What happened to good, old fashioned visiting? Remember when ladies used to get together and quilt? Or spend a day canning? I don't quilt or can (yet), but I would have no problem say, getting together with a friend and folding laundry over ice tea.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've been reading about pioneer women. The women who packed up their families and all their belongings and necessities that would fit in their covered wagon, and followed their husbands and fathers across the continent to stake a claim on some land and begin a new life. The books I've read are actually just compilations of diaries that these women kept on the the journey. There was a common thread within their writings, which was friendship, support, care, comfort, and community that they shared with one another. They helped each other care for their sick children, they did the wash together, delivered each others babies, cooked together, sewed together, exchanged bonnet patterns and even spread out their prairie skirts to create a makeshift "lady's room" right there on the open prairie.
One of the fondest memories I have while spending time with my grandmother in the summers was going with her on an afternoon visit. We would pull into Ms. Joy's driveway and almost immediately she would burst out her front door and welcome us in as if she had been expecting us all day. Ms. Joy would put on a pot of coffee, and there was always some kind of pie to be served on her white Correlle dishes and I would sit and listen to these two ladies talk about sewing, gardening, canning, quilting, and whatever else was important to them. After a hand or two of dominos (which I HATED) we would load up and head back to grandma's house. Nothing fancy about it. No celebration. It was just a normal day, visiting a friend for no other reason than to just be social and neighborly.
Why don't we do that now? Is it because I'm 39 and not 69? Because it's 2015 and not 1985? or 1885?
What would that look like today? I think the easy thing would be to meet up at a Starbucks or Panera, but to me, that is missing the whole point. There is something honest and authentic about welcoming someone into your home. Home.
What would that mean for me? For my guest? It would mean that I would have to be okay with you stopping in and being greeted by a baby in a diaper and t-shirt and dried oatmeal in his hair. It would mean that my visitor would most likely be stepping over abandoned shoes and Matchbox cars, library books, piles of laundry and graham cracker crumbs on the floor. You would most likely see the breakfast and/or lunch dishes in the sink, a fluffy dog (roughly the size of small horse) begging for your attention, and a refrigerator covered in fingerprints and priceless works of art. It would also mean that I would have to make sure there is toilet paper in the guest bathroom because no matter how many times I ask the precious babes to use their bathroom upstairs, they just will not.
But I also hope that you will find a place where you are always welcome. You'll find a weary-in-a-good-way mom that is so happy to have a visitor. She will most likely be in a raggedy t-shirt and jeans, and barefoot of course. There is always coffee and tea in abundance in this house, and sometimes even chocolate chip cookies! I hope that you would find laughter, kindness, love, encouragement, friendship and a safe place to just be you. Most of all, I hope you will find that ours is a home where Jesus is Lord. You'll probably have to shove some toys off the well-worn leather sofa and pet the dog. PET the dog. Focus on the dog. Like the whole time. He is....well, needy. Sometimes, I think that friendship is a lost art. We get so wrapped up in the busyness of doing nothing that we forget, or maybe we never learned what it is to be a friend.
I have a lot more thinking to do on this. What are your thoughts?? I would love to know!
