Walk The Walk

I’m pretty sure that most of us have experienced a bad neighbor at some time in our life. We’ve certainly had our share and unfortunately, we currently have a bad neighbor where we live now. For the past five years she has consistently caused us problems, so we refer to her as the “crazy lady” next door. By the way, that’s the same description the sheriff uses every time he has to deal with her.

And when I say crazy, I’m not exaggerating. She has an extremely loud voice and loves to drink and party all night on the beach. But mostly she loves to be the center of attention. My wife and I try our best to ignore her, so maybe that’s why she doesn’t like us and keeps trying to make us want to move. Whatever the reason, here is just a short list of some of the “crazy lady” things we have had to deal with.

·         She tore down our mailbox and our neighbor’s mailbox in a drunken rage one evening.

·         She knocked over a temporary fence we had installed, but managed somehow not to spill her drink.

·         She likes to party late into the evening and sing along with loud Hispanic music, which wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t singing so off key.

·         She doesn’t like me to park in front of my own house because it makes it slightly harder for her to turn into her driveway, so earlier this year she took her electric golf cart and creased the whole side of my truck with it.

·         Two months ago, we brought home some giant pink balloons from our daughter’s wedding shower and tied them out on our beach area. They were gently swaying in the breeze when we went inside to eat lunch. When we came back out, they had both been mysteriously popped.

·         And most recently, she broke off all the branches on the single beautiful Jade Tree we have in our front yard. I’m not sure what the Jade Tree did wrong, but maybe it simply forgot to applaud as she walked by.

So… If you’re wondering why we don’t just move away, there are several reasons. For example, we love living at the beach, we love our landlord, and we love all of our other awesome neighbors who help offset the single bad one. But you may also be wondering why we don’t retaliate. Well, the truth is we have thought about it and come up with a lot of clever ideas, but we can’t act on any of them because we’re trying to be good Christians. So, what can we do? We can be thankful! I know, now you think I’m the crazy one! But think about it. This “crazy lady” is giving us a chance every month to show God that we can pass His test, that we can actually walk the walk (just so long as we don’t walk into her yard), and that we understand what it means to turn the other cheek. We won’t stoop to her level (although I did stand on a ladder yesterday to install security cameras) and we won’t complain about it anymore (mainly because it doesn’t change anything anyway), but we will do something from now on every time we see her. We will walk the walk… and we might even applaud!

Prayer is when you talk to God. 

Faith is when you walk with God.

~ Anonymous