Making an open home

Our Japanese homestay student arrived this weekend.  She'll be staying with us for about six months as she polishes her English and gets used to Canadian culture before beginning university here in the fall.  When I tell people about this arrangement, they generally respond by saying how wonderful an opportunity it is for the kids to learn about another culture, which it is, but they miss the real point of why we have people stay with us.

My wife and I both come from larger families, and we found things very quiet when we first got married.  We felt that being so much alone and insulated encouraged us to be possessive of our things and our time, so we decided to be deliberate about offering our home to people who needed a place to stay.  Over the years we have lived with a Chinese graduate student, an Albertan couple and their toddler, a Congolese woman and her two sons, a recently divorced friend, a former student of mine, and various other friends and family members, not to mention my mother-in-law who lives with us full time and the tenants who live in the basement.

What we learn from living in this way, and what we want our kids to learn as well, is not just that there are other cultures in the world.  We also learn, over and over again, that we must make room for other people in our lives so that we can be whole people ourselves.  It is only as we share our time, our possessions, and ourselves with others that we truly understand and value what we have and who we are.