Let me confess to you that I am not typically prone to being social.
There was this brief time in high school, when I looked like I belonged in a boy band and played sports, where I thought enough of myself to be loud, outgoing, and probably really obnoxious! But all in all, my whole life I've sort of always been inward expressive, the guy who doesn't usually end up being the life of a party or the guy next door who goes around introducing himself to all the neighbors in the area where he's just moved in.
For this very reason, I spent the first year of my time in Chicago behind the closed doors of my house, inside the parameters of my front lawn, and inside the box of 'me'. Little kids annoyed me and the screaming people in the houses next to ours were just more distractions from my much-needed sleep, rather than echoes of real lives or real people with real issues.
It's amazing that when you think you're living in a world created for you, it's quite easy to drowned out the noises of busy lives all around you. It's easy to treat people like distant faces at arms length, people you can politely smile at but whom you owe nothing more to...ever.
Recently, my wife Sarah was the first between the two of us to break out of this shell, to end her hibernation and begin this thing they call 'living'. Mind you that while she is quite drawn to being social and outgoing unlike myself (it's the youth pastor in her ;)), we both have a tough time taking that first step.
But for me, watching her attempt to walk in new territory like a baby deer daring to cross a park path in the first day of spring, it helps me to follow more assuredly, having more confidence in the ability to bring new lives into mine and share worlds that other worlds dare to tell us belong apart, separated by fences in backyards in neighborhoods where no one knows the other people's first names.
Sarah began this new daring feat by befriending some of the neighbor girls next door and several other kids a few houses down. She began this 'experiment' by introducing herself, learning the girls' names, and sharing small moments of exchanges and light-hearted fun. We were even gunned down with squirt guns on several different occasions while attempting to bring in our groceries from our car (these little girls can be ruthless...haha!)
Now fast forward to several months later (aka present day!). This past week Sarah and I set out a big round table in our front yard, set up a bunch of chairs, fired our mini grill up, roasted some hot dogs and burgers, and had community with these girls, some of their friends, one of the girls mothers, and had our own little impromptu neighborhood social event. I cannot tell you how liberating this was for me, how much it really made me realize the importance of this thing our Bible and our Jesus talk so much about, being created to need one another, to be in relationships with each other.
It's a really real thing. Not just a bunch of painted prose in fairy tales or cute Bible verses. This is the stuff of life. Knowing people by their first names. Knowing their likes and dislikes. Knowing where they work and what they do. Knowing what their lives are like and where they hurt. Knowing how to pray for them and actively participate in being there for them. This is good stuff.
My challenge for everyone today is- have impromptu neighborhood cookouts like once a week...right where you live! Who knows who you'll meet, what you'll learn about, and how you'll grow in those precious moments. Who knows what hurts people have that God wants to use you to be a part of fixing. (We learned two of these little girls just lost their dad a few months back, and very few other neighbors knew about this. Heck, the church next door to my house didn't even know!)
The moral of this story is- Doors, fences, and windows are meant to be broken, and they should be!
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