Open House?

"If they so much as start toward the bedrooms I will tackle them on the stair case or yell, 'Fire! Fire!' and run out of the house."

Wendy knew I wasn't kidding. It had been one of those weeks (or one of those months) in which we'd had meetings or ballgames every night, and ballgames all day on Saturdays. No one had done any laundry or made a bed or picked up a stitch off the floor. The last thing we wanted was for anyone to see what pigs we were, so of course, you know precisely where this story is going.

The phone rang; I answered, and the conversation went something like this:

"Hey Rev.! We're right around the corner, and just wanted to make sure you were at home. We'll be there in a couple of minutes. We can't stay long. I hope it suits..."

"Well, as a matter of fact, this is not a good... [click! bzzzzz]. Hello? Hello!!?? Awww @#$%! Wendy!"

The next two minutes were spent trying to close bedroom doors, tidy up the downstairs bathroom, which was hopeless because we have two boys who, when they were younger, thought using the toilet was sort of like horse shoes. Just get it close... Thank goodness the kitchen and downstairs were semi-respectable.

The doorbell rang roughly 30 seconds after the phone call ended. I swear they were already in the driveway when they called. Panicked that someone might just see us as we really are or at least as we are when we haven't cleaned up for company, I turned to Wendy with a big smile (because our "guests" could see me through the glass on the front door): "If they so much as start toward the bedrooms I will tackle them on the stair case or yell, 'Fire! Fire!' and run out of the house."

Like Adam and Eve covering themselves with fig leaves and hiding from God, we spend much of our lives not wanting anyone, not anyone, to see us as we really are. How far removed we are from Eden.

[As Christians,] we aren't meant simply to invite people into our homes, but into our lives as well. Having guests and visitors, if we do it right, isn't an imposition because we aren't meant to rearrange our lives for our guests—we're meant to invite our guests to enter into our lives as they are. It is this forging of relationships that transforms entertaining (i.e., deadly dull parties at the country club) into hospitality (i.e., a simple pizza on my floor). As writer Karen Burton Mains puts it, "Visitors may be more than guests in our home. If they like, they may be friends."

I don't find inviting people into my life much easier than inviting them into my apartment. At its core, I think, cultivating an intimacy in which people can know and be known requires being honest—practicing that other Christian discipline of telling the truth about where we live and how we got there. Often, I'd rather dissemble. Often, just as I'd rather welcome guests into a cozy apartment worthy of Southern Living, I'd rather show them a Lauren who is perfect and put together and serene. Often, telling the truth feels absurd (Lauren F. Winner, Mudhouse Bath, p. 50f).

So you see, asking people into my life isn't so different from asking them into my apartment. Like my apartment, my interior life never is going to be wholly respectable, cleaned up, and gleaming. But that's where I live. In the certitude of God, I ought to be able to risk issuing the occasional invitation (Mudhouse Bath, 53).