Inviting Strangers Past the Porch
I don't regret inviting ten strangers to see every nook and cranny of my house, even the messy areas. It's kind of like a writer's life.
I recently invited ten strangers into my home, and they stayed for two hours. I showed them every nook and cranny of my house. Storage areas. The corners of the basement. Every bedroom. The cellar. The bathrooms and kitchen. And then we sat on the wooden benches at the dining table, visiting.
No, my home isn’t for sale. And no, I’m not making it up. But there is a twist. You knew there had to be.
Our home is a century-old former country church with a parsonage attached. And although they were strangers, visiting our home was a reunion for them, like coming home. They brought photos and scrapbooks of weddings, Bible school, and potlucks. They also brought stories from decades ago of what it was before the sanctuary became our family room and the office became my craft storage area. When they had sleepovers with PKs and meals with the pastor’s family.
Every Corner Seen
When you see your stuff through a stranger’s eyes, it’s vulnerable. Having someone see the main rooms is one thing, but having them peek into the recesses where you’ve kept things for nearly two decades is different. “We live here,” I caught myself saying. “There’s some junk accumulated.” I felt the need to excuse the mess. Although it wasn’t particularly messy. Nor are we hoarders. It’s lived in.
Before they left, someone asked if they could pray with us, for the ministry work my husband does at a nearby Christian camp, and for our family (which has expanded from four to twelve people since we moved here). A short prayer with heartfelt words that blessed us. I didn’t notice how much time had passed until I realized it had been long enough that I ought to have asked if anyone wanted water or coffee. Tea. Or a cookie. Anything that showed I had an ounce of hospitality.
Soul Exposed
Since that afternoon, I’ve thought about how much being a writer in midlife feels like inviting strangers into my home. I let people see the places most people keep buttoned up and closed. Open the doors to my heart and let others see what fifty-plus years of constructing and deconstructing and reconstructing looks like. (Hint: It looks a lot like a one-hundred-plus-year-old home with multiple additions and remodels.) Invite them to view the clutter and the works in progress. The stuff I ought to toss but am hanging on to for an emotional rainy day or the urge to grieve.
The apology is always on my lips. To offer embarrassed words about the stuff I haven’t had a chance to extract from mental storage. There is a familiar hope that no one trips over some baggage I meant to deal with.
That sarcasm. Oh, yeah. That’s there from some hurt I haven’t processed, and someone’s words activated it. Writing bubbled it up to the surface in unexpected ways. Pardon my rant.
There are the post-traumatic experiences on display from childhood, emerging from where they were tucked away alongside loving mementos of sweet days in the summer sun. But there it is, one showing up in unstoppable form for several days and nights when a “thing” triggers it, and the hurt won’t relent. I won’t vomit it to the page impulsively because some things I don’t even understand. But they show up in shadowy ways.
The sharp tongue. Intolerance of fake nice. Super-sonar radar for lies. Tender heart for empathy, but missing words to express it. A thought of a friend, followed by a whispered prayer for her. A passion for detail and art and words on a page. A thirst for beauty and a craving for nature and water.
It’s all there, just the same as the dungeon in my church house basement that once housed church ladies chattering and washing dishes in a fellowship hall that has long since become musty and damp. What it was and what it is merge together, some parts sorting onto the page for others to read and some retreating back to the recesses of my mind.
Like the dark shadows on faded blue carpet that bear evidence of the pews that were once bolted to the floor of “the chapel” aka family room, shadows of Michelle from 1969, 1975, 1984, 1987, 1992, and all the years between and after remain.
Open the Doors
Sometimes it hurts to open the doors to show others who I am. A shy moment of wondering if they will still love me after wrestling through questions of faith and finding myself with more questions rather than answers. Will they embrace my progress and quirks? Will they accept a girl who rips open political and religious “boxes” and puts legalism, hatred, anger, and judgment out by the curb like discarded boxes from the basement to make space for justice, diversity, equity, inclusion, grace, tolerance, and love in it’s not fully unpacked state? Will they engage with the “me” who doesn’t like who she used to be?
Maybe. Some will respond with unsubscribes. It’s okay. Others will open their emotional scrapbooks and say, “Girl, me too!” They will invite me to peek into their dungeons and cellars. The attic, the seasonal storage, that junk drawer of feelings that can’t be sorted and processed.
And together, we will see that Jesus never left the building. I might be repurposing things and tossing, but he’s still the central figure. More now than ever before.
Renovating Our Way Forward
When the group of strangers said goodbye, one thing stood out. They had known my home when it was their center of ministry. But Jesus is still here. Ministry is still here. One gentleman expressed how grateful he was that God was still at work here in new ways. Within our work, our family, our community.
And that’s what it means to be a writer in midlife too. It means inviting you, dear reader, into my space, letting you see what’s been happening. Offering to let you trot through my renovations in progress. It’s asking you to excuse the crap I’ve accumulated and see that Jesus is sorting it out. Thank goodness.
I’m still a work in progress. So is this house. So is this life. But Jesus hasn’t left, and he won’t. That’s the story worth telling and the one I’ll keep writing.
Thank you, so good!
I resonate with so much of this.