21 Oct 2017

Lavish Hospitality 19

by | posted in: 31days, lavish hospitality, mothering | 0

What is the goal of motherhood?

You know what – I don’t know.  I don’t have all the answers.

Basically – here is what I think the goal of motherhood it is.

With God’s grace, shepherd your children to see their need of Him.  If along the way you teach them how to do well in school, be model citizens, grow up to be a great wife or husband, be honorable, then they are good side effects.

But, the goal of motherhood is to point them to their Creator.  And point them is all we can do.  That has been the hardest thing for me to come to grips with – I can’t save my kids.  Only God can save my kids.

And, if we attempt to put on a mask of motherhood perfection – we are not being hospitable. Not to ourselves, our kids, our husbands, or our friends.  We will only let ourselves down.

Quote from Beyond Bath Time by Erin Davis

21 Oct 2017

Lavish Hospitality 20

by | posted in: 31days, lavish hospitality, parenting | 0

Write31 update: I was going to write this post last night after our trip to Stone Mountain.  But, even though we were home at a normal time, got the tired boys in bed after a quick bath and family worship, I just didn’t have it in me.  Two days of eating a lot of carbs and stress of an all day trip, with Hashimoto’s I’m learning I have to slow down when I need to.

So, you are getting two posts today.  I hope you don’t mind!

I am a mom of two preschool boys.  They used to be newborns, then babies,  then toddlers, and now in preschool.  We have made it through every stage with naps, netflix, and mostly the grace of God.

But, one way that sabotaged every minute of my parenting is comparison.  Comparison for when my kids walked or talked.  Comparison in whether I was breast-feeding or making my own baby food.  Comparison as to whether I was using cloth diapers or Huggies.  Comparison on how fast my kids are reading or playing well with others or climbing on the big slides all by themselves.  Comparison on if they scored goals during their first soccer game.

And I know the comparisons just keep coming.  It doesn’t stop when they reach kindergarten or middle school or college.

And comparison is anything but hospitable.  It isn’t gracious to yourself as a mom (or a wife or a woman). It isn’t hospitable to your other mom friends.  So, just don’t do it.  Its hard.  But, rely more on the fact that God has created you to be the Mom that you are to the kids that you have right now.  And He will give you the grace to complete your task!

Quote from Sharon Hodde Miller’s Free of Me.

19 Oct 2017

Lavish Hospitality 18

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Update on this blog series:

Thanks for reading.  I’m learning new ways to practice hospitality – I hope you are too.  I just had a good friend design a cover for the e-book that I hope will come out early 2018 (or regular book if anyone wants to publish it.).  I will start pulling all these quotes from each day and writing in November!

Today’s post is about something that effects and affects every area of hospitality.  Our humility.  Left to ourselves we are not humble people.  We are prideful and only care about ourselves.  Our rights.  Our ways.  Our happiness.  The selfie-generation didn’t just start a few years ago.  It has always been.

With our God: come to Him with our weariness. He will give rest.  Come to him with honor and adoration – He will show Himself to us.  Come to Him with our desires – He will fill our hands.

With our spouses: Put their needs above our own.  Seek to outdo one another in showing honor.  My husband excels at this – all.the.time.  He has told me in recent weeks that I’ve grown in humility in the time that he’s known me.  That is in direct correlation to God putting him in my life almost 7 years ago now and the work of the Spirit in my heart.

With our children: We mess up as mamas.  When I mess up (often), I will usually go to my kids, get right in their faces (affection), and talk to them really softly and gently.  I think I do this because I want to mend the brokenness, and act in opposite fashion than I just did: loud, harsh, pushing them away.

With our community: When you open your home to people who don’t live within our houses, we speak volumes to their need – and our need.  Our need for community.  That alone speaks of humility because it says that we are not enough in and of ourselves.  God made us for community.  He made us for relationship.  I stink at this sometimes, especially when going out.  I was a poor representation of the gospel this past week at a new friends.  It had been a bad day, it was my son’s birthday, and I don’t think I barely looked anyone in the eyes and I just barely answered their questions.  I didn’t want to be there and others could tell.  I can’t go back – but I can move forward out of my brokenness and let Him do a new thing.

Quote taken from Lord Have Mercy (Ellen Miller).  Photo by Evergold Photography of a cupcake I made.

18 Oct 2017

Lavish Hospitality 17

by | posted in: 31days, Books, lavish hospitality, mothering | 0

As a mom of two preschoolers, two things I think about the most of anything is my children’s safety and their eternal life.  One I can do something about and one I can only point them in the right direction.

Its funny, this week my 4 year old had 5 shots and 1 toe prick to draw some blood.  All routine for a 4 yo check up.  As I was holding his arms across his chest as they were sticking the needles in his thighs, I watched him scream over and over again.  I didn’t feel like I was providing much safety for him.  And after the pricks were over, he was calling for Daddy – all he wanted to do was go see Daddy.  To have Daddy hold him.

