Learning to Live in the Family of God

The Remarkable Ordinary #14: Carol Hudson on the Healing Hospitality of an Open Home

New in my faith and still hurting from my parents’ marriage breakup about two years previously, I moved nearly 4,000 km from Western Australia to Tasmania to work at a hospital in a place where I knew no one. I found a local church and started attending regularly and moved into a rented house with a student nurse I’d met. Unbeknown to me, this young woman was very unstable.

A couple with three young children who were active in the church were aware of my house mate’s history and were concerned about me and began to reach out to me. Every Sunday I would walk home from church and if they were driving past they would stop and offer me a ride home but I always declined. I was still learning to trust again.

I can’t remember how long this went on but I gradually thawed towards them. Meanwhile, life with my house matewas not going well. She was manipulative and verbally denigrating and with my background of rejection I just assumed I was the problem. I was due to go back to visit my family and was away for a couple of weeks and when I returned a friend met me at the airport and told me that my house mate had packed up and left town, leaving me to pay the rent on my own, which I couldn’t afford.

When the couple from church found out, they asked me to come and live with them. They had a busy, open home with people coming and going and already had two other young people living with them who also came from broken homes. I moved in and began to learn what a Christian family should look like. It wasn’t perfect or I would never have fitted in. It was messy and I wasn’t easy to live with!

A very strong memory of when I was about 10 years old has remained with me. My Mum and Granny had been having a whisky together as they did when they got together each week. I’d just walked into our house after coming home from school and my Granny said,

‘’Carol, never get married!’’ and my Mum voiced her agreement…’’Never get married, Carol.’’

I was TEN so the idea of marriage had never crossed my mind. This must have happened a few times because the memory is so sharp and it shaped a negative view of marriage in my mind and my parent’s separation after 19 years of marriage only strengthened that negativity.

Now here I was in another family being given an opportunity to experience a different view of marriage. I saw them live through some difficult times; watched them communicate with each other, interact with their children and enjoy being with them; witnessed their generosity and hospitality; I saw grace in action and heard truth mixed with love.

They had their flaws. They were ordinary and lived ordinary lives in many respects but the way they embraced a prickly young woman filled with rejection, gave her a home and built up her spirit and soul, was to me extraordinary. Their acceptance of me and their sharing of their family life with all its messiness helped me to discard my warped perspective of marriage and raising children. A deposit of faith, hope and trust was graciously given to me that was to shape the years ahead.

A huge, huge thanks to

Carol Hudson

for sharing her incredible story. If you haven’t, please check out her publication Carol Hudson’s Substack.

The Remarkable Ordinary is a weekly publication highlighting Christians performing ordinary acts of kindness, hospitality, and integrity. Its goal is to be an anti-moral failure, anti-church scandal, anti-hypocrisy kind of journalism.

For more info on the “why” behind The Remarkable Ordinary, check out this essay.

Have a remarkably ordinary story? Feel free to reach out and send one in!