The Place

We have this spot. 

I would consider it "the place" in our home.

It is the coveted location.

It has the best vantage point. It overlooks the kitchen the living room and the hall. From this place, you can enjoy the company of people sitting at the island in the kitchen. Talk with whoever is cooking. From this location, you can benefit from the view of the backyard tree house and field from the kitchen window.  It gets the natural light and is right in the middle of the action.

This chair is 15 years old now. We bought the set when our youngest was two. This furniture has weathered our children growing up. Food was snuck onto it, crumbs and spills leaving their marks. Bed-time stories from when they were so small all three could sit side by side on it.

It is getting threadbare on the corners.This particular chair has a 1.5" slice in the fabric. No one fessed up, and not one of us can figure out how it happened. We have flipped the cushion as much as we can and still the wear is showing.

When we have friends over, we quickly tell them that the furniture is "curl up" furniture. You have to get your feet up on it, that is how it is best enjoyed. It is cozy, inviting. It hugs you back.
When our family sees this picture, there is a warm, positive feeling of comfort, safety, and rest that fills them.


This day, with the sun pouring in through the window, I came up from work and noticed the light bathing this particular place in its glorious light. I was compelled to take a picture. I did not want to tidy the blankets, fluff the pillows or position the foot rest. I just wanted to capture it. Rumpled, lived in. This moment in time encapsulated a feeling that this spot has come to represent in our family.
No matter how "lived in" it looks, it is always inviting, beckoning you to come curl up, rest, relax and soak in the light.

It has come to represent Soul Hospitality to me.

Soul Hospitality is mindfully creating space for another to find community with you. By opening up your soul, another can find safety and a place to let down the protective barriers they have built up to guard themselves.  It is creating a still, peaceful place of rest in yourself for others to find security, healing and shared journey. In reading this description, you may have already thought of someone who offers this to you, you may just not have had a name for it.



Sacred Companions author, David Benner, describes it like this:

"Soul hospitality is a gift of safety. Think of feeling safe enough with another person that without weighing words or measuring thoughts you are able to pour yourself out, trusting that the other person will keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away….
Soul friendship is the gift of a place where anything can be said without fear of criticism or ridicule. It is a place where masks and pretensions can be set aside. It is a place where it is safe to share deepest secrets, darkest fears, most acute sources of shame, most disturbing questions or anxieties. It is a place of grace- a place where others are accepted as they are for the sake of who they may become."

Soul Hospitality is a sacred place.


A pure gift.

It is rare and beautiful.

It is a place of mercy and grace. 

A judgment free zone.

You cannot be this for everyone. Your rumpled unlovely places line up with others who have similar rumpled, unlovely places. To offer yourself like this to anyone means that you first fill up in God, the one in whom light and life are found.

Soul Hospitality occurs when someone is brave and allows us access to the parts of their soul that have been, wounded, rumpled, even torn. In sharing their "lived in" soul with us, we find safety to start revealing ours. It is the rarest form of friendship. These bonds become your people. For women, these are the beautiful ones who become our soul sisters. For men, their band of brothers.
Sacred friendships, where life is lived and shared together.

Do you need to risk opening up yourself, wisely and prayerfully? Who might God be leading you to create Soul Hospitality for? 

It is "the place".

It is a piece of the Heavenly Kingdom on earth.


It is where all of you is loved, unconditionally, and viewed not as who you are, but as who you are becoming.