Now, if something happens when Daddy is around, then he calls out for me.  So the kid can’t make up his mind.

And now thinking back, I think of me, holding his arms down, covering his face to he couldn’t see the needles being put into his legs, closing my eyes in tears as he screamed, wondering if he would ever trust me again.

Isn’t that often how God is.  We are safely in his arms.  Being held in the palms of his hands, nothing can take us out of his grip.  But, how often does his face cover our screams?  How often do you think that God cries and longs for our hearts when we are hurting?

On this earth, I think we are to be “little Christs”.  So, we are to be Jesus with skin on.  Being hospitable to people may be holding them in their pain, letting them cry, catching their tears.  My husband often does this.  And I think of the safety I feel in his arms.  And it makes me long for the Savior – who will never hurt me but was hurt for me.  So that I may rest secure in Him.

Quote taken from a new book by Lavon Gray (thanks New Hope Publishers) Tuning Your Heart to Worship

17 Oct 2017

Lavish Hospitality 16

by | posted in: 31days, Bible, lavish hospitality | 0

How do you get to know someone?  Thankfully in today’s technology-driven world, I think that is easier and harder.  Let me explain.

You can get to know people on social media.  This is how I love to keep track of new friends and old friends who live in different areas of the country/world.

You can get to know people by running into them at small groups or in church services.  Or playing basketball, shopping, being in a creative group together or a book club.

But, I genuinely think that the only way to truly get to know someone is to sit down with them.  Talk with them face to face.  You may not want to genuinely know everyone – but for those close friends, don’t you want to genuinely know them and sit down with them face to face as often as you can.

With my husband: I can get to know him through texts, through what he posts on facebook, but most I get to know him when we are talking to each other without distractions.  Or if we are sitting side-by-side traveling alone together.

WIth my best friends – I want to get to know them while sitting on their porches, sipping coffee together, or grabbing a quick breakfast together (without our kids).

With new people: it is hard to get to know new people at 40.  It is.  But, I have found it best to just sit down with them, have food or beverage present, and talk. Share.  Be open.

That is what God’s Word does for us.  Though we don’t have a face-to-face with God, the Word reveals God’s heart to us.  He has been hospitable in creating the Word. He was hospitable when He sent Jesus.  And He was (and still is) hospitable to us when He God-breathed the Word to be carried down to generations for us, believers today in 2017.

Quote from Noel Piper Treasuring God in Our Traditions

17 Oct 2017

Lavish Hospitality 15

by | posted in: 31days, food, lavish hospitality, Uncategorized | 0

We are halfway there.  Thanks so much for reading.  Can’t wait to finish out the month with yall.

Since becoming a mom, I think I’ve cooked less and less. I prefer simple meals or take out or Publix rotisserie chickens.  I’m tried throughout the day.  When my husband is home I want to do other things other than just stand in the kitchen and crank out a week’s worth of food.

I know cooking is healthier and easier on the budget for the family – but goodness, tough to get in the kitchen and do.  Especially when half of my people around the table may not even eat it.

But, part of my responsibility (in our family) is to cook and make sure we have food to eat.  My mister will cook but he is usually at work until dinner time, but he always gets up with the boys and gets them breakfast.  I’m extremely blessed – also, with a nearby Publix or Trader Joes.

So, how do I welcome my misters with food?  I thought I would be a wife and a mom who always had a homecooked meal on the table.  Usually I was that kind of wife, but I’m not that type of mom.  I mean, we eat every night.  But only a few days a week is it a fresh homecooked meal.

Here are my tips:

Little Caesars Pizza.

Publix: bagged salad mixes, chicken tenders or rotisserie from the deli.

Dollar menu items.

Bagged veggies with sweet potatoes

Instant Pot

Crock Pot

A local food delivery or pick up service (we found a local place that has freezer meals on hand you can pick up.  And a friend of mine does this as well).

Cereal.

Eggs, fruit, grits

Trader Joes freezer section.

Hope these items help you offer hospitality to your family by getting food on the table.  What are your quick go-to food helps?

Quote from Karen Ehman A Life That Says Welcome

 

15 Oct 2017

Lavish Hospitality 14

by | posted in: 31days, lavish hospitality, mothering | 0

One of the deals with motherhood is that you tend to get interrupted.  Whether you need to change a diaper in the middle of a church service, breast feed in the middle of the night, calm an anxious heart in the wee hours of the morning, get out of bed before your alarm clock goes off because a preschooler wants some juice.  It might be to miss out on something you want to attend because you have a teenager who needs to get somewhere.

Interruptions come.  That’s just a fact of life.  The life of a mother, that is.

And I’ve learned that it usually doesn’t make me smile when I get interrupted.  I like to do what I’m doing and that’s that.  Whether its making dinner, working on a blog, or running errands, I want to do them how I want to do them.

