I’ll never forget the day several years ago when a friend walked in and commented on a pile of clean laundry lying on our family room floor. “Your laundry is on the family room floor!” she exclaimed with an odd sense of excitement. “Yeah… this is where we fold our laundry. This load finished a while ago, but I haven’t had time to fold it yet,” I replied. She continued by telling me how relieved it made her feel to know that someone else wasn’t living in a magazine-worthy home and that my relaxed attitude about said pile helped her eradicate thoughts that she is failing or can’t have people over because her home isn’t a picture of perfection. There also was the time that a family friend heard we were hosting a large dinner event at our home shortly after moving into our current neighborhood (our seven kids ranged from one to eleven years old at the time). She seemed shocked we would do such a thing, since we hadn’t had time to decorate or get fully settled, but honestly, it never crossed our minds that we shouldn’t.
Comments like this continue to come our way. People walk into our home and sigh a big sigh of relief. We hear things like, “I feel so comfortable here.” Or, “I can totally relax here.” And even, “I love being at your house. It feels like home.” They seem to convey that our home feels like a good old pair of well-worn jeans. The comments used to catch me off guard. But at some point, I realized that by not chasing a perfectly clean house or a social media-worthy image (that I can’t attain or maintain) and by inviting people into the way we actually live, it encourages others in more ways than one. Hence, the term I started using to explain this: the ministry of mediocrity. People would comment, and I would chuckle and reply, “I guess I have the ministry of mediocrity.”
Mediocre is defined as “of moderate or low quality, value, ability, or performance,” so it might strike some as odd that I would use this word to describe how we operate and how we seem to encourage people at the same time. Behind it, however, is a priority for people, a realistic view of our time, money, and how we are wired, as well as a deep desire to be authentic instead of being a slave to “optics.” These motivations result in what might look like “a moderate or low quality” when it comes to the orderliness of our home and other areas of life, so mediocre is a fitting word to use. But I know for certain that living this way has benefited our family and others greatly. While I have friends whose homes are meticulous and beautiful and who I believe are not breaking their backs or their banks to keep their homes as such, I and many others just don’t or can't. And that’s normal and more than ok. Being brave enough to admit this brings assurance to others like us. It shows others that you can practice hospitality often and impromptu, as well as host events with whatever time, money, energy, gifts, and abilities that you have in any season of life, or really, on any given day. Additionally, living authentically in this way allows us to do more because we aren’t waiting to have everything in order so that we can have people over. It uncomplicates hosting. And it frees us up to invite others in, no matter what. It is a mindset that allows us to truly put people first.
Take for example, a sweet family we befriended a couple of years ago. I was working part-time and knew that the lady who worked next to me spoke in a thick accent. It wasn’t until we attended a special breakfast at work one day and started asking her questions that I realized something incredible. I learned that up until recently, she, her husband, and their two small children had lived in Ukraine. While they were vacationing in Portugal, their home country was invaded by Russia. Long story short, to this day, they have never returned home. Having a couple of relatives in the United States has allowed them to live here for an unknown amount of time and their life is filled with challenges and uncertainty. Imagine leaving for vacation and then never returning home or not knowing if you ever will be able to. Imagine fleeing to a country where you don’t know the language and where you must work incredibly hard to get a job far below what you are capable of in your home country. I instantly had a thousand questions and wanted to show love to these extraordinary people. Without hesitating, I asked her to bring her family over. Within a day or two, they joined us for our weekly Friday frozen pizza night. It wasn’t about the food or a clean house. It was about this sweet, incredible family and hearing all that they had been through while their kids enjoyed playing with ours. We talked late into the night, and it was an experience I will never forget.
A couple of summers ago, we were hanging around at the end of a church service when a group of teens gathered at the front of the auditorium to pose for a picture. They had just attended church camp together the week before and were riding on the high of all they had experienced and the new friendships they had formed. All my son did was glance over at me, and with a little nod, he knew he could invite the group of twenty or more over for lunch. We threw together what we had, and someone swung by the store for hot dogs and buns. The meal was nothing to write home about, and the house was what it was, but the kids had a space. And they had a blast soaking up more time together.
Living with a ministry of mediocrity mindset allows you to not have to count the cost of the condition of your home or the level of food you can provide in order to be with people. It allows you to do the best you can with what you have (and be more than ok with that) so you can be a blessing to others.
I would be lying, however, if I told you I have never felt self-conscious about our home at times. You can imagine nine people living in a modest-sized home and homeschooling on top of that. That’s a lot of meals made, messes made, and just a lot of time lived at home. It’s not like there’s no order at our house. We have a chore chart (one of many of the versions I’ve made over the years). We’ve taught our kids how to clean (just ask the older ones about the color-coded chore cards they wore in lanyards around their necks when it was chore time or mention the “cleaning CD” and be ready for groans and eye rolls). But a long time ago, I realized that achieving a perfectly clean house by becoming Momzilla was no way to live. Honoring God with my words and the way I treat my kids is far more important than the results. One day, in an attempt to encourage me, my husband said, “Look, if we are living in a way that twenty minutes of cleaning up can get us to a place where feel good about having people over, then we are doing great.” This has stuck and continues to encourage me on days when I feel like our humble abode has crossed the line into chaos. There are definitely times when we don’t have twenty minutes, or others when we have truly fallen below the twenty minutes away from “good” threshold, and well, we invite them in anyway.
