Our Sunday school lesson that day was on hospitality. I had read it a couple days before and had been thinking about one part of it. Hospitality wasn’t always in having company over but was also in opening our hearts to each other and being there. 

She sat next to me that morning in class and as I felt her presence there I thought of the past few years and more recently, the past few months. I was not a seamstress by any stretch of the imagination. While it was true that I did all my own sewing and gave a good amount of help to my girls, I needed patterns that fit and a pattern for basically everything. I didn’t have the talent to dream up something in my mind and be able to sew it. The alterations I managed to do were of the smallest sort.

But this one sitting beside me and another who wasn’t there that Sunday morning and even others who lived in places my girls had called home for awhile, had not only sewn dresses for my girls but had also drafted exact patterns to give me. Patterns that fit them and ones I could follow. 

I thought of the many times in the past several months when I had pulled out these patterns to begin cutting out a dress. As I placed those exact patterns on the fabric, knowing they would fit, I saw the handwriting of this one, and that one, and still another. And every single time I felt a little sparkle in my eyes and a bit of warmth surge through my heart for these kind souls who had done this for me.

One definition of hospitality in a person is “creating an environment that fosters genuine human connection and a sense of belonging.” These friends did just that every time they drafted a pattern for me, every time they sewed that collar I just couldn’t get, every time they answered my phone calls with questions. Human connection. A sense of belonging. Hospitality.

No amount of money could ever repay them. No act of kindness was too great. It was hospitality at its finest. And although some of these homes I rarely go into to sit and dine at mealtime, I am fed many times over. The writing on the patterns feed me like a meal never could. I see the words written in their familiar handwriting and my heart smiles as I want to message them and say, “Do you even know what this means to me?” 

If every soft thing my heart feels in these times is gratitude to God for friends like this, God is thanked over and over. And if every smile that crinkles the side of my eyes when I see their handwriting is a prayer, they are prayed for many times. In the same way these friends have blessed me with a demonstration of hospitality, I can only pray that I, too, can do this for others. That I can be there, opening my heart and ears and hands to others, making the way easier in whatever way I can.