spiritual life

What a year of innkeeping has taught me about readiness

JOY journal

There’s the TED Talk stuff, of course. Work as a team. Communicate. Monitor your supplies — first in, first out.

But, the thing that has really stood out in this sea-change year — a year sparked by the convergance of a sudden step back from a career in journalism and an emptied nest — is that readiness can be maintained only if there are down times.

This seems counterintuitive at first, especially given America’s love of action. Readiness — something Jesus spoke frequently of concerning our spiritual life and His return — should surely involve hamster-wheel busyness.

It doesn’t, I’ve learned. It requires down time.

The inn for which I work — technically a church retreat center set on a historic farm — has cycles of activity. There are crunch times when rooms are filled and there are so many people requiring meals and wifi passwords and meeting spaces that we are struggling to keep up with the dishes, the laundry, the overflowing waste baskets and pots of flowers that always need watering.

There are also down times.

Sometimes these are long. Winter weather and curvy access roads leave the January calendar nearly empty, for example. That has proven critically important. It’s a time for the details — to mend quilts, organize pantries, restock supply closets, whiten linens in the sun, dust the tea cups, paint ceilings. There’s always something to do in an 1847 house.

Sometimes they are short. A single day that’s literally crossed off the calendar lest we be unable to get “our” house in order between events. A couple of hours in between meals, when we clear the kitchen and sit on a back porch to rest our feet.

Whatever their length, these blank spaces are critical. We could accomplish business hair on fire — for a while. But, we would never be truly ready for that unexpected guest or when a meal for 15 suddenly appears on the calendar.

Down times make it work.

This realization has made me appreciate my personal down times — the times of loss, change, injury, illness — for what they are. Sabbath. These times for recuperation, preparation, contemplation enable readiness for anything. Or, Anyone as the case will someday be.

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After a long career writing for local newspapers — and, on rare occasions, for publications such as The Washington Post — Nora is enjoying a second wind as an innkeeper. She still blogs and does writing projects of special interest. She lives in Appalachia with her husband and a dog named Finn, who is beside himself with joy when the family's daughters have college breaks.

19 thoughts on “What a year of innkeeping has taught me about readiness”

  2. Ah Nora,
    Hope all is well.
    Long time since I visited your blog.
    This post resonates so much with me presently and today in particular have valued downtime which has been so difficult to achieve for various reasons.
    Thank you for that.
    Take care
    😊🙏

    Liked by 1 person

  3. As a former innkeeper (and coincidentally, a journalist) I can sympathize with everything. It was either full speed ahead, or kind of dull, but the slow times let us have time to ourselves and to do little projects like polish the silver or put on some lipstick!

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  6. I used to find January a bit depressing – holidays over, deep winter, not much going on, snowed in … I don’t know when my attitude reversed, but now I see January as a blessed time of rest after the craziness of the holidays.

    Nora, I wish I’d had this wisdom when I was younger and on the “hamster wheel” of non-stop activity/ministry. (I don’t know what made me think I was so important to the Kingdom of God … *eye roll* )

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  8. Innkeeping! I love that this is where the Lord has planted you for this season. What richness in all that you will learn and the people you will meet. Your words “is that readiness can be maintained only if there are down times” is the best explanation of Sabbath rest that I have ever heard.

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  9. 🙂 Thank you!! This job is an honest testament to God’s grace being spot on and above and beyond what I could have imagined for beginning the empty nest season. A bustling, joyful house — but with a team to care of it! So thankful!!

    Blessings on your busy-bee season. Hold onto your hat and take those Sabbath rests whenever they come. 🙂

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