Edie Wadsworth

Welcome! I’m glad you’re here. This is day 9 in a 31 days series on hospitality. Start from the beginning here!

Don’t worry. This is a family blog. I’m keeping it on the up and up.

But really, I’m convinced that it all begins right here.

In this bed, in this room, with this relationship.

The very person you love the most is the hardest one to love sometimes.

They often fall to last on the list.  We cook the best meals and wear the best clothes for someone else.

We clean the house and get out the best dishes when company is coming.

And it’s time to reorder ourselves.

This person should come first;  this person with whom I share my bed and my struggle.

I should make it my business to know what he likes and what he doesn’t.

I should make it my life’s mission to serve him, above all others.

Wanna know why America is in such wretched shape?   We’ve lost the order of things.

“Things fall apart,” as the poet says.   “The centre cannot hold.”

We kill ourselves and spend our last dime to make our children rotten but we’ve forgotten that it all  hinges on this bed, and our holding it sacred.

See him with new eyes and study him.  How can you help him?  How can you ease his burden?  How can you make him laugh?

Stop keeping score and just love and serve him.

You know him best so this won’t be hard for you.

Make him see that you hold this relationship in the highest regard.

Hospitality starts here.  In this room.  With this man.

The strength of our love for others depends on what happens here.

May the centre hold and may the best be full of ‘passionate intensity.‘

Love him well.

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“I will love with urgency, but not with haste.”

From The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Y’all have been so patient.

I know you were thinking that surely a series on hospitality would be full of recipes, model guest bedrooms and perfect table settings.

It’s coming.  Hang on!

I started this series where all true hospitality begins—-in our hearts.

And before I move on to all the fun stuff, I want to pause to consider why any of it matters.

Why should I make room for others?

Why should I perfect a few recipes?

Why should I put some thought and effort into what goes into my guest bedroom?

What’s the point?

The point is to serve others.

That and only that should be my guiding principle.

So yes, we’ll talk about kitchen and pantry organization.  But not for the sake of perfectly aligned spices.   Only as it helps to serve our family and neighbors.

We’ll  talk about cooking and why it’s important to learn basic kitchen skills—but not so we can boast of being  gourmet chefs.

We’ll do those things that help us feed and serve our families and friends.

It’s so easy to become obsessed with the perfect home, the most organized playroom, an heirloom tea set.

But what is our motive?

Are we spending our time and energy and money to impress others?   Or to serve them?

We become slaves to our stuff instead of using it as a tool to serve those we love.

So, we won’t encourage perfection.   We will encourage service.

And, as the topics become more visual and practical, don’t forget the goal:

To use our resources of time and treasure to love and serve our neighbors.

It’s just that simple.  And just that impossible.

Join me in the beautiful and crazy paradox!

This is day 7 in a 31 day series on hospitality.   You can start from the beginning here.

We often have nothing to give others because we are bankrupt.

The irony is that we haven’t learned to help others because we haven’t learned to help ourselves.

Solitude is how we help ourselves.

It is in solitude that we develop a rich inner life that sustains us and spills over into the lives of others.

In Radical Hospitality, Pratt says that,

“When we are alone, we have cut off our normal routes to escaping ourselves.  Not only that, solitude hacks off most of the usual ways we feel affirmed.  In solitude, we cease being competent workers.   We do no serve or nurture others in solitude, and we seldom talk.  Once amputated from these normal support systems, we discover a throbbing restlessness that begins to surface.  Ancient wounds to the psyche begin ascending into the conscious region of the mind.  They float up like long dead bodies.  Illusions shatter around us and wisdom gets  a chance to get hold of us.”

Most of us are scared to death of solitude.   We know that our demons linger there.  We are haunted by the truth about ourselves and solitude threatens to expose us.

But if you can stay with solitude long enough to get past the initial pangs of emptiness and helplessness, you will find a beauty and strength there that cannot be possessed in any other way.

Your demons aren’t that scary when exposed to the light of day.  The emptiness is a God-given longing for home, for Him.   He is in the solitude.  It’s His face we find there and it’s there where we come to truly cherish this life, these relationships.

