Growing up we did not lock our door unless we were sleeping.  I don’t know if this was truly an intentional choice or the fact that my dad lost EVERYTHING.  Regardless, it was how we operated.  It was also not a secret.  My family told everyone that the door was always open.  My dad would often say, “Come on by the house, the door is always open.”  If someone said that to me today, I don’t know that I would take them up on it, but people accepted my dad’s offer on a regular basis.

My mom and dad had a heart for people.  They cared for people, especially if they were on the fringes of society.  If you did not feel like you fit in, you fit in with my parents.  They wanted everyone to feel at home and they would go out of their way to make someone feel special.  My mom had a vision to open a business that would operate as a coffee shop during the day, a tutoring resource after school and a concert venue at night.  Somewhere in there she also wanted to operate a Christian radio station that would play my brother’s Christian punk band (technically the dream was born when it was a ska band.  My mom was their biggest fan.).  This dream never came to existence, but her home became almost all of those things.

In middle school our basement flooded with raw sewage.  It was disgusting.  Before the flood, the basement was glorified storage for everything we continued to move from house to house, but never took out of the boxes.  (We moved a lot until I was in middle school.)  After the flood, my parents made our basement into a cozy place for people to congregate.  We hosted family parties, Bible studies, band practice, care group meetings, bridal showers, sleepovers, wedding proposals, birthday parties, fantasy football drafts, school projects and game nights.  We also hosted people that needed a place to stay.  The basement had a windowless bedroom that we nicknamed “the tomb” because it would get so dark.  It was the best room in the house to sleep.  Anytime there was a need to host a visiting group or speaker, my parents would volunteer.  We had bands, missionaries, comedy troupes and ventriloquists.

Our house was a place for people to gather even when we were not home.  Several times in my life I would pull down the street, see a car I did not recognize and wonder who was in the house.  We would come in and people would wander up from the basement.  A couple of times people got dropped off, so they scared the living daylights out of us when they came upstairs!

The best part of this open door policy was watching my parents connect with whoever was in their house.  The friends of my brothers and me would often sneak up and find my dad in his office or in the living room watching a western.  I would look around in the basement and notice someone was missing.  I would find them upstairs talking to my dad about whatever was on their heart.  He had a way of getting people to open up.

This past weekend we ran into a familiar face at a Trunk-or-Treat event.  I introduced her to my boys and told them she was a friend of Uncle Adam.  She confirmed my introduction and added that she was over at our house all the time in high school.  It melted heart.  She had great memories about our house, our family and the welcoming place my parents created.

It is a legacy I have tried to carry on.  It is really hard to do when I lock my doors and I prefer you call before come!  But I want our place and our hearts to be inviting.  Our home is definitely lived in and will never look like a museum.  Please leave your white gloves at home!  But please come.  We can play a game or simply chat on the couch while my boys try to get all of your attention.

I am so thankful that my parents set this example for me.  It was not the only way they cared for people, but it is the way that had the most impact on my heart.  So while my door is usually locked, my heart is always open.