Thank God for Good Neighbors

When we moved into our home six years ago, I was very lonely. Adam worked all the time and the only person I had to converse with was an infant who had nothing stimulating to talk about. My mother frequently received crying phone calls about my plight. “You’re just going to have to get out and make some new friends.” she lovingly told me.

A desperate laugh was my usual response. We could only afford one vehicle and it was always sitting at Adam’s place of work, so the prospect of me taking off to make new friends was not a realistic option.

After enough complaints my mom told me, “Well, then you’re going to have to pray and have God send a friend to you.”

Knowing God would have to bring me a friend from somewhere close by, I immediately thought about the lovely lady who called me white trash. She was the only person on my street close to my age. The thought caused me to cry hysterically.

“There’s nobody here!” I wailed.

“Just give it a try.” My mom insisted.

“Fine.” My tone emphasized my annoyance with being given a task and not a means to get me immediate results.

The house to the left of us had been unoccupied since before we moved in. Our neighbors told us the person who lived there had abandoned it, causing it to go into foreclosure.

About a year later, we started to notice prospective buyers coming to look at the house. Months went by with no taker. Of course I don’t think we helped the situation.

As I said before, our house needed some definite love. We went right to work when we moved in, tearing up floors and painting. The project we were working on during the showing of the other house was what became our current eat-in kitchen, which had originally been an extremely small, closet like kitchen, (that doesn’t fly when there is a chef in the house) and a dark, dreary dining room. To accomplish this extensive feat, we had to take out the wall separating the two. We had removed the wall; but couldn’t afford a dumpster, so a large pile of wall chunks lay scattered in my driveway, next to our broken down Caravan that had the classic wood strip. A total eye sore, not exactly something you want to see when you look out your window.

Lesson 4: driveway full of wall chunks and broke down vehicles = white trash

There was one particular couple that we knew we scared away. My husband had invited his best friend over the night before, which always involves beer drinking. I know this sounds bad, but when we are strapped for cash I make Adam get a $2 forty instead of a case of beer. So, in the morning, I found that the guys had left a couple of forty bottles on our front porch. (That’s where they drink because no one is permitted to smoke in our house.) I decided to go outside and clean up. At that time I still occasionally smoked and had decided to indulge myself in an after coffee cigarette.

I walked outside and lit my cig just as a very nice SUV pulled up in front of the vacant house next door. I walked over to the little table on my porch and picked up the two empty forty bottles. I turned around, forties in hand with a cigarette hanging loosely from my lips to see a couple with the real estate agent looking at me.

I smiled and waved the best I could while holding the awkward bottles. They didn’t wave back or smile, a look of horror on their faces. Realizing what I must look like, I quickly extinguished my square and disappeared into my house hoping that they didn’t look out their living room window down on my driveway full of garbage.

About ten minutes later I hear Adam yelling from out in the back yard. I ran outside and found him and Seth frantically swinging a two-by-four and a running leaf blower in my garage. The leaf blower was so loud they had to scream to communicate. Adam glanced in my direction and screamed, “There’s a @*#! bird in here! Do you want me to kill it?!” Just then I feel someone staring at me. I look over to find the unknown couple had come outside to admire the beautiful deck, and instead they got an earful of obscenities and a bird slaying.

I was mortified. I knew we had ruined any chances of this couple making the neighboring house their home. No matter how beautiful it may have been, living next to us had to be the last thing they ever wanted to do. I chuckled to myself at the ridiculous situation as I watched my husband and his best friend try to slaughter the poor bird. The couple and their agent watched too out of pure shock. Then, if it couldn't get any worse, something else caught my eye. There, in our yard, was our dog Jasper, heaving until he puked up some weird fluorescent yellow foam. I turned and look at the couple who were now running away.

Lesson 5: smoking while cleaning forty bottles off your front porch + killing birds with two-by-fours and leaf blowers + dog puking up toxic waste DOES IN FACT = white trash

Anyway, a few months past and finally a single lady named Jackie moved in. She told me later that we weren’t home when she looked at the house. (Luckily!) Four years later, she’s not only my best friend, but an adopted family member, and Godmother to my one and only daughter. I’m very thankful God answered my prayer!