I need God our gracious Father to show up in my heart and mouth and face when my little boys interrupt me.  I need to be ready to color with them, read with them, talk with them about the same topic I’ve already talked about for 4 hours that day, sing one of their songs for the 30th time, and watch the same kids movie with them that they know by heart.

Thanks to Sandra for writing this blog post where I pulled this quote.

13 Oct 2017

Lavish 12

by | posted in: 31days, food, lavish hospitality | 1

On a post about food, and it is my son’s birthday, and I’m not cooking anything.  Nope.  We are going out for donuts, then going to a fun lunch, picking up his Publix birthday cake, then going to a friends for small group.  I’m getting off easy.

But, sitting around a table is more than just food.  Yes, I love to cook.  One of the ways I learned to cook was from my mom being disabled and unable to much of my growing up.  So, she would tell me what to do and I would cook it. Or I learned it from watching my Granny and Papa or learning how to scale fish and cook a mean french fry at the Suwannee River with weeks away with my Papa.

But, I learned to love to cook for others when I got to know a family in college.  I got to be a part of their celebratory meals and their every day meals.  Knowing recipes that family members loved.  Knowing what would please the ones they loved.  Sitting down at a table in their home and talking for house over good food and good wine.  Or just good old sweet tea.

The meal is more than just food.  It is life for the soul of many.

Quote from The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Schaeffer.

12 Oct 2017

Lavish 11

by | posted in: 31days, Bible, lavish hospitality | 4

There are times I fail at hospitality.  And, yes, fail is a strong word.  Most will probably say just practicing it is enough, but for me, I want to do it right.  So, there is often a struggle between doing it and doing it well.

I’m a number 3 with a 2 wing on the Enneagram.  I like to be known and loved and be needed and always seem to be giving my resume.  But, I hate the fear of rejection.  Rejection and me do not get along.

The last 6 years I’ve had the most love I’ve ever known (husband, 2 boys), but I’ve also experienced the most rejection and dislike in my life. It has been some incredibly lonely times.  Filled with so many tears.

I remember just one little example of this.  I was hosting a meeting of ladies in my home.  I love to bake.  And I make these delicious and beautiful cupcakes.  I had spent all afternoon making them (with a toddler and baby).  One person ate a bite, no one else had any.  I wanted to cry the whole meeting.  When my husband arrived home, I threw them in the trash.  He didn’t even get to taste one..  When you work on something creatively for someone, have others reject it, its really a rejection of yourself.

So, the past few months, I have really been taking that rejection and placing it on Christ.  Where I need to sit and dwell in is his everlasting, never-rejecting love for me.  I’m his beloved.  He will never let me go. He will hold me fast.

When we welcome others in our loves, in our home, not rejecting them – we will be a piece of Christ to them.  In order to show them the Gospel.  To let them dwell in the love of Jesus.

More on this Psalm in The Songs of Jesus by Tim Keller

12 Oct 2017

Lavish Hospitality 10

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I grew up in a small Primitive Baptist Church in a small town in central Florida.  I accepted Christ early and started participating as a member in my church.  We did feet washing.  I remember washing feet and having my feet washed.  I remember kneeling and  getting the towel wet.

Now, we don’t do feet washing in the churches I’ve been a part of, but I will tell you some of the most meaningful Lord Suppers.

In Louisville, I went to a church where the Lord’s Supper was practiced every week, tied wholly into the sermon each week (the Gospel), and we actually broke bread (tore off pieces from one loaf) and could dip the bread either into the wine or the juice (in goblets).  The community of believers served each other each week.  Here some meaningful aspects:

  1.  Believers serving believers.  Community with the Lord’s Supper.  First with Christ because He gave himself for us, then we other believers who have put their faith in Jesus too.
  2. Tearing off the bread.  The body of Jesus was a real body. He was bloody.  He had thorns on his head.  The little wafer that I’ve mostly had in life isn’t as much of a replication of it.  But, there is something about tearing off the bread that is more symbolic of what happened on the cross 2000 years ago.
  3. Wine.  (If you have personal reflections on alcoholic intake, I’m not saying you should go partake with wine at the Lord’s Supper.  Where there is freedom, there is love).  I’m not a dry red wine fan.  But, when taking the Lord’s Supper, and you are drinking sweet grape juice, it again misses the symbolic mark for me.  When I dip the torn bread in a cup of bitter wine, the wine hits my tongue and almost makes me wince…it highlights the bitter nature of the cross.

And this table, the Lord’s table, reminds me most of a time when I can sit at the table with Him in Heaven, my feet covered with brilliant fine linens, no one seeing my faithlessness, my rebellion, but all seeing the love and beauty of Christ.

Quote from John Frame, Systematic Theology, found in Habits of Grace by David Mathis.