But “good” is relative, especially today. Not so many years ago, we only knew what our grandparents’ homes and a few friends’ homes looked like. Today, we can see inside of an infinite number of homes via social media, and many of them are carefully curated masterpieces. The skillset and gifting requried, as well as the time, money, and energy put into some of these homes just isn’t doable for some and isn’t as much of a priority to others. Trying to live up to something we are not capable of and doing so for the wrong reasons leads to all kinds of problems. It’s an optics issue. It’s a priorities issue. It’s a jealousy or pride issue. And my heart breaks for the current generation.
Social media paints pictures of homes and hosting parties that are just not realistically achievable for many. Posts of extravagant baby and bridal showers, engagements, bachelorette parties, and first birthdays are enough to make a lot of people never want to attempt to do any of these things. The picture-perfect posts leave others scrambling, hustling, sacrificing, and spending way too much money trying to do so anyway. What the photos don’t tell you are some of the stories behind them: the wife who blew through her budget and kept that from her husband, the friend who was made to feel less than by someone she thought was her friend because she wasn’t arranging the florals just right, or the kids who were ignored for days while mom was working feverishly on party plans. While I realize that there are people with a knack and true desire for throwing parties to be admired by all, I believe others feel this is the bar that is set and are trying to keep up when they really should feel the freedom not to and to just be themselves. Hosting events in a way that is truly realistic and reasonable for you specifically is freeing and keeps you from pitfalls, such as the ones I just mentioned. Maybe you currently have time and the desire to add an extra special touch to a party, or maybe you are in a place where a simple tablecloth and some sprigs of eucalyptus in that vase you keep under your sink will actually accomplish the same result we should be aiming for: time with people. Freedom comes when optics are put in their proper place, which should be the place of “real”. The question is, how many have the courage to operate realistically? If more of us were living this out, it would help others to do the same.
Along with keeping the true reason for hosting events in focus, shifting our mindset to understand the primary purpose of having a home is important. In the early days of a church we used to attend, the pastor would repeatedly announce that he wanted to “wear out this building to the glory of God.” His heart was that the rooms and halls of the church would be full of people connecting and doing all kinds of good work. People and work mean messes, dirt, and wear and tear, and he knew that. But he was willing to wholeheartedly accept these if it meant people were using the space to learn, grow, worship, work, and connect with others. Instead of looking at them as deficits, he looked at the messes as evidence of a whole lot of good happening. I think of our house in a similar way. And sometimes I refer to it as a launchpad. I am sure there is a mess to clean up after NASA launches a rocket, but no one sweats the clean-up or post-launch repairs, because they just lifted something into outer space and that’s what it takes to accomplish such a feat. Similarly, we are aiming to launch our kids and people we love into this world. We want to help friends and younger families with their marriages, friendships, trials, and fears. We want to let our kids explore and try things and learn. And the launch site gets messy. It’s just part of it. In our home, you never know what startup business is being attempted, who has been doing school all over the living room, who is practicing an instrument or some other form of fine art, what baking project is midstream, or what else might be in progress otherwise. But actually, you do know, because the evidence is there. And it is evidence of good things happening or that have happened. As one friend recently said on her first visit to our house, “I love your house. I can see that you are about your kids.” It is true. We want our kids to have the freedom and space to try things far more than we want a perfectly clean home. Just this fall, our oldest daughter was married and she made the comment one day that she realized that not every set of parents could handle what she was doing in preparation for her wedding. There was a room full of fresh flowers, a garment rack with freshly pressed formal clothes for our whole family blocking our bookshelves, two large tables of painted vases in process taking up the kitchen and patio room, watercolor paint supplies set up for personalized name cards she was making, and another room full of boxes with materials for the big event. She is a gifted DIYer and very artistic. And she had the space and freedom to do what she loves and was thankful.
I was prompted to sit down and finally write out my thoughts on this topic because my longtime friend who long ago took notice of my laundry pile was over again today for an impromptu visit. She’s had an incredibly difficult month, and I knew she would be in the area so I asked if she wanted to come in for a while. And guess what? A clean pile of laundry was again on the floor in front of us as we talked. And again, she smiled and commented, “Just like my house.” Our conversation was sweet, and I cherished the time we were able to spend together catching up. The laundry pile didn’t hinder our conversation. If anything, it helped. It reminded her again that there are others out there with homes that won’t be featured in a magazine, but that are full of evidence of good things happening. It reminded her that our homes are havens and launchpads for our family members and friends to find rest and enjoyment in before being sent out into the world each day. It showed her that she was my top priority for the short time we were able to spend together.
And that dinner we hosted with a house “not ready” for hosting just after we moved in over a decade ago? We gained a lifelong relationship from that night who is today one of our closest and dearest friends. I can’t imagine all we would have missed out on over the course of the last thirteen years with her had we not hosted something we desired to just because our house wasn’t ready.
The ministry of mediocrity is code for: be reasonable, be
yourself, be real, and invite people in, because there are others out there who
need to see this. Do it because there are people who need your hospitality and
time with you in your home, regardless of how it looks or what you cook for
dinner. It is a reminder that we don’t have a show to put on or an Instagram
post to make, but a life to share and people to bless.
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