It's been a while since I've written anything about Kyra.
(For those of you who don't know, Kyra was my supervisor's wife while I lived in Rome for two years who died in a car accident a few months before I returned to the States. It feels like such a big part of my story that it's a little crazy to me that many people I've only met in the last few years don't know about that chapter at all. But if you want to read more about her, look back at posts around August 2015 and the following year.)
I've been thinking about her more recently than I have in a while. Partly because I finally finished watching every episode of "Call the Midwife" that is currently on Netflix (It was her favorite show...the one we would get together and watch while sipping tea from her Polish Pottery mugs and that we [but mostly she] all were excited to watch the next season of when she and her family returned from the U.S. for the summer, which is where/when she passed away. I mostly just liked it because she liked it so much then, but now, during pregnancy, it's been even more meaningful and emotional). It's also partly because some friends from Rome recently brought back a painting I'd done there of said Polish Pottery mugs (which I had almost forgotten about after six years and seems funny to see again now on a daily basis).
This morning--I'm not sure why--I spent some time scrolling through her Instagram (which I'm so glad still exists and probably always will, since it was probably connected to her phone). She only had it for about a year (one of the years I was there), so it all just looks so familiar and nostalgic and real. Nothing was posed or filtered. She posted about things like her kitchen sink and the fact that we should all cherish dishwashers if we have them, her favorite seat on the bus, the graffiti-peppered playground near their apartment, her daughters' crazy bedhead and silly faces, and all the charming but dysfunctional things about Rome (like the fact that their elevator broke all the time, Reid's bike kept getting stolen, and everything closed due to things like heavy rain).
Kyra only ever had 90 followers. And she'll only ever have 90 followers, since I'm pretty sure her Instagram account was private. She wasn't famous or particularly exceptional in any of the ways our culture may deem someone noteworthy. But she will always be one of the most special and influential people I've ever met.
The main reason I've been thinking about her more lately is because of how much I wish I could talk to her. I so desperately wish I could ask her advice about so many things. About pregnancy and motherhood. About moving our family overseas and seeking to serve the Lord in that context. She taught me so much about both...before I even knew for sure whether or not my story would include either.
And now, at the brink of bringing a baby into this world (something that intimidates me more than maybe anything every has) and as we look ahead to (Lord willing) moving overseas soon afterward, I find myself thinking back on the many things I learned from her.
She was such a great mom. She loved her little girls in a way that was fierce and fun and free of frustration or ever complaining about her kids.
She was also one of the most hospitable people I've ever known. And it wasn't the showy, Pinterest-worthy brand of hospitality. It was a come-as-you-are, we're-scrounging-for-dinner-but-we-have-plenty-to-share, my-house-is-a-mess, welcome-to-our-reality type of hospitality. She didn't have to welcome two single girls living there for two years into her family. But she did. She didn't have to regularly have people over for their birthdays or holidays or just for no special reason at all. But she did. That was one of the main ways she loved people and shared Christ's love with them...by welcoming them into her home.
She was living proof that hospitality and evangelism go hand in hand, which is the theme of books like Rosaria Butterfield's The Gospel Comes with a House Key. Glenn and I have also recently been reading Elliot Clark's Evangelism as Exiles, and he has a chapter about how essential hospitality is in pointing people to Christ:
People who would never cross the threshold of a church will still walk through your front door. People who are indifferent to religion or disinclined to Christianity will still appreciate a friendly dinner invitation. They’ll gladly accept a free meal and, in the process, may just listen to you rejoice in free forgiveness.
In his Gospel account, Matthew records twice in short succession that Jesus reclined at table with sinners—this after promising that many would join at his table in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 9:10; 8:11). It’s as if Matthew understood the two actions to be connected. One way sinners enter the kingdom is by first entering our kitchen. Some will only come to the table of the Lord after first coming to our dinner table.
A little further on in the same chapter, he goes on to say:
We might show generous hospitality, but only to people like us—never to those of a different race or background, a different belief or persuasion, or a different social class. We welcome others into our home, but generally those who don’t even need it. Our hospitality is only lateral and transactional. We host peers in a system that expects reciprocity, not one that displays free grace.
But real hospitality...doesn’t require limitless resources or a luxury kitchen with an open floor plan. The only requirement of hospitality is love. Love that serves others rather than serving ourselves. Love that seeks to use our home and our resources, like Matthew, to introduce people to Jesus. But sadly what we often label as hospitality is merely entertaining—it’s just more of that old Southern hospitality, dignified and genteel, but knowing nothing of sacrifice or incongruity.
Kyra's hospitality was not "lateral or transactional." Her small Roman apartment certainly didn't have a "luxury kitchen with an open floor plan." She just reached out and invited in. She just loved.
I know there is one family who is now part of the family of God because of her hospitality and love. Not long after she died, a friend in Italy she had shared with and prayed for for years became a believer, and now she and her husband and son have been baptized and are part of a new church plant in their (and our old) neighborhood in Rome.
So why did Kyra live this way? Why did her husband and daughters (and now, years later, his new wife and their son) stay in Rome? Why are Glenn and I planning to move overseas with a six-month-old (something plenty of people have thought us crazy for doing)?
Love.
"We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).
Hope.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:3-6).
We want people to know the love God has for them...this holy yet personal God who created them and died in their place so that they could have a relationship with him and be with him forever. We want people to know true hope...in a world of fleeting pleasures and constant changes that offers nothing of true, lasting hope.
And we feel the urgency of doing that in a place that doesn't have a church on every street corner or where the majority of people either know or have at least heard of Christ's saving grace. As Scottish missionary, Ion Keith-Falconer, once said:
"I have but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather burn it out in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light."
I hope I can burn out my life's candle like that. And I only hope I can be half the mother and minister of the gospel that Kyra was. Thank you, dear friend, for your example.
