We’re celebrating the release of Finding I AM by Lysa TerKeurst this week and we loved this segment of a recent HomeLife article with Lysa. We thought it would be a perfect Hospitality Hint—host your own dinner on a Monday or any other night sometime this month!
Lysa TerKeurst is busy. She runs Proverbs 31 ministries, speaks at several events each month, writes books and Bible studies, and, most importantly, has “five kids, three dogs, one husband.” You may ask the age-old question, “How does she do it all?” Grounded in the midst of her busyness is a common thread of deep conversations, church, Monday night dinners, and God’s Word.
Lysa’s children are mostly out of the house (three of the five of them got married in 2016!), but they maintain a tradition started years ago at home — Monday night dinners.
When the TerKeurst kids were small, they had neighbors, Mary and Ken. Mary practiced amazing hospitality; her house was always clean and her food was always excellent. Mary passed away and Lysa saw Ken one night at a restaurant. Not knowing what to say, she asked him how he was doing. Ken replied, “Not very well.” The silence was killing him. She knew she needed to help.
“What Ken needed in his life was noise,” Lysa says. “And I have lots of noise.” While her house wasn’t always clean or perfectly decorated and cooking wasn’t her strong suit, she invited Ken for dinner. Ken has since remarried and spends his Monday nights with his new wife, but the tradition of Monday night dinners has continued to this day.
Lysa says the dinners have helped make her home a refuge and a safe place, not only for their kids, but also for friends. The kids have always known they can count on Monday nights to gather together, and they could always invite whomever they wanted. In fact, she says, her kids’ high school friends drop by even when they know her kids won’t be present.
Monday Night Dinners
The success of the Monday night dinners doesn’t rely on food, Lysa insists. “I never promised it would be gourmet,” she says. “Sometimes it was boxed pizza and sometimes tacos. Then, sometimes we would do something a little nicer. But it wasn’t really about the food. It was about feeding the people who gather around our table emotionally and spiritually.”
Part of feeding their guests emotionally and spiritually included a discussion topic each week. Even then, the conversations weren’t always deep. Sometimes they were light and funny, like discussing a new song with misunderstood lyrics. Sometimes they would talk about new hilarious fashion trends. But sometimes the conversations were deeper.
Lysa says the key to having deep conversations with your kids, no matter their age, is to listen to the questions they’re asking. What are they weaving in and out of their everyday life? What are they talking about on social media? This will give you a hint of the struggles they’re having. Kids want to talk about what they’re questioning and their own problems.
However, she often frames the questions in a way that isn’t too personal. Ask if they have heard of a certain issue. Do they know people who struggle with that? Have they ever struggled with this problem? What do they think you, as believers, as a family, as a country, should do about it? These questions open up the conversation in a way kids will participate.
“So,” Lysa says, “sometimes the conversations were deep. Sometimes they were silly. Sometimes they were intellectual. Sometimes they were emotional. But the thing is, they were always connecting. It was like the fiber that connected our family together.” By having these conversations and these dinners, they gave their kids and their kids’ friends the sense of belonging we all long for. They knew they had a place to come for good conversation, acceptance, and an inside scoop on the TerKeurst family.
Having the tradition of Monday night dinners, Lysa continues, “is one of the best decisions my husband and I ever made.”
This article was written by Elizabeth Hyndman and originally appeared in HomeLife Magazine.