I have several favorite parts of Seven by Jen Hatmaker, but the following excerpt expresses so perfectly the loveliness of our Link visits...
...but being in each other's homes, cooking and sharing food together is delightful. Eating a meal in a restaurant in one thing, but friends padding around barefoot in your kitchen and chopping carrots for your soup and sipping their coffee on your deck is another creature altogether. This exits the expediency of consumerism and enters the realm of hospitality.
There is something so nourishing about sharing your living space with people where they see your junk mail pile and pee wee football schedule on the fridge and pile of shoes by the front door. Opening your home says, "You are welcome into my real life." This square footage is where we laugh and hold family meetings and make homemade corn dogs and work through meltdowns. Here is the railing our kids pulled out of the wall. This is the toilet paper we prefer. These are the pictures we frame, the books we're reading, the projects we're undertaking - the raw material of our family. It's unsanitized and truthful. We invite you into this intimate place, saturated with our family character.
Maybe this is why hospitality was big to the early church. Living life together in the sacred spaces of our homes is so unifying. When our Christian forerunners were persecuted and misunderstood, when belief in Jesus was dangerous and isolating, they had one another. They had dinner around the table. They had Sabbath together. They had soft places to fall when they traveled. Safe in the home of a fellow Christ follower, they could breathe, pray, rest. What a gift.
Jenn has an amazing gift for hospitality and it is a gift to be in their home, breathing, praying, living, resting. After a busy summer of traveling for both of our families and passing through to say hi, it was so good to get in a longer, more relaxed visit. Not that we were on vacation...we still did school and work, but that's what it's all about, right? Living real life together. We know we are so blessed to have best friends who operate on our same routine, so that we can visit during the middle of a school year (yay for flexible homeschooling!) and not get off track. And then, when all the day's work is done, we were there together to play and eat dinner and visit until bedtime. So fun!
Our first afternoon, the kids played some Uno and then Jenn set up a mini waterpark in the front yard. They loved it and spent some time riding bikes/scooters too.
That night, Matt got out his legos to work on building a castle with Gehrig. Combine it with some Monday night football-watching and Gehr was good to go! I love hearing their conversation...Jenn isn't the only one who loves us like family :)
Many years ago, my friendship with Jenn grew close from daily walking and talking. Now, instead of one child to push in a stroller, there are five! So instead, we snuck out for an early morning run before Matt left for work :). Beautiful sunrise!
Sweet playtime for the "babies." They love each other!
Jenn made a notebook with copies of Madi's schoolwork so that Greer could do it too. So sweet and Greer loved "doing homeschool." The babies joined them some too while Gehr and I did schoolwork in the dining room.
Later that afternoon, the girls helped to snap peas for dinner...
And then wrestled with Gehr :)
Crafting with crayons and playdoh...
Our last night there, Papa came up to meet us for dinner. The weather was beautiful for outside dining, the food was yummy and the company was sweet :). We are so glad that he lives so close and thankful for how sweet he is to all the littles!
Papa let Gehr sit on his motorcycle and rev it up! Thanks, Papa :)
The one hiccup of the trip came on the way home, when the tire pressure warning came on. We stopped to get it checked out and found two nails and a screw in one tire! The guys there were so sweet to change our tire for us and we rode home on the spare. So grateful for the notification of a problem before we were stranded or in an accident. Thanks God!
I found them here while the guys were working on the tire :)
Can't wait to do it again, but were really glad to reunite with B too! Makes us miss the old days when we were all together in one city...and pray for the possibility that we can be again one day. Thanks again for having us...sure do love chopping carrots with you :)
