What is Your Hospitality Legacy? (with Sue Moore Donaldson)

What is Your Hospitality Legacy?

Christian women: we are called to leave a legacy of hospitality!

Today, my friend Sue shares with some ideas about leaving a legacy – a life of welcome. 🙂

From Sue:

I have a good-china legacy. I love pretty dishes. I have to be careful in thrift shops, especially if I spy green glass. I come by this legacy naturally—Mom loved pretty dishes. 

Every Sunday we’d ask, “Mom, which china do you want to use— Grandma’s or yours?” She’d say, “How about Grandma’s— pretty dishes are meant to be used!” 

I got Mom’s pretty-dishes-DNA. She had two china cabinets. I have one and I am holding (so far). She’d say to us girls: “Now tell me—what dishes do you want after I die?” Morbid? Maybe, but we liked to please and would wander through her cupboards and drawers and lay claim to a treasure or two—just to make her happy (read: just to make her stop asking!).

While preparing to teach a workshop on “hospitality,” I decided to interview my mom. “She’s a natural,” I thought.

However, when mom began answering my questions, I was shocked to hear she used to be scared to death to invite people over. (“Really, Mom? I don’t believe it!”) Really. Her mom rarely had company. It wasn’t part of her legacy. Mom felt shy and backward when it came to inviting and cooking for others.

Mom learned – through trial and error – how to be hospitable. It wasn’t a grace she had received, but she worked at it until she became comfortable with it. Philip Yancy calls this: “breaking the chain of un-grace.” 

Mom got better with practice. Maybe that’s why it’s called “practicing hospitality.” 

By the time I came along—number four of five—she had shed her insecurity and we hosted company most Sundays and many days in between.

We never knew she had broken a chain of non-hospitality in her own legacy so that we wouldn’t have to—an inheritance far beyond a pretty dish or two.

Mom told me that when she was early married, Dad had invited the deacon board for pie and coffee. Now, she could make a good pie, she just didn’t know how to make coffee! 

She cut the pie and placed the pieces on plates and loaded them with vanilla ice cream, Dad’s favorite. But when she tried to get the vacuumed top off her coffeepot, it stuck and she had to wait 30 minutes for it to cool! By that time, the ice cream had melted and she said, “I was mortified!” That was her word. I was mortified just listening to her.

“Mom,” I said, “why didn’t you tell the deacons so they could help you? All engineers, most likely! Why didn’t you serve the pie first and say the coffee would be coming?”

“I would now, Sue, but then I was too insecure.” (And mortified. Mortification stops us in our tracks. I get that, Mom.)

Bless her. She learned through many years and many mortifications that it’s not what’s on the plates and on the tables, it’s who is in the chairs and on the porch. 

Mom took to heart the commandment: “Be hospitable one to another, without complaint.” I Peter 4:9. (A commandment, not a suggestion.)

We felt special as kids because we got to use our home for youth group parties, Pioneer Girls sleepovers, and Good News Clubs.

She passed down to us the ease and confidence to open our homes and hearts, something she herself had not received. She broke a chain of non-grace and I’m forever grateful.

Is there a treasure you wished you’d received in your legacy? There’s still time to break any chain of non-grace–all because of his grace. It may take some practice (and many mortifications.)

Hospitality doesn’t have much to do with what kind of dishes you use or if you’re a good cook or a “practicing cook.” It has everything to do with showing love and favor for the one at your table.  

Our girls, Bonnie and Bethany and Mary Grace, know how to invite and make coffee. And they can always go to Costco for pie. All because of their grandma. 

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:16

And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. Acts 20:32

A full life,

Sue

To be filled up with all the fullness of God…Ephesians 3:19

Want a free gift? Join Sue’s email list and grab yours.

More resources for you:

• Why We Have to Live an Inviting Life
• My Dad’s Life Changing Morning Routine
• Welcome God in Your Darkest Parenting Moments
• Connecting Across Life Seasons

Sue says: Changing the World One Cup of Coffee at a Time Tea works, too. 🙂

Find Sue online:

• Sue is the host of WELCOME HEART: Living a Legacy Life Podcast. Listen Here.
• Need a Speaker? 8 Retreat Series/16 Keynotes 
• Find Sue on Facebook Here.