Nearly everything in life is about balance. We balance check books and priorities. We balance a job and family. In dressage, we talk about the horse's balance. We balance our emotions.
There's a balance I haven't found yet - the one between being compassionate and protecting myself. The latest event to highlight my lack of balance has been dealing with our next door neighbors.
When we moved into our house about four and a half years ago, the little blue house next to us was inhabited by a very old lady who babysat her grandsons during the summer days and during afternoons after school. She was quiet and sweet. She gave me plants, and she would use our fenceline to hang her sheets and rugs after washing them. That was perfectly fine with us, because she was such a good neighbor.
Flash forward to now, and the sweet Ms. Cagle is gone and the little blue house now has a couple of girls who are married (though I assume only in spirit since gay marriage is still not legal in NC) and, supposedly, a son of theirs. I only say supposedly because Jim and I haven't seen a kid around there at all. In fact, we've hardly seen one of the girls - all of our interactions have been with only one girl. Well, from the beginning, those interactions were a bit off-putting. When she came over to introduce herself, I was alone at home, so I just cracked the door enough to jut my head through and squeezed an arm through to hold open the screen door. As she introduced herself, she also told me about another girl who was stalking her, and that they were feeling the need to put up security cameras because this stalker-girl wouldn't stop, despite the fact that our new neighbor had once waved a gun in stalker-girl's face. Now, is that the kind of story you'd tell your neighbors after moving in and trying to introduce yourself to them?
Then came the traffic. Cars of all sorts would come and go all day long and well into the night. They would often come, part on the street for a few moments, then leave. There was a steady stream of them, and Jim immediately got suspicious of drug activity. So he called the police just to let them know what we were observing. A few days later, when we got home from school, there were six police cars (including a K9 unit) surrounding the house next to us. The police searched the home and ended up towing away one of the vehicles. Jim and I hid inside our house and spied furtively out the windows to watch the activity. A few days after that, the neighbor girl caught us and apologized for all the traffic. "It was only pot!" she called out to us. We just shrugged and went inside.
There have been several other incidents that just make us uncomfortable having these folks as neighbors. I want them to move more than anything else right now. Yet, I also