Learning to be alone is a spiritual discipline.  It takes practice.  And it’s become nearly impossible in our modern world full of chaos and distractions.

Pratt says,

“We possess inward solitude at a very high cost.  It does not come easily.  In solitude, we feel helpless and almost out of control.  We have grown dependent on others and the noises we make at each other.  We do not even know how to imagine our lives without the bustle.”

The problem is, most of us moderns have neither solitude nor true relationship.   We live our lives in the murky middle, where it’s comfortable and doesn’t cost us anything.

But true relationship and solitude both require us to be fully present, fully alive to both our fears and our deepest vulnerabilities.

I like to call it living on the dangerous edge of life, where joy is possible but so is falling.

You can stay in your comfort zone and miss the danger.

Or you can enter the wild abundant life that awaits just on the other side of solitude.

The riches you will discover there will lead you to a life that naturally overflows to your neighbor and meets his need without you even trying.

Solitude breeds hospitality.   In silence, true conversation is born.  Out of my emptiness and heartache, I see how desperately I need others.

And falling is finally the least of my worries.

When all else around me is quiet,  I can finally hear His voice.

Only then do I have something worth sharing.

This is day 6 in a 31 day series on hospitality.  You can start from the beginning here.

Brave hearts shine with the divine presence; like God they are free, they are welcoming and accepting,  they are strong yet gentle.  They are wondrously available.

You have all the same excuses I do for not opening yourself to others.

You’re busy.  You don’t have the skill set.  Their problems are too much.   Their  life is a mess.  Your life is a mess.  You’re too impatient.  You’re not kind enough.  You don’t even like them.  You don’t have anything to offer.  What does it really matter?

Turns out, in the end, it’s all that really matters.

All that other stuff we spend most of our lives doing—-that’s what  doesn’t matter.   Trust me, I’m the queen of meaningless minutiae.

But those people that we pass by everyday, that we discard, that we overlook, that we disdain, that we can’t stand, that we don’t get—-those people need us and we need them.

So let’s call the problem what it is.

We are selfish, prejudice, self-centered, arrogant, and desperately afraid.

We are afraid that we’ll be exposed for what we really are.   We are afraid of rejection.  We fear people who aren’t like us.  We are too self-absorbed to be bothered.

And if those are not your barriers to making yourself available to others, you know what yours are.  We’re all in the same sinking ship.

But here’s one thing that is true.  You can spend your whole life hiding behind possessions and gadgets and busy-ness and fear and you will never know the joy of true relationship.

Yes, it will break your heart.  Yes, it will be messy and terrifying.   Yes, you will be broken and humbled and changed.

But the alternative is a mediocre loneliness that will eventually smother you to death.

Open your heart and live.

Your willingness to be alive and vulnerable will welcome others to do the same.

When you extend your heart to someone, you are, in bravery, extending them  a lifeline.

Be brave.  Step into the light.  Someone’s life is hanging in the balance.  And the irony is—–it  may be yours.

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quote above from Radical Hospitality by Lonni Collins Pratt

This is day 5 in a 31 day series on hospitality. Some seasons are not for hospitality but even then, He’s making us ready. Click here for the rest of the series. Thanks for coming along the journey. I’m glad you’re here.

When my house burned to the ground in December of 2010, I found myself in desperate need of someone to show hospitality to me.

I needed somewhere to sleep and I needed someone to find clothes for me to wear.

I needed someone to  listen to my gut wrenching cries and tell me that light would shine again.

I had nothing to give.  All I could do was sob.

Some seasons are like winter in your heart.

It’s during those times that you learn how to live in the skin of someone in need.
It’s then that you learn to cling to the only Hope there is.

Don’t despise the winter grace.

It’s then that you learn the  blessedness of poverty and despair.

When someone else feeds your hungry soul, you learn to recognize those who starve.

God is leading you through this deep and wretched valley to make you blessed.

And when He brings you out again, you will see your brother with new eyes.

Your suffering will have made you perfectly fit to pour out your life for others.

Every time I hear this song, I think of my dear friends who live everyday in heartache.
This life is a veil of tears but Christ will raise us up and the Light will shine again.