How to Navigate the Good and Beautiful Mess of Missional Living
Most days our house is a mess of thrown shoes, play in progress, specialty smoothies being concocted by young baristas, and remnants of sleepovers. It’s loud and also lovely.
Here, friendships are being formed–some effortless, some with intention and learning curves and heapings of grace. There’s immeasurable good in both kinds as this is the way we find our people and learn to be a better friend ourselves.
But messy it is, with all its ruptures and made-rights. There are firsts, a flurry of them because we’re navigating new ground and each day brings fresh tensions and questions to the surface. When we bump elbows, we rub off on each other and whatever’s growing inside shows.
It’s glorious and complicated, and I’ll take both, please, because it hasn’t always been this way.
Making Neighbors Feel Welcome
I’m especially grateful for kids in and out of our door, filling cracks of time between school and extracurriculars, dinner and bedtime with their presence. Over the years, it’s ebbed and flowed at our house as our kids grew through different seasons. Despite their distinct wiring, they’re finally all finding their network of within-walking-distance people, learning for themselves that we aren’t meant to do life solo.
As conversations deepen and length, I see evidence of clocked hours. As Jennie Allen says, it takes 200 hours to develop the depth of friendships we crave. Proximity lends to racking up hours fast, if you lean into it and let your door swing open often and show up at each other’s house and jump up to answer the doorbell.
The key, as we’re learning, is to make others feel welcome.
When we feel welcome, we come back. Kids know this instinctively. As adults, we might have to unravel what we’ve learned about hospitality because we’ve somehow begun caring more about keeping our house clean than putting our guests at ease. Our efforts, though good-intentioned, may sabotage what we truly want: for others to feel at home in our home.
Kids don’t care if the counter is clean before pulling out ingredients for a new Starbucks copy-cat drink. They don’t think of when the bathrooms were last cleaned before planning a sleepover. Nor do they ignore the doorbell if the floor isn’t vacuumed or they just woke up.
They live in the moment, unashamedly. For them, it makes more sense to pay attention to the people right in front of them than all the things they could have cleaned or finished first. Yet I need all the reminders that it’s okay–better actually–to welcome our neighbors into our authentic, lived-in space. If this is a struggle for you, you might find this blog post on cleaning for unexpected guests helpful.
Intention & Maintenance
Establishing an environment of welcome takes both intention and maintenance. We’re human, and humans misunderstand each other and accidentally–or sometimes on purpose–hurt each other’s feelings, and the welcome our friends felt when they first walked in the door can dissolve in an instant. The same is true for kids and adults.
It’s gritty and full of apology and learning to meet in the middle, this together-way-of-life. It’s learning to talk it out face-to-face and not behind backs. It’s being honest when we need a break or we have other plans, and it’s practicing treating others how we’d want to be treated no matter what.
But it all takes practice. And we’ll mess up it many times as we learn and become and grow.
Yet we’re better for it. Better for the ways we learn to deal with hard stuff instead of hide from it. Better for having to verbalize what we’re feeling. Better for learning that conflict can make relationships stronger. Better for finding real-life context for the things we say we believe.
7 Tips on Navigating the Mess
Navigating the good and beautiful mess of missional living is made simpler when we focus on making others feel welcome. But I want to leave you with more tips because it’s a multi-layered life.
First, though, let’s talk if you’re not there yet. Maybe you’d welcome a little mess because right now there’s little overlap between yours and your neighbors lives. You’d answer your door, but knocks are rare, and you don’t know where to start.
Hold onto this: it doesn’t happen overnight. Deep relationships with your neighbors are the result of lots of little choices to show your face and engage and offer your availability. So we start small–with a little extra time in our front yard or regularly walking our neighborhood–and remember that the direction is far more important than the pace.
Dream of God-filled conversations in your driveway and shared meals and kids rotating playtime at various houses. Pray for soul-sister friendships in your neighborhood. Then take one baby step at a time towards it. Listen to God’s little nudges and say yes to them. Every yes will make the next one a little easier.
Now for a few tips for you if, or when, you find yourself with extra shoes at the door or adolescent drama or misunderstandings that need addressed.
- Stay close to Jesus. Without Him, it’s just a mess. With Him, it’s ample opportunity to let what He’s growing inside you spill into your interactions.
- Be yourself. It makes it a million times easier for others to get to know you.
- Authenticity doesn’t negate the need for kindness. Speak to others, and yourself, gently.
- Give relationships time to grow. 200 hours can’t be clocked overnight.
- Understand that friendships shift during different seasons. It’s normal for kids as well as adults.
- Keep easy-to-prepare food on hand. You’ll thank yourself when there are extra kids over at meal-time.
- Set expectations. People are welcome, but certain behaviors or language may not be. It’s wise to define boundaries.
- Make your apologies count. Save them for the times when you are in error, and welcome the opportunity to model a graceful apology. Constantly dismissing yourself by over-apologizing, however, is a roadblock to deep relationships.
Let’s pray.
Jesus, we invite you into the both/and of a missional life. Help us navigate the good and beautiful mess of life with our neighbors. May our homes be places of welcome and our hearts stay closely connected to You. Grow good fruit in the soil of our lives so it spills into the friendships we’re growing with the people right in front of us.
P.S. Find out if you are accidentally sabotaging your relationships–and discover what to do about it–here:
Just a friend over here in your corner,
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