Making Yourself at Home

The conditions are always impossible.

“You can’t give what you don’t have.”

This has long been one of my mother’s maxims of ministry (say that five times fast!). Applied to hospitality, it means that if you don’t feel at home in your place, you’re going to have trouble extending a joyful welcome to others.

These are not easy times; few among us feel much ease, margin, or capacity to do more than we are already doing. And yet, our world is full of strangers, desperate for welcome. Perhaps this is why I was struck recently by a quote from the novelist Doris Lessing. “Whatever you're meant to do, do it now,” she says. “The conditions are always impossible.”

The conditions are always impossible. Perhaps this is the cheerful pessimism of middle age; certainly it is more defiance than despair. So: the conditions for hospitality are impossible. Our houses are too small (too cluttered, too dirty, too precious). Our families are too much (too shy, too wild, too complex, too unhappy). Our work is too demanding (too anxious, too necessary, too important). Our resources are too small….

Yes, yes. We know. Let’s welcome the strangers, anyway.

Whatever constraints we feel, the work before is spiritual and imaginative. The material knots will only come loose when we have done the hard work of seeing our circumstances through the eyes of the Gospel.

An example:

My first apartment was a sweet 500-sq-ft garage studio in an old neighborhood in Waco, Texas. I lived there for the first two years of my PhD program, which meant that I worked during the day and attended my classes and seminars at night.

Disoriented, lonesome, and suffering from the “imposter syndrome” common to all young scholars, I came home each night to a cold, dark apartment. I’d open my laptop, munch a granola bar for supper, and try not to cry as I began my homework. Hospitality of any kind certainly felt impossible. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to share saltwater tears and cheap granola with me.

At some point during that first year, I mentioned to my father how lonely it felt to come home to a dark apartment. He very practically asked, “Why don’t you put a timer on one of your lamps?” I found en inexpensive timer—the kind you use for your Christmas tree—and set a lamp by the window to switch on just before I arrived home after classes.

It was shocking how much it helped. I would park my car and see a warm light shining from my window. I felt welcomed, expected, loved — even though I knew perfectly well I was the one who had set the timer.

My father’s suggestion sharpened my imagination to other ways I could make a better home for myself. My mother had insisted that a slow cooker was essential kit, and I realized that if I made a stew before work in the morning, it would be ready just as I returned home. The pièce de résistance was a $5 bread machine I found at a yard sale. It also had a built-in timer, so I could add the ingredients in the morning and set the machine to have the bread ready 8 hours later when I returned home.

From darkness and miserable snacks to light, warm stew, and fresh bread: anyone with a nose can imagine what a difference this made. My apartment was, in a sense, consecrated by these acts: set aside for a holy purpose. The rituals of light and food fought back against the lies that had been taking hold of my heart. And I suddenly felt myself not only able, but eager, to invite someone to share this goodness with me.

If extending hospitality in this season feels hard or impossible, you might want to consider how you feel as the primary inhabitant of your home: your time, your space, your practices. Find a pocket of desolation - a place or hour in your day where things feel pinched or ugly. Find a way to replace that desolation with a simple, daily practice that makes YOU feel welcomed. It might be making your bed, or simply stepping outside into the fresh air for 15 minutes each morning. It might be putting on mascara, or pre-mixing a batch of cookie dough and storing it in the fridge so you can have a few cookies warm from the oven every afternoon.

Coupled with prayer, these practices have enormous power to awaken your appetite for and willingness to extend hospitality. It will feel impossible at first. Let’s do it anyway.

Do you have any practices for making yourself feel more at home in the here and now? Please share them and inspire others to see the holy possibilities in their days and homes.