Family of Misfits
epilogue from Misfit Table: let your hunger lead you to where you belong
I close my eyes and see myself standing in the doorway of a framed house.
A house of belonging. I searched for this house for years, thinking I’d find it with my mom, my grandma, or some man.
I used to think it was a house in the real world, even though it might be a church or soe house God would build.
Now I know the house Papa wanted to build is inside me. It’s a palce for the two of us.
I run my hand over the wood of the doorframe, wonering what color of door she will have when it’s all finished. I look at the stone slab and see “Come as you are” etched in that stone My welome mat.
Sunlight streams in from all sides. There are no walls yet, and I realize I am this house. I’m an exposed frame. Bones with no skin. Still being finished. Still, I smile.
“Excuse me,” a voice interrupts my reverie. “She’s been torn down to bare bones. The framing is done. She’s sturdy now. Foundation is good. She’s ready,” the Carpenter says. He’s says he’s restoring order and beauty. He’s the structure. He unrolls the plans. Runs his finger over each room.
Asks me where I want to start. I tell him the dining room. I want to set up my table, a place for the two of us, for others. I leave him to his paper and figuring, and I head back to the front porch.
He’s making me into a temple. In the middle of that temple, he’s placing a table for us. I can’t stop smiling.
I see now how love has pulled me to Papa’s table time after time, day after day. It’s where he whispers promises to me, where he bandages my wounds, where he feeds me.
And because I’ve hungered and thirsted for love, for healing, and for food for what feels like most of my life, the table has become our place, the place for my “misfittedness” in a house of belonging.
I can trust him with what happens with my business, my family, my health, my story that hangs in midair. Where I live or don’t live doesn’t matter.
As long as I have my huger, my voice, and my pen, I’m going to come to the table. Every single day. Take and eat. Invite others. Show and tell the gospel meal. Share my God story.
There are so many who’ve experienced the love of God at tables just like this. I’ve met them. We have the only cure—the gospel.
It puts us back together again.
We gather around Papa’s Word, around tables with food, telling our God-stories. We’ve come to know the only table that transforms is the table wehre Jesus sits.
And Jesus table is where the wounded, wild and raw, are welcomesd. It is heere the hungry misfits can pull up a chair, ahve the best meal they’ve ever tasted, and walk away full. So full, in fact, you’d want even your worst enemy to experience that kind of fullness. So full you’ll want to forgive. So full you’d want to give up everything, and I mean everything, and follow Jesus to the table every day, every chance you get. It’s the only table that can put anyone together again.
Even broken families. Especially families.
Will you come? Will you join this family of misfits? We’ve saved a place for you, a place where we hear Papa’s song every day.
***
Little one, you will always be a misfit in this world when you eat Jesus’s body and drink his blood, when you remember true freedom is a radical thing that comes at a great cost My freedom is a gift that comes through pain. A gift that is free. Receive it. Let it fill you. Then give it away. Then you will taste true freedom. True peace. True belonging. True home.
—PAPA
***
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Too often the world speaks words of harm, and too often we believe them--and so we live stories God never intended for us. Yet God longs to rewrite and redeem your story.
Tiffini Kilgore, founder of the lifestyle and design boutique House of Belonging, grew up in a broken home before marrying at the tender age of sixteen. Years later, divorced and with three small children, she remarried. The seasons that followed brought two more children, another broken marriage, chronic disease, major surgeries, and cycles of abuse--leaving Tiffini feeling alone and unloved.
Hungry for healing and a safe space, Tiffini began seeking Jesus through journaling and soon found breadcrumbs of grace leading her down a new path. There, she found a rich table set for misfits just like her--a place of nourishment and restoration. Where she was fed lies of worthlessness, God fed her truth that she was his treasured daughter. Where she was told she was a helpless victim, God offered her the cup of his strength. Where she once held an empty future, God gave her hope and a fresh start. In cultivating an ongoing dialogue with her Abba Father, God transformed Tiffini's pain into passion, and ultimately, fierce belonging.
Tiffini writes as a modern-day mystic, with lyrical force and deep tending of the soul, in this book for anyone who has ever felt out of place or at odds in the world. Each chapter features compelling narrative as well as a poignant response from "Papa" God as Tiffini calls him, and the result is a stirring invitation to come home to where you belong. Come and sit, take and eat, and join the battle cry to take God at his word.
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