Challenging Neighbors

Well I met our first neighbors this morning… I was greeted by a grumpy old man pointing a finger in my face telling me to keep my dog quiet or he would call the police. How nice. I was just talking to Kevin the other day telling him how I thought it was kind of disappointing that we hadn’t met any of our neighbors yet, that noone had come over to say hello or anything. Well, I wasn’t expecting my first encounter with anyone in the neighborhood to be quite like it was this morning. All I could think of while this man was yelling at me, telling me to control my dog and explaining to me how POed he was, was “is this really happening? Is this really the first ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ we get?, Is he really yelling at me?” All I could muster up to say to the guy was “it was nice to meet you” and all I got for that was a hand waved in my face in disgust resulting in him walking away. Wow. I was and still am in shock, mad, upset, you name it. Everytime I think of the guy I cry or want to throw up. Nothing like adding this to my list of overwhelming moments for the week. Nothing like being pregnant and emotional anyway. Nothing like trying to get rid of the cause of my stress in the first place (the dog) only to have someone rub it in my face even more!

But now what? Now we have this neighbor hanging over our heads, now we have this issue to deal with and an “opportunity” to be Christ to our neighbor who was a big jerk to us. How do you confront someone in love who just confronted you in a big jerky way??? How do you make a mense with a neighbor who lives right behind you so everytime you look out your back door you’re not ticked off at them when you don’t even really know them.

Ugh… the issues of challenging neighbors!