the chaos around me. Now chaos can come in the form of a messy table, or it can come in the form of a little boy sitting gleefully on his screaming baby brother with his big sister trying to disengage him by the ear. In any case, my pushing it aside will result in someone else having to deal with it. My husband returning to the chaos after working hard all day? The children trying to communicate with a smilingly absent mother?
So, I canceled the scrapbooking event instead of adding to the chaos. My children are not feeling well and the house is not in any kind of proper order. If I focus on making something universally yummy for dinner, giving them some time to talk about things while they’re in the bath, snuggling with them over a story in their neatly ordered room (smelling their fragrant clean hair) and tucking them under their duvet covers to send them off to dreamland, I will have done the most important thing. Doesn’t my family deserve a haven of peace and welcome too?
* This post originally appeared in my former blog, Perfect Welcome, and may contain some modifications or discrepancies in the names or comments.
Lovely. Just lovely.
Loved this one…and not just because I was mentioned in a flattering light (heehee)…but because you are a wonderful story teller and this was a great reminder of something I do too often…put my family second to something else I'm trying to do. So I loved the ending. I'm going to do that tomorrow night :-).