Hospitality please.

Over the years in the Scott household, we have had many visitors. Relatives , friends, children... you name it. While others are still chipping ice off their windshields, we are getting our tans started here poolside. Come one, come all.

Hospitality is a lost thing nowadays. Its not enough to want to have people over, to want to be a beacon of hospitality. You have to do it. I have friends who I have known for many years who’s homes I have never seen. Meeting up for coffee, or having lunch at a restaurant to catch up rather than sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee and talking for hours seems to be the new thing.

I blame HGTV. Everyone thinks their home has to be perfectly clean or lavishly decorated so that their friends don’t think they are total slobs. We are all slobs who make messes in our houses.

We recently moved in to a new home. It is (in my mind) the perfect home for entertaining. (Thank you Lord Jesus for this wonderful blessing!!!) We have been here almost 2 years and have had several people come and go through our front doors. We have had 7 extended period guests... and so many over for meals I've lost count.  I'm not saying that we are great hosts, we are not. It’s just to say that if you open your home to others, regardless of its size, appointments and cleanliness, people respond. People, I have found, are hungry for real hospitality. People are hungry for relationships... for realness.

All the credit for my sense of hospitality goes to my mother. She has always been the ultimate hostess! Not because she is “Martha Stewart." In fact, she has a sign that use to hang in her kitchen that read, "Martha Stewart doesn't live here."

Once my sisters and I started in school, you could almost always count on extra dinner guests. Our house was the “hang-out” house. It was where all of our friends wanted to come. Not because it was the biggest, nicest or had the best toys, but because they felt loved and accepted. And also because my mom always fed them. Teenagers of both genders can be won over easily with food.

So I encourage you, dear readers (all two of you) to be hospitable. Let others see the pile of unfolded laundry on your couch. It will make them feel better about theirs. Let them see the crumbs under your kitchen table. They will know you actually eat there. Let them see the little finger smudges on your doors. They will know that kids are allowed to be kids in your home.