becoming.: becoming a hostess

As we've been praying through building community here in Atlanta, Jayson and I felt led to take a step of faith and plan a dinner party. Now, I do realize that "planning a dinner party" may not seem like a daunting endeavor requiring great faith to many people, but it was for me, because:

I am not a good cook. Or, maybe better said, I am not a cook. Our family of two mostly subsides on eating out, picking up take-out, grabbing a salad or soup from Alon's, or - if we're really getting adventurous - Jayson grills chicken and I put asparagus in a pan and put it in the oven for 10 minutes. Cooking scares me.
We live in a one-bedroom apartment. It's not so much big; you have to go through hoops like dialing in at a call box, going through a gate, going up an elevator, etc. to get in; the hallway carpet needs to be replaced; and, perhaps most importantly, we don't have a kitchen table.
We don't have a group of friends, so we'd be inviting couples who don't know each other. This is fun to me, but I realize it can be intimidating or just not as fun to other folks.

So those are the reasons I didn't know about having a dinner party. But Shauna Niequist, who wrote Bread & Wine (which, one day, I will stop blogging about, maybe), inspired me to give it a try. Throughout the book, Shauna wrote that genuine hospitality is not about being perfect... having a perfect home, the perfect meal, a perfect life. It's about creating a space for people to come together, to share life, to break bread, to laugh, to feel at home, cared for and safe. So I put my insecurities aside and went for it with Jayson.

We picked a date and invited seven couples, three of which could make it. We asked the Williams to bring wine, the Sparks to bring cheese, the Dolvins to bring a salad, and we got ingredients to make homemade pizzas and a recipe called "Simplest Chocolate Mousse" from none other than Bread & Wine. We cleaned the apartment, set a Frank Sinatra playlist on the iPod, borrowed a few chairs from our neighbors, and prayed for God to provide a fun and homey night.

I can't say that the party was a raving success... mostly because I don't know how that would be judged, and more so, because that wasn't the point. We went into Friday night with open hands, asking God to bless our evening and make our friends feel welcomed in our home but trying to accomplish nothing beyond that.

What I can say is that Jayson and I had so much fun, and we hope our guests did too. Our friends were beyond gracious - helping with pizzas, getting to know one another with a genuine interest, sitting on the floor to eat, sharing sweet compliments about our little home. We went to bed Friday night worn out but happy and grateful.

I don't know where God will lead us next on our journey toward building community. But I hope Friday night will remind us that our only role is to prayerfully trust God and obey as he leads us. And if that involves pizza, wine, chocolate and friends, well, we'll certainly oblige. :)

p.s. I didn't take too many pictures - in fact, none with people in them - but here is a before and after look at our kitchen preparations:

Before