... how's your neighbor?

(This is a first in a series of "neighborly" posts, leading to a discussion of centered around the thought: "Who is my neighbor?" First, we begin with a question, "How is your neighbor?")

Praying for neighbors. Ever since we got married and we were getting ready to move somewhere, Laurie has prayed for our neighbors (more fervently after having children). She has prayed that the kids would be nice and that everyone would be friendly. She has boldly prayed that they wouldn’t be the neighborhood crazy children that happened to live right next door to us.

I think God thought we were strong enough to handle any situation because he has given us our share of unusual people living close to us.

We’ve had a depressed man living the apartment next to us after we got married who used to cry and moan himself to sleep.

We have had the “Loud” family. Everything they did was loud: talking, yelling (100 decibels loud), and worked on cars at 2:00AM loud…

We have had neighbors living in a basement apartment below us in Canada that I believe were growing pot marijuana in their apartment. He also yelled at me for getting a few blades of grass (probably close to four total) on his fifteen-year-old piece-of-junk car, demanding I pay for a car wash!

We’ve had teenagers next door throwing bonfire parties in their backyard, complete with all of their friends at all hours of the night (those of you reading this from Livonia Youth Group know what I’m talking about – if not, ask dale, Rob, and Brian next time you talk to them).

My favorite story though occurred when we moved to TX when our kids were 9, 7, & 2. Laurie was fervently praying for good neighbors so we thought things were cool when our next-door neighbors had two boys exactly Meg and Cam’s age. It didn’t take long to realize these boys were going to be a challenge. The younger one had an unusual habit of just walking into your house unannounced. I came out of our bedroom one day to find _____ sitting on my couch watching TV. I asked him what was going on and where Cameron was. He said, “Outside.” I said, “Hey, why don’t you go out and play with them?” He said, “I came in to take a break and watch some TV.” That was enough for me. We laid some boundaries, rules, whatever you want to call them at that point. Knocking is good. Coming in when you are asked to is good. Those kind of things.

What kind of "How's your neighbor" stories do we have out there?