So my neighbor across the street from us isn’t one of our biggest fans. I have a couple of theories as to why he isn’t, and I’m pretty sure it’s not because I completely took out his mailbox with the back of my car a couple of years ago… even though that would at least be a good reason.
My first theory has to do with us having had church at our house and the subsequent large number of cars parked on our street each week. Every Sunday morning (or a few Saturday evenings) he has diligently gone out and moved two of his cars out onto the street so that no one could park in front of his house. He has gone so far as to park the cars, get out and check distances, and get back in to move his car half a foot one way or the other. Admittedly, we have been entertained on occasion weekly to watch him do this. Our neighbors have noticed he does this. People at our church know he does this. Needless to say, he’ll at least be happy that we don’t have church here anymore.
My other theory (and I think it’s actually both of these theories) has to do with our pathetic lawn. Everyone who knows us knows that our lawn sucks and that we don’t have the first clue how to fix that. As you might guess, our neighbor’s lawn is perfect. He spends hours and days working on it each week. Us… if I had the time, I still wouldn’t know what to do.
I do know that mulch covers a multitude of sins though, and so I’ve been wanting some for awhile. My mom and I had planted some new things to replace all the others that I had killed, but it really needed mulch to finish it off. Well, this week we were given a TON of mulch!! I was so excited that I spent the entire next day putting it all over the place. I spent the entire time, though, thinking about our neighbor. Did he notice my attempts at making it better? Did he at least appreciate the effort? Couldn’t he have just asked us nicely not to park in front of his house each week? I exhausted more energy in worrying about what he was thinking about me hauling mulch all over the yard than I did actually hauling mulch all over the yard.
So anyway, today as I was one of “those people” finishing up some yardwork while others were driving by all dressed up and going to church, I made a decision that if he came outside I would walk up to him and ask for help. I didn’t really give him a chance to say no as I asked him to come over and tell me if something was a weed. He told me a bit about what ended up being a tree and the moles in my yard and then continued on his way. I was pretty happy with that. It took me not caring that I can’t tell the difference between a weed and a frickin’ tree (in my defense it was a VERY SMALL tree) to start a conversation between us and hopefully begin mending whatever was broken.
But I became ecstatic when a little while later he came up my driveway on his own to show me something that might help me chase my moles away.
To me, that was more of what Jesus is about than going and sitting in a building somewhere just so I can “check off” church.
