Open Heart, Open Home

My friend, Holly, picks flowers from her garden each Good Friday, and takes them with a “Thanks for being a good neighbor” note, and her family personally delivers them to each neighbor with a invitation to join them for Easter service and an opportunity to be a guest at their Easter brunch in their home. 

Giving flowers suits many families, but because we raised all boys, when we moved our young family to southern California when we were both age 28, for Bill to take the Lead Pastor position of a church, we took inventory of what we could offer to bless and build our new community. Because Bill was a quarterback in high school, and I was a college athlete, and we had two (then three) sons in youth sports, being a coach and team mom was a good launching point. But we decided to treat our teams like families. 

At first we lived in a tiny apartment, so we brought barbecue to the park to share after games. Once we had a duplex, we invited one family at a time over for a meal and play date. We invited everyone, but we especially looked for family like ours, who were new to the area or lived far from their families. Eventually, our little duplex was filled to the brim with people around a simple Thanksgiving potluck meal.

Christmas came around and we invited many new friends with kids over for what we called, “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.  With our boys help, we baked and decorated a rather pathetic but tasty “Happy Birthday Jesus” cake, I asked people from our church to donate their “junk” to create a trunkful of costumes. So with random old prom dresses, tiaras, bathrobes, stuffed animals and tossed aside sunglasses, we dressed up all the children as the characters of the Christmas nativity (sheep, camels, shepherds, wisemen, angels, Joseph, Mary—and a real baby as Jesus!) Our oldest, a brand new reader, read (stumbled, stammered and sounded out) the Christmas story from A Charlie Brown Christmas (which is really Luke 2 rendition).  Each family left with a tiny (and a bit scrawny)  “Charlie Brown tree” with an invitation to join our family for Christmas Eve dinner, then candlelight service—and they all came! (If we discovered any were struggling financially, we played “Secret Santa” and brought over a holiday meal and toys as a “Gift from God’s Heart to Your Home”

This open heart, open home friendship building seemed natural, so we threw Valentine cookie decorating parties and lavished our friends with love. And some of them really needed some love: single moms who were escaping violence from a live-in boy friend, widows from the neighborhood living far from family and lonely, common-law couples with kids from broken homes with broken hearts that honestly loved one another but the thought of making a marriage commitment scared them to death! We invited in families from several countries newly immigrated who spoke broken English. We hosted Easter hunts and a picnics, and used the Carton of Eggs to tell the Resurrection story—and grown ups and kids alike stayed to hear it. We invited our pre-believing families to beach days, July 4th barbecue and fireworks, and Labor Day end of summer, back to school celebrations and our churches Fall Festival (eventually the July 4th Picnic and Non Talent show, our Christian Schools’ Children’s Christmas play and our churches Easter drama and became some of the largest events in our city).

However, by far, the most uniquely Farrel “Open Heart, Open Home” gathering began our second Thanksgiving in our new city. When Thanksgiving rolled around that year, we accessed our limited budget and our gift and talent set. With three sons in youth sports, Bill a former high school quarterback; me, a team mom, we decided to host a Father-Son football game, with a mom’s “mug and muffin” on the sidelines. From Halloween on, we invited everyone we met to come join us Thanksgiving morning for a low key, casual, fun family morning out. We flung the door open for people to bring out of town guests if they wanted. All we asked is they gave us a quick RSVP if they even thought they might show up. The week of the event we quickly realized more than a hundred people were going to be there, so we organized two games (one for the older kids and one for the little kids and their dads) as well as a tiny tot “Punt-Pass and Kick” contest. We gathered a few donations from local businesses for a few prizes (simple ones, like a free donut!)  And people came. We didn’t even have any family fliers or invitations to come to church, instead, people asked us what time services where. After the games, moms stood in circles asking my husband deeper questions about God. And all through the games I fielded questions of faith from moms from all walks of life, most who had very little if any church background.       

The questions sounded like this: “Why does your love seem so strong and sure?”, “ Why is there so little drama in your relationship?”, “How do you and Bill stay in love? “, “Your kids seems so "You seem to really enjoy being together as a family, how come you don’t seem to argue and fight as much as at our home?”  And because many of these pre-believing friends had known us for almost a year, we also got questions like, “Okay, we know your history, your families of origins have some issues, like our do—so how did you overcome them to build this happy marriage and family?” So Bill and I shared our personal testimonies; Mine of being the first born daughter of an alcoholic abusive father and Bill of being raised in a home with a mom who struggled with a wide spectrum of emotional and mental dysfunctions. And then we shared how Jesus, sought us out, like the one lamb in need of a Good Shepherd. And we shared each of our “come to Jesus” moments and some of the decisions we were glad we made to climb out of the pit and walk to the peak, that abundant life God wants to give everyone.

But it wasn’t just us, we equipped our preschool and grade-school sons to give out faith “stickers” and taught them what the colors of the Wordless book and the beads on the faith bracelet meant, so they each learned to clearly share the gospel. Eventually this grew into our sons launching a Fellowship of Christian athletes club at their public school, and being involved with Student Venture and Teen Impact clubs where they shared the gospel and their testimony for every sports team they were a part of. 

All the years our sons lived at home, we had an open door policy for them to bring their friends home—anytime—any meal—any holiday. And some stayed longer, a few football players became like second sons to us because they needed breaks from the chaos of their homes. They knew they could call mom and pop Farrel any time, day or night, for any reason, and we’d come. 

We always wondered during those years if this open heart, open home, open door policy were  a blessing or a burden for our children. We did balanced it with plenty of “just family” vacations, a weekly family fun night, and other mom-son or father son days, but over-all we embraced our community and we all looked for ways to serve from running sports award banquets, to grad nights, to being on campus for any servant type need. And we prayed—as a family, in Moms In Prayer, as a church family, we prayed for our city. God answered our prayers, with small heart-warming moments with those we had prayed for, and celebrations of new found faith. And we raised our sons with the family motto of “Those who honor God, God honors” (1 Sam 2:30). And, we say that God was faithful to honor each of our sons with college scholarships and a solid faith of their own as college students and now as young adults. 

One of my favorite moments of the fruit of this Open Heart philosophy came a few years ago at Christmas. We were flying with our oldest son, his wife and our three grandkids back to join their brother’s and their wives for a Christmas celebration. Our oldest son and his wife were making plans to move into the inner city to be a light of love to some of those society over looks. We draw names for gifts and my precious daughter-in-law got my name. She knew I had plenty of “stuff” so she prayed for a creative gift. It came in the middle of a Christmas Day flight. Because we travel so much to speak, I had been upgraded to first class (along with our toddler grandson)  and the rest of our family was in the back of the plane. The flight attendant came on the PA and said, “Well we have a special surprise for us today, in honor of one of our million milers, Pam Farrel, her grandchildren have a free Christmas cookie gift for any of you that might want one.” Then I watched as my cute granddaughters and their mom walk up the aisle of that plane wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. The cookies were prepackaged so people felt comfortable taking them, but my daughter-in-law had added Christmas stickers and a Bible verse. People, passengers, airline staff, and later the TSA team, the gate agents, and even the police officers our granddaughters gave their Christmas treats to, thanked our family for bringing a pleasant surprise of true joy to their day. And isn’t that what Jesus came to give? 

Sometimes the simplest gestures of kindness open doors to hearts, lives, deeper conversations and the chance to share the love and gospel of Jesus.