The trash in their backyard

We've had a whirlwind of a few months.  In the midst of preparing for a new baby, continuing to heal emotionally from some tough things in our marriage, going to grad school, raising our daughter, and working our full-time jobs, we decided to sell the first home that we bought five years ago.  There is never a good time to buy or sell a home, but I still think we were crazy!  On January 22, we put our house on the market.  Three days later, we had four offers on the house and sold it for over our asking price.  Four days after that, we made an offer on a new (to us), bigger house in Norman.  It got accepted.  We closed on that house on February 20 and moved the same weekend.  Then we closed on our old house on February 24.  We aren't exactly "settled" yet, but we are managing, and I'm learning more every day that I don't have to have the best decorations on the walls, the perfect paint colors, or the latest Pinterest project in Piper's room to have a happy home.

Before we even moved in, I was already complaining about our new neighbors to the south.  They have three yappy dogs, chickens, random boxes and wood scraps all over their backyard, and a citation from the city in their front yard.  They also have no less than four cars in their driveway and on the street at any given time.  "These are trashy people," I thought.  Though our pastor had posted a challenge on our church's website about loving our literal neighbors not even a week before we moved, I was determined to have as little to do with these people as possible.  "Maybe we could be friends with them," suggested my husband one day.  Or...maybe not.    

A couple of nights ago, we were in the backyard, enjoying the first sign of nice weather that we've had in awhile, when our neighbors came outside.  First, there was a girl about my age.  Then her fiance came out.  After that, her mother came out, eating an avocado straight out of the peel with a knife.  Next was a middle-school-aged boy.  Then his sister.  People just kept coming out of the house.  All in all, I think seven people live in a house that is much smaller than ours.  They introduced themselves, asked about us, wondered if we knew what happened to the lady who lived in the house before we moved in, and offered to help Andrew with the boxes that he was breaking down on the patio.  As the girl was talking, I began to feel smaller and smaller, embarrassed and ashamed that I had jumped to such quick conclusions about these people who now wave to us all the time and have been nothing but kind since we moved here.  The avocado lady had open heart surgery several weeks ago and had less than a 30 percent chance of living.  The rest of the family is just trying to help her out and make ends meet for themselves.  Yet, all I could see when we bought the house was the trash in their yard.

Last weekend, I shared one of my life's stories at our church's women's retreat.  It's not a pretty story, and I had been nervous about my talk for several weeks.  When I came up to the microphone and looked out at the audience of 60+ women, the two things that I wanted more than anything were for people to hear God in my words, and for them to love me in spite of my messiness.  I wanted them to extend the grace to me that I was so unwilling to extend to my neighbors.  And they did.  Beyond what I could have envisioned.

Don't all of us want that- acceptance regardless of what we've done?  Perhaps the more grace we receive, the more we understand how to give it to others.  Maybe, too, our neighbors' messes are not so ugly when we consider our own.  We might not have literal trash in our front yards or chickens in the back, but we all have garbage that we want people to overlook and simply see us.  I hope that we can become friends with our new neighbors- partly because they're nice people and deserve a chance, but mostly because people have seen past my junk and loved me anyway.