Wednesday, March 27, 2024

How Do You Pass Down Hospitality To Your Children? You Do Hospitality

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How Do You Pass Down Hospitality To Your Children? You Do Hospitality

Sue Donaldson

March 27

How do you pass down hospitality to your children?

You do hospitality. Even if you never saw it happen in your own family.

(That's called: "Breaking the chain of un-grace.")

I have a good-china legacy. I love pretty dishes. I have to be careful in thrift shops, especially if I spy green glass. I come by this legacy naturally—Mom loved pretty dishes.

Every Sunday before setting the table, we'd ask, "Mom, which china do you want to use— Grandma's or yours?" She'd say, "How about Grandma's? Pretty dishes are meant to be used!"

I got Mom's pretty-dishes-DNA. She had two china cabinets. I have one and I am holding (so far). She'd say to us girls: "Now tell me—what dishes do you want after I die?"

Morbid? Maybe, but we liked to please and would wander through her cupboards and drawers and lay claim to a treasure or two—just to make her happy (read: just to make her stop asking!)

While preparing to teach a workshop on hospitality, I decided to interview my mom. "She's a natural," I thought. I found out otherwise.

When Mom began answering my questions, I was shocked to hear she used to be scared to death to invite people over. (Really, Mom? I don't believe it!) Really. Her mother rarely had company. It wasn't part of her legacy. Mom felt shy and backward when it came to inviting and cooking for others.

Mom learned—through trial and error—how to be hospitable. It wasn't a grace she had received, but she worked at it until she became comfortable with it. Philip Yancy calls this: "Breaking the chain of un-grace." In other words, doing the work and taking the risk to add a grace to your own family that maybe you missed out on.

Mom got better with practice. Maybe that's why it's called "practicing hospitality."

By the time I came along—number four of five—she had shed her insecurity and we hosted company most Sundays and many days in between.

We never knew she had broken a chain of non-hospitality in her own legacy so that we wouldn't have to—an inheritance far beyond a pretty dish or two.

Mom told me that when she was early married, Dad had invited the deacon board for pie and coffee. Now, she could make a good pie, she just didn't know how to make coffee!

She cut the pie and placed the pieces on plates and loaded them with vanilla ice cream, Dad's favorite. But when she tried to get the vacuumed top off her coffeepot, it stuck and she had to wait 30 minutes for it to cool! By that time, the ice cream had melted and she said, "I was mortified!" That was her word. I was mortified just listening to her.

"Mom," I said, "why didn't you tell the deacons so they could help you? All engineers, most likely! Why didn't you serve the pie first and say the coffee would be coming?"

"I would now, Sue, but then I was too insecure." (And mortified. Mortification stops us in our tracks. I get that, Mom.)

Bless her. She learned through many years and many mortifications that . . . CONTINUE READING OVER AT ANGELA'S BLOG: EVERYDAY WELCOME

(This week I'm guest blogging over at Everyday Welcome)

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One bottom-line reason I do hospitality is because of loneliness. Believers and non-believers alike need community. lnviting someone for coffee or day could change their day—maybe even their lives. Get my free resource: "15 Things to Try When Feeling Lonely" and pass this link onto a friend.