On Exercising Hospitality in a Nomad Life

"To every season, turn, turn, turn." - The Byrds.

My now-occasional Monday musings serve as much as an exercise in cleaning out mental clutter as sharing thoughts and questions for the presumed benefit of others. I am my own primary audience. The questions I pose are the one’s with which I wrestle as I stretch into something better, someone more mature (by God’s great faithfulness - Lamentations 3:22-26). This Substack work is about transparency in the process of becoming more of myself, to the praise of his glory.

One of the major pieces of self the Lord has developed in me first through my family of origin and latterly through (nearly) twenty-four years of marriage is hospitality. This theme runs so broadly and diversely in my experience that it deserves more reflection and unpacking than I can do in one sitting. Be forewarned: I will be back to ponder it several times in this space.

But hospitality as a topic has been nagging at the corners of my mind for many months. The shade of it that has distilled in my thinking relates to the changing shape of hospitality in varied life seasons. Moves and big life changes have characterized and structured my life from a young age. Life for me has taken on more of the shape of a tumbleweed than an deeply rooted oak. From the time I was three months old, my family and I moved on average every three years until the time I moved away from home. My husband and I have only added to this pattern, bringing the average down further to one move every 24 months of my life. Granted, some of these were “little” local moves and temporary (less than one year) housing situations. But these interim moments nurtured my expression of hospitality just as profoundly as the semi-permanent ones.

The biggest moves of my life included huge cultural and developmental shifts and occurred when I was a teenager (I turned 13 shortly after we moved overseas):

• 1991 from Northern Virginia to Dublin, Ireland

• 1994 from Dublin, Ireland, to Northwest Arkansas

• 1995 from Northwest Arkansas to Castle Rock, Colorado

• 1996 from Castle Rock (at home with family) to Fort Collins (to Colorado State University).

I have since learned that such huge transitions in the middle of this stage of development are known in psychological terms as “ACEs” or “Adverse Childhood Experiences.” The result? Each of these moves in each of their seasons shaped my instincts (some for better, some for worse) for making friends, building a home, creating community. My beginnings as a “socially aggressive” child only grew cemented as I leaned into those strengths in order to survive in each new environment.

You may notice I did not use the word “thrive.” I hesitate to use that word without reservation. The fractured nature of our experiences allowed certain parts of me to leap forward in growth; but not all parts of me received the same stimulation or nurture in each season. I had to learn to adapt (which can be hard work, even when enjoyable!) and learn what it meant to be me in every place we lived. I believe that identity work, that adaptive necessity, provided the necessary wiring for what came next.

Chip and I got married in 2001 and hit the ground running with building a youth ministry together. Functioning as an assistant pastor, though not ordained, required that he also engage in hospitality. Living in a two bedroom, two bathroom second-story condo of about 1000 square feet presented us with our first challenge…but it would not be the last. Below I document them, brief sketches and impressions. They are my “Ebenezer stones”—placed here as reminders of the Lord’s steadfast love to us, his willingness to use us to display his nature as host in every season (richer or poorer) of our lives:

• Our first home (1000 sq ft): youth ministry with teens coming to us every Friday evening from the high school next door for food, fellowship, music, and games. For other hospitable endeavors, Chip and I would take our chefs knives and ingredients and go to friends’ homes, cooking for them and their young children, having adult fellowship with them once their children went to bed.

• Our pre-seminary years when Chip was a pastoral intern: more cooking for others in their homes; preparing meals for musicians like Jars of Clay and David Wilcox who came to play at our church building in concert. Grilling for our small group on the roof of our second-story apartment in downtown Asheville. Hosting a wanderer for a time in our home while she was in transition between school and finding her vocation (and herself!).

• Our seminary years when we and our two toddlers hosted hungry seminary students—often the single guys from downstairs—in our 900 sqft, two bedroom/one bathroom apartment. Tea time for moms and their tots both in our apartment and on the playground. Organizing and hosting picnic after picnic at the Missouri Botanical Gardens and Art Hill.

• Our post-seminary years when we “hosted” our hosts with whom we lived, sharing the burden and the joys of preparing meals for two families for the three months they housed us during transition out of school and later in a space we rented, hosting friends, small group, and many more tea times with moms and their children.

• Our first ministry call, when the Lord provided 3000+ square feet of house and 3/4 of an acre. With children of late elementary and middle school ages, we hosted Quidditch parties and Murder mysteries, “Chopped” competitions and 40s Swing Dances. We hosted a “community” garden and had garden parties. We grilled and grilled and grilled.

• Our second ministry call, the square footage shrank to 1400 square feet, but it was the year of COVID-19, so our front yard saw most of the action: Birthday lunches for a women’s small group; weekly worship fellowship around the fire. The opening of the word. Worship songs sung by star, moon, and candlelight.

For a time, I even hosted a podcast with God’s WORLD News, learning to create space for conversations that replicated into homes around the nation and even to English speakers around the globe. This great challenge forced me to think about hospitality and its reach in a whole new way. It emphasized for me the idea that small spaces and small groups, like small stones, create ever-larger circles rippling outward to reach more and more for his kingdom. The hospitable heart of the Father, the Lord of the banquet, is displayed in the parable Jesus told in Luke 14. From verse 23 of that chapter: “And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.”

In this post-(vocational)-ministry season, we find ourselves in 1200 sqft, a cozy, three-bedroom, one-bathroom home situated on 1.25 acres. We use our deck for small group hospitality, tea time for one-on-ones. We gaze in quiet, restful wonder with our guests at the “Broad Place” to which the Lord has brought us (Psalm 18:19). We host Chip’s mom (of Buick fame) in her later days as often as we can. We host Eldest when she comes home from school and soon we will play host to our fledging Middlest. Our basement is a roller rink and dress-up studio for neighborhood kids. We learn to shift, to adapt, to make room...to love.

Hospitality for my husband and me has taken on the shape of our limits and the needs of those around us, but not without growing pains. It has required resourcefulness and creativity. It has pushed us to consider what it means to host in spaces that are not our own, but that provide either more space, beauty, or just easier access to a community. In all things, we have recognized that hospitality has very little to do with entertainment or our own comfort. But it always relates to delight: We feel the Lord’s pleasure in us as we, his little children, seek to mimic him in all that we do. SDG.

What do you think about hospitality as one of the ways we image our Creator? Is it optional in the Christian life? Why or why not? What has shaped your thinking in this area?

What obstacles have you experienced that have thrown a wrench in the gears of hospitality? How did COVID-19 lock downs slow or halt an expression of hospitality in your life?

What is one step you’d like to take towards growth in the area of hospitality: what you think or feel about it or how you exercise it?