Come on in

Welcome. Come in. You may use the front door to my house the first time you come over but after that you'll know everyone comes through the side door.

When you enter my house through the side door, you see pieces of our lives all over that first room.  We call it the "front room" although I have no idea why.  It's walls include the front and back of my house.  It used to be a garage for previous owners, but it was closed into the house long before we got here.

The front room holds unorganized lockers for my kids, desks filled with papers to sign or save or just be recycled, an extra refrigerator, a wall full of artwork and projects from my young artists, recycle bins (that also hold artwork at times), and a large dining table and chairs on a beautiful rug.  The dining table and rug do not seem to fit in this cluttered room, but then again they do.

Wow look how clean that table is.  It was Christmas.

Welcome.  Come in through the side door and pass through our clutter and stay a while.  This is how we live.  We invite you in.  We give you access to our lives, our imperfect lives, and hope that by gathering we may grow more.

Grow more like Jesus.

This is not how we live just at home, but this is how we serve.  In everything we do--whether it's work or ministry or parenting.  We don't know how to do it any other way.  We are not perfect.  We are not always equipped.  We can even bumble our way through sometimes pretty bad.  But when we bumble, we ask for forgiveness and we pray and we try again.
 
We have recently opened our home like never before--welcoming a family to come live with us.  We are learning a lot and have only entered kindergarten in the school of "Doing Life Together."  You may be wondering how we all fit now that there are 15 (YES even 16 when Katerin comes home) of us together.  That's for another post.