We found out yesterday that Ernie, our next-door neighbor, passed away. I’m sad that I don’t know whether or not he received Christ, BUT I’m so grateful God gave us 3 years with him and the opportunity to share the gospel with him several times. I’ve been remembering our journey getting to know him, and it all began with his blinds:
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I pulled down hard on the cord—it had been a while. The large, heavy blinds heaved upward, disturbing the dust and clicking, one against the other, slapping together at the top.
The room filled with light. I looked down the street—our house is taller than all the others—and took in the bird’s eye view. The hospital at the very end, the incongruous dumpy duplex with a new Hummer and a Mustang out front, the 100-year-old bungalows, like ours.
The small ranch next door with statues lining the front yard.
Nothing ever moves over there. We’ve been here almost four months and I’ve never seen the owner. (That’s mostly an indictment of me.) Jeff went over straight away, discovering an 80-something-year-old man who drops F-bombs with alarming frequency. (Partly why the kids and I haven’t taken cookies.) His first words to Jeff were, “Hey! I keep getting’ all your f-in’ mail!” Awesome; great to meet you too.
But the statues stumped me. Old grumpy guys are no anomaly, to be sure. But the statues. Why the statues? One of Snow White and several little dwarfs. A few Dutch-children and two little frogs. Their color has worn and faded, the edges chipped.
They sit at slight angles, settled in the soil like ancient tombstones.
The door on this toolshed always hangs open. The day we moved I took this as a sign that he’d be back and forth, active, at work. But the door never closed. It just hangs open, slack, still, every day. I can see tools inside. A small tractor is parked just outside. Many signs of a life once lived.
The blinds are always closed. The back of his house has large picture windows—they’re beautiful, really. But never once, in all our time here, have I ever seen the blind slits open wide, or pulled up to the top.
Blinds. Such an odd thing.
It was on Jeff’s third or fourth visit that he found out:
She had died.
Of course. The statues, the tools, the signs of once-life, all sifted into place.
And now the blinds are sealed tight, a tomb.
Debra, our housemate, had said it just that morning. “When we share our stories with each other we give the gift of a glimpse into redemption.” God is always redeeming. Always taking broken things, broken lives, and making them new. When we isolate, seeking to protect, we close the blinds and become just that—blind. We lose sight of hope. CS Lewis’ words came to mind:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket–safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
I turned from the window, resolving to open the blinds more often, and called for the kids to follow me into the kitchen. I plugged in the Kitchenaid as they pulled stools up to the counter.
“Who wants to make cookies for the neighbor?!”
“ME!” both hands shoot up.
“Good,” I glanced out the window. “I do too.”
{Thanks for reading.}