As I worked on the three articles about hospitality, something jumped out at me: this is our work all the time. We don’t just try to fortify our guests. We want our people to be fortified too. We don’t just make sure our company has a place to sit and drinks and clean bathrooms. We want that for our people too. We don’t just make sure our company is welcomed, tended, sheltered, and fed. We want that for our people too.

Hospitality, like all of homemaking, starts in the heart and moves out to touch our people.

If we are only practicing hospitality, accepting the vulnerability and sacrifice required, when outsiders come in and never for the insiders who live here, we need to step back and reset our priorities. Have you spoiled your family? Have you spoiled your people? Have you spoiled your husband? Do you save the good food and the good china only for people who don’t live here?

Side Note: I’m not talking about the spoiling that ruins a child. Children must learn how to do many things, be given responsibility, and be trained for life as adults. But that doesn’t mean we don’t lavish delight on our children. Hold the tension to find the golden mean.

It is so easy to slip into taking our people, those living within our four walls, for granted. Yes, there should be a certain level of comfortableness in our homes that we don’t share with outsiders—pajamas, inside jokes, intimacy, bad hair days, sickness, struggles, no bras (let’s be real)—but that should not move over into neglect of the souls that live here all the time just because they live here all the time. Check out the article about the Hiding Place (coming soon) and how important beauty and color proved to be for Corrie and Betsie Ten Boom. We shouldn’t manage homes that set beauty on a shelf for visitors only. Hold the tension between comfortableness and dignity, beauty and shabbiness to maintain the right balance.

In Hospitality, Part 1 we talked about how practicing hospitality leaves us vulnerable. This is also true with our own people because people are finite and sinful. To be a tender is to be vulnerable. And just like when we open our homes to outsiders, we must embrace this exposure because it is good for us and good for our people. Nothing rubs off our selfishness and self-focused tendencies like the people who live with us every day. Home is to be our refuge, but it can only be that if we are actively engaged in making it so, which will require effort and sacrifice. It will require thought and meditation on our work. Homemaking requires us to be continuously committed to our people and to our homes. We don’t get to just drift and daydream through life.

In Part 2 we talked about the practical sides of hospitality: drinks, food, chairs, bathrooms, and general shelter. Are not all those things true every day for us? Are we not providing beverages, meals, cozy places to settle, clean spaces, and protection from the elements? If we do these with an eye to beauty when we host brunch, how much more should we do that for our own people? Yes, we want a cozy atmosphere, not a formal one. We want to communicate “us” in all our silliness and tumbles and bumbles when we set the table, but our people should never be the last to enjoy our love of beauty. We think about chairs for company, but do we make sure our people have a “soft space to land” at the end of the day, or on a hard day, or a rainy day, or just every day? Do we spoil our people? Do we pamper? Do we lavish? Or do we treat life like a strict boarding school unless someone else is coming over? Do we spoil a guest and tyrannize our people?

In Part 3 we talked about tending to the souls of our company, about welcoming and encouraging. How can we do this for an outsider if we’re not doing it for the insiders? Do our people feel welcomed when they get up in the morning? When they return home in the evening? When they come in from play or work? Do we engage in conversation with a guest but shush and snap at husbands, children, and family when they want to talk? Do we loathe the messy interruptions people bring to our work? Do we ever think about little things we can do to make our people feel welcome? Maybe taking their hats and coats? Maybe helping them wash away mud? Maybe moving slow enough to kiss your husband when he comes home? Maybe smiling when your mom comes into your room or your little sister? Do we seek to listen to our people, actually engaging with their problems and then offering words of encouragement? Do we fortify them? Do we make sure they’re sent out into the world knowing that home has their back?

If we wish to practice hospitality we must start with our own people, the humans that live in our four walls. It is always tempting to start out there with those people, but we must start in here with these people. This is one of the things I liked about House Rules by Myquillyn Smith: she talks about having seats for her family first. Does the room have enough places for the bottoms that lived there? We should always start by tending our own first. This requires us to go to work on our hearts, to humbly open our eyes to the ways we’re not doing this, and to go to work one failure at a time. We’ve said it before, but 90% of the time homemaking is a matter of the heart. Are we plowing, fertilizing, and planting love in our hearts for our people? Are we conscious of the housekeeping being an expression of love? Do we embrace the importance of beauty? We all claim to love our people, but do we act that way? Are they jealous of the way we pamper our company? Or do they receive that lavish love from us first before it’s poured out on others?

A word to Maids and Crones who may find themselves living alone: this can still apply to you. You may not need to ask yourself if you are holding back the good china from your family, but are you holding it back from yourself? Do you treat your home and yourself with a certain appropriate dignity? Do you set the table for yourself? Do you get dressed in the morning even if no one is there to see you put that bra on? Do you make hospitality a part of the roots of your home even if you don’t have a guest? Don’t become so “comfortable” in your aloneness that you and your home lose all decency, all elegance, all beauty. Demand a level of beauty and cleanliness and order of yourself so that you can share it with others.

What a wonderful job we have, to tend our people. How mighty is it to provide shelter, beauty, safety, and nourishment, body and soul, to our fellow man. Let’s be hospitable to the people nearest to us, our closest neighbors, first, and then out of that overflow of productivity invite in a few more.

Hospitality (Part 4): This is HearthKeeping

Hospitality (Part 3): Tending Souls