I invited a dear friend over yesterday for breakfast. We were planning to attend the Alliance Air show and make a day of it.

She has a bit of OCD so I try as hard as I can to make sure my house is perfect when she comes over. Perfect was a long shot for me yesterday. I had spent most of Friday working on my guest rooms upstairs. While I was getting my guest rooms in tip top shape, my downstairs had decomposed to a blooming mess.

I apologized for the mess when she came in. She said that my home looked lovely. She normally doesn’t lie so I just thanked her and apologized again. She raved over the breakfast I had prepared and thought the cascading roses in my backyard were stunning. Bless her heart she didn’t mention once the litter of scattered papers on my living room floor.

I must have apologized again because she then said something which made an impact. She said,”Your home is warm and inviting. It is comfortable.”

I have had other friends who came into my home with a critical spirit. They made me feel ill at ease in my own home. I have also been embarrassed to host events at my home because my carpet is worn and my couches are tattered.

As I reflected more on her kind words I realized that my ideal of a perfect home was seeded into my consciousness in childhood.

My mother was a perfectionist. By the time I was born she had become a frustrated perfectionist, which is the worst sort.

Whenever we had company she would become a living terror. Fretting about every little detail and screaming at the rest of us when we did not execute her task list with perfection.

I remember asking her why in blazes our house had to be perfect every time my sister came home from college. She never gave me a suitable answer.

By the time the company would arrive she looked like Martha Stewart but the rest of us were a frazzled mess of raw and hurt emotions.

My sister got the perfectionist gene also. Her home looks like a museum. She is a very competent and wonderful hostess but faces self condemnation when her standards of perfection are not met.

I have always wondered why I didn’t get that gene. Maybe it is better that I didn’t. I don’t particularly like screaming. If people are going to be critiquing my home when they walk in the door then maybe it would be better if we met at a restaurant or coffee house.

As for the friend I had over for breakfast yesterday, the door will always be open. Through her kind words, I have come to the realization that God made me to be a Mary, not a Martha. I surmise it may be more important to have a home that is inviting and warm instead of having one which is a museum and perfect.