Ideas and the Ideal

As many a girl does, I grew up with all kinds of hopes and dreams for my married life. Although marriage didn't happen for me as early as I expected, most of my hopes and dreams have been or are being fulfilled with Matt. One hold out, of course, is children. That hasn't happened yet, but c'est la vie.

The other characteristic, so to speak, of married life that I haven't seen come to fruition yet is our social-home life. You see, I always had this image of our home as being full with friends and family, constantly. The idea of welcoming loved ones into our home regularly always struck me as ideal. It was an important part of establishing the kind of home life I thought I wanted.

Starting out living 45 minutes away from our church and that far or farther from our friends hindered our hope of having them in our home routinely. Since the move, which happened three short months ago, we've been getting settled in and establishing a routine. In the midst of that, though, we had a large dinner party and had a few friends visit one at a time.

Even still, last week's events had me thinking about being proactive in establishing a new normal for our home life. We opened our home for a praise band to practice a couple of nights last week. We had a couple over for dinner at the house one night. My little buddy that I keep for a friend came over for a few hours for extra time with me and his mom stayed to visit with us afterward for a while. 

Having our house overflowing with people, enjoying their company, and serving their interests was fun. We were able to get to know them better and strengthen our connection outside of church activities. Dare I say it, true friendships extend beyond church walls.

This week, another friend-family will come over for dinner one night and we head out of town to see family on the weekend. It will be another full week since I'll be working with Matt everyday. I hope I have enough energy for it all!
 
As much as I enjoyed last week and look forward to this week, I'll have to wait and see whether or not the idea I've had for so long actually is ideal. This is Matt's refuge from the world and that takes priority. Ministering to him and his needs come first. I think, though I'm not sure, that this week stretched him and his social capacity to share home :) He only had one night without company or an activity, so who could blame him! 

He certainly didn't mind coming home to the boy...

 

Even though I emailed Matt a warning...

"Someone took your spot. Better come home quickly to take it back. ;)"

Admittedly, the busyness of this week was too much to be our new normal, but it was good as a reminder for me to plan more occasions for hospitality in our home. I'm hopeful that this is the work of the Lord to bring about something new, something good, something dreamed of long ago.