Hosting

To at least some of my readers, it's no surprise to hear that I grew up in a less than perfect home environment. I'm not going to dive into all the details in this forum (but I'd probably be willing to talk about it in person if you asked), but for the purpose of this post, I want to make the point that my family never had guests over to my house. From a pretty early stage in my childhood (circa mid-80s), we literally never had any guests: no dinner parties, no cocktail hours, nothing. There was one exception - my next door neighbor, with whom I was good friends during high school, would come into one room in the basement, through the basement door, to play video games with me occasionally.

For essentially my entire childhood, I never knew what it was like to host a party or really have friends over. This may sound odd, but just having people into my dorm room when I first started college was sort of a thrill - it was basically the first time I had really had anyone "over". On a side note, my grandparents lived pretty close to me, and they were more than happy to let me bring my friends over for dinner or games or what have you. God bless them! But it was still only an occasional event, and it still wasn't my place, my home.

When I moved to the Farm after college, I finally had a place where I could invite people over, and it was awesome. I had no idea what being a host entailed, or how to do it right, but it really was a thrill. I finally learned that it is incredibly gratifying to open up your home to others, to put their comfort and enjoyment as your primary goal. Needless to say, when my landlord pulled the plug on me having more than a few people over at a time (at no fault of my own), I was seriously disappointed.

All of this really hit me last night, when I had some church friends over to watch the Phillies game. I was filled with this sense of joy and fulfillment at seeing friends having fun in my home, watching my TV, and drinking my beer. I think I finally got what it is to host people - now I understand why people go out of their way to make others comfortable in their home. It reminds me of stories in the Bible when people would wash the feet of guests who had come to their home. There is this deep feeling of love and community in sharing the place you live with others and serving them before yourself.

None of this is to say that I'm a particularly good host, or that I did much more than grab a few beers for people last evening. But it suddenly clicked, and it only took me 27 years.

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