Won't You Be My Neighbor?

This spring, our church put on a short-term Sunday School class focused on loving your neighbor. Not your metaphorical neighbor - your actual, literal neighbor. One of the challenges of the class was to focus on ways you could connect with and spend time with your actual neighbors.

Today, our neighborhood held an ice cream social for our friends and neighbors who live nearby. I did very little and most of the heavy-lifting was done by other wonderful neighbors. It was absolutely beautiful weather. The kids jumped on a trampoline, played in a bounce house, rode scooters, blew bubbles, drew elaborate pictures with chalk, kicked soccer balls, and had a blast. The adults stood in small groups or circled their lawn chairs around together, eating ice cream, cobbler, watermelon.

The whole event was wonderful. We had a chance to connect with both old friends and new neighbors. We were able to catch up on the daily minutiae of our lives. The kids were able to blow off steam on a glorious autumn afternoon.

What was the hardest for us to fathom is that our last neighborhood ice cream social was in 2015. It feels like yesterday, but yet, three years have managed to slip by. And I think that is such a perfect analogy for life - we really want to get together frequently and have meaningful connections and spend time together with the people who we do life with - but yet small moments of time add up and three years ultimately pass in the blink of an eye.

There is so much more I would love to do if I had more time. I would spend more time with my kids and go on long walks every night with my husband and have coffee every day with friends and FaceTime those who live far away every evening - and connect to our neighbors in some meaningful way every day. Alas, time is finite, sticky, limited, and most of our time is devoted to packing lunches and corralling children and stacking piles of paper on the counter and putting out our own little fires everywhere. But I truly would like to better prioritize connecting with our neighbors. Because what a beautiful gift that is.