Yesterday i found myself both uncomfortable and embarrassed. Have you ever felt that way?
Yesterday I found myself hugging my neighbor’s wife.
Maybe I should give you some background. As I was working on my yard, my next door neighbor’s wife came out to work on hers. She’s a really nice lady- a little very shy – but friendly none the less.
On a side note, my wife and I had noticed that we haven’t seen her husband around in a while. Don’t get us wrong, we are good neighbors, but we’re definitely not “nosey nieghbors.” We assumed a couple of different scenarios, but never really asked. We figured we would find that answer out someday, so no need to create a potentially awkward situation.
Well…the awkward situation found me.
The gap in between kindly saying hi to my neighbor’s wife and me getting back to heading towards trimming my yard is filled with boring descriptions of me describing in detail the proper use of weed and feed and all that jazz short. What happened next totally caught me off guard.
As I walked away to go back to trimming my yard, in a timid, yet slightly raised voice she said,
“Thanks…you know it’s been tough since my husband died”
DIED? Her husband died? I turned around and all I could say was I am sorry. I asked when it happened and she told me how he passed last summer. He had gone in for shoulder pain and the doctor originally thought it was some type of arthritis. But when the treatment he prescribed wasn’t working, they went back. This time they took some x-rays, and things didn’t look right. When they took a CT scan they found out why.
Cancer had overtaken the bone marrow in his arm – and was actually spreading all throughout his body. From the day they heard that news, until his death was only 4 months.
I was embarrassed because I didn’t ask what happened to him when we noticed he was gone. Being that they were about the same age as our parents (and also have a son old enough to be my brother), I kind of naturally assumed a number of different situations: they were separated or he had moved back to California for work.
Then I became uncomfortable. I didn’t know what to say, so I simply asked if I could pray with her. She said yes. And as I extended my hand to pray, this short little Chinese lady reached up, hugged my neck, and began to cry on my shoulder. As I prayed with her the embarrassment and uncomfortablity that once clouded my emotions was overcome by compassion and love.
My family and I have been feeling the Lord challenging us towards living our lives with a more missional mindset/paradigm, I am beginning to see how God begins to ordain open doors towards living a “great commission” life and I believe he is opening these doors because we are asking for it.
And that was my day.
How was yours?
Good going, Phil. Your loving response was most appropriate. Now work to build a solid, helping relationship with your neighbor. This last week we found that our neighbors of 17 years suddenly moved away. They were trying to say nothing to us. We couldn't let that happen. We found that they had been foreclosed on by the bank. We have tried to be close over the years, but pride got in their way and lack of attention in ours. Had we, and the community, known their situation I am convinced that a better outcome could have been had, they could have kept their home. It just reminded me that we, as the Body of Christ not in the building, have to really step it up!