THE DAY MY WELCOME WORE OUT.

It's a hard thing to tell a friend that he or she isn't welcome at one's home anymore. Yet this situation does happen from time to time in our lives.  Some friends understand the difficulty their presence causes but others take it hard. I was one person who felt rejected when Jay, the man in whose house I boarded, announced that I would no longer be staying at his place anymore.

One June evening in 1972, I stood listening to my radio in my basement room. "I need to talk to you about something," Jay announced as he paused at the doorway. "May I come in?" I felt the twinge of fear I always did when adults took that tone of voice with me.

Jay stepped into the room and came right to the point. He told me that he and his family were moving to an apartment and there wouldn't be room for me there. As we discussed the matter, Jay said that they wanted their privacy and they couldn't have that while I was around.

I felt devastated. Though Jay assured me that there were no hard feelings, he and his wife had tired of having a boarder.  I had done nothing seriously wrong but they felt they were no longer interested in me residing in their basement.

Like many situations that seem harsh, things worked out well in the end. My mom found a house-keeping room for me and I began cooking for myself. Though the landlady was nosy, I had more privacy than I did at Jay's place. Apart from visits to the homes of friends and relatives, I've been living on my own for forty-one years. Being evicted from Jay's home began my journey to the solitude I prize so highly today.

I wrote about Jay and the house church he introduced me to in How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. Read more about the way God led me out of legalism and error to the freedom of his grace at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm Publishers.

Bruce Atchison, boarding houses, confronting friends