Martha Crocker

In an effort to be real with y’all I thought I’d throw this random post out there. Give you a little picture of who I am and what you are likely to encounter if you were to pop over for tea, or coffee, I do both.

First of all my house is small and I live in a neighborhood that can only be described as straight out of the 50’s. Imagine all the people in your church living in your neighborhood. Yeah, that is what I have. While we are not missionaries ourselves, D’s parents are, and they live on a missionary base. Across the street from this missionary base is a small 5 street, square neighborhood. It is almost exclusively made up of missionaries, except us. We love it here. If some little kid crashes on his bike at 3:30 in the afternoon, about 8 mom’s are going to come flying out of there houses.

There are also many homeschoolers here, so it is not uncommon to see kids outside at 10 am on a Tuesday. I love it here except for one thing…the houses. Think military housing. It’s like that. No creativity and they were designed to house the larges number of people with absolutely no bells and whistles. We have 4 bedrooms and the smallest living space possible. We couldn’t possible feed as many people in the kitchen as we could sleep in the bedrooms. The upstairs has only one room, the master with a bathroom. This is the only reason I can live here. I can go upstairs are literally rise above it all. This is the strangest house, I have a living room the size of a postage stamp, but the largest master bedroom I’ve ever had.

One thing about living here is that people really do pop over to borrow sugar. I can’t tell you how many times a mom will knock on my door to see if her kids are here playing with mine. This, of course, never happens when the laundry is put away, no. People only drop by unexpectedly when there is a mess. But that is who I am.

There are currently 7 of us living in this little house and it shows. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not social-services-taking-my-kids- away bad. It’s just always lived it.

It is not beautifully decorated, but I do have curtains, pictures on the wall and some candles. It’s just not necessarily the way I would love to decorate had I more room. One really must LOVE something to allow it to take up space in a 1500sq ft house occupied by 7 people.

I do someday dream of a model home type atmosphere. But I know it will be long after the kids are gone. Right now, as I sit at the kitchen table and type this I can see a sticky spot, probably from the glue stick A was using this morning, or from the peanut butter and honey sandwiches the kids ate for lunch. The table has been wiped off several times today, but not by me. I am the only one who can get EVERY sticky spot off the table. I think you have to be over 18 before this skill develops.

So there you have it. You’re always welcome to drop by my house for a chat, but just be aware that you might stick to the table.

I don’t live in a perfect house because I’m not a perfect person, but really no one is. Martha Crocker does not really exist. I sometimes think if we’d all just work a little harder at being real with each other we could erase some of the burden of perfection we all feel. God does not call us to be perfect, thank goodness, He just asks me to be hospitable.

I need to get a sign for my front door…Enter at your own risk. Neither Martha Stewart or Betty Crocker live here.