GRITS

GRITS: Girl Raised in the South.

Yep, that's what I am, though I lack that charming Southern belle lilt to my voice (I have more of the Redneck drawl, which gets worse the more exhausted I am). And the South's claim to fame (other than being the Bible belt) is Southern hospitality.

Which I completely lack.

In fact, every time I take a spiritual gifts assessment, hospitality isn't even a blip on the radar. But God has definitely put some people in my life that exhibit this spiritual gift: and none of them are women.

Indeed, the two people that first come to mind when I think of the gift of hospitality are my husband and my father. They love to cook for others and the more people to cook for, the better. As I type this, my husband is smoking up the house cooking sausage for the baked ziti that he plans to serve on the family of six that will be our guests today (did I mention we live in a one-bedroom apartment?). My dad's typical get-together involves 25 to 30 extended relatives cramming into the little two bed-room house I grew up in. My dad will get up before dawn, regardless of the weather, to fire up the grill for the holiday barbeques. Likewise, my husband strolled in from work at 5:00 this morning and prepped everything for cooking, then got up just five hours later to fix us coffee, do devotions and start actually cooking the meal.

And neither one of them want praise. In my dad's case, he can cook for the extended family and he seldom gets a thank-you (and depending on which side of the family it is, he might not even get a compliment on how good the food is). Meanwhile, I, who usually hadn't even lifted a finger to help clean the house, grumbled and griped about people's lack of thanks. Whenever I would say something to my dad, he would just shrug it off and say he hoped everyone had enough to eat.

When I sit back and think about it, I think I lack the humility for true hospitality. To work so hard cleaning the house, cooking the food, and then the clean up afterward, and not to even want thanks for it all, that's something that I find hard to swallow. Hospitality takes a real servant's heart: someone who is not looking for praise or notice.