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God gave James and I similar personalities in many areas.  Yes, we have our major differences.  But we’re on the same page about tons of things.  See this post for an example.  Right from the beginning of our marriage, we’ve always loved having people over.  We love opening up our home and we love friends and eating together–swimming in the summers–having Kan-Jam nights–making bon fires and having s’mores.  Most days in the summer, James and I say, let’s have someone over tonight. Which actually never quite works to our favor, since most normal people don’t work quite so last minute.  So often times, that night remains open for us, but another date a little further in the week gets filled.  But then we have to wait a few days, and well, patience isn’t so fun when you want friends to come over and enjoy the eighty-degree pool and roast some marshmallows with you and talk about how good life really is.

Obviously, it’s not summer now.  There’s no pool.  And we haven’t made a fire yet for company, but we still love having friends over.  I do completely admit that I often freak out multiple times–for only a tiny amount of time–because it gets pretty messy, pretty fast with company, especially company with little kids.  When eating dinner together, the kitchen goes from pristine to fifty dirty dishes, pots, pans and other cooking paraphernalia . .. and this alone makes me want to run away and cry.  And then the toys . . . wow.  Toys end up everywhere.  Bins dumped out.  Forty costumes strewn everywhere.  Little superheroes spread out all over the family room like little land mines waiting to bite anyone who steps on them.  

And then by the time company leaves, we’d rather not spend the effort cleaning up entirely because we’re a bit on the tired side.  So usually that job gets left to the stay-at-home mommy.  Not blaming James for not helping–he really does.  The family room got picked up for the most part, and a few dishes got done.  But I do have to admit that it’s no fun waking up to a counter littered with dishes that need to be taken care of.

No matter the mess, it’s true that we still love having friends over.  The mess eventually goes away.  But building relationships and investing in people’s lives really is what living and loving is all about.  So we do it with happy hearts.  And it blesses us to do so.