The Grace of Neighborliness

We have had some fantastic neighbors in our time.

There were the neighbors who dug me out repeatedly during DC’s Snowmageddon when the Man was deployed and I was pregnant beyond all belief.

There were the neighbors who brought by chicken soup and a survival plan when I was up to my throat in twins and toddlers and probably tears too.

There were the neighbors who provided last minute, no apologies necessary babysitting.

There were the neighbors who made sure the kids knew they could use the next door trampoline as if it was their own, the ones who took the kids to see a bear graveyard and make bee hotels, the ones who uncomplainingly allowed our kids shoot them with nerf guns, the ones who gave hugs and accepted weed bouquets and unripe strawberries and always took the time to talk.

Today, our next door neighbor came by with a bouquet of roses that he’d cut from the yard and carefully trimmed of thorns. Last month, he brought over red velvet cupcakes. This winter, he didn’t complain once when our landlord left half of our fence fallen over into our neighbor’s yard for months on end.

I will be 100% honest: I’m not sure I’d want to be neighbors with us. Bee likes to sing “Let It Go” at the top of her lungs while pacing dramatically on the back porch. She informed me the other day that when she does that, she just really feels like Elsa in a deep place. I pointed out that Elsa rhapsodizes in a frozen wasteland where she can’t burst anyone else’s eardrums. Bruiser likes to race up and down the street in front of our house on his scooter making hysterical shrieking sounds that are a cross between a siren on the fritz and a dying rooster. And at any given time of day you can hear me bellowing out the window something along the lines of, “GIRLS! Your room looks like a tornado mangled a landfill! GET BACK IN HERE!”

And yet. And yet.

Today, our neighbor brought us roses. And for some reason, when my husband asked me who they were from, I choked up a little.

I think I know what that reason was. I think it’s because those roses were just grace upon grace—in much the same way that all the wonderful neighbors who came before were also grace upon grace.

Sure, I’ve taken over baked goods to Paul and his daughter. We’ve stopped to hear his old war stories and compliment his garden. The kids have taken him handfuls of flowers (mostly dandelions) they’ve gathered from our yard. But he was under no obligation to be kind to us or to go out of his way at all.

But he did. Not because he had to, but because he wanted to. He saw our family—the Man limping around in a boot, the boys playing football until our yard into a mud pit, the girls tying random bows to all the trees, and me, running in the rain to maintain my own sanity, ripped jeans and sneakers, my nose in a book half the time—he saw our family and just wanted to be good to us.

What a picture of Jesus. What a picture of grace.

Today I am treasuring home grown, partially de-thorned roses and the reminder they give me of unasked for kindness, of undeserved grace, and of gifts whose beauty can never be fully weighed or even partially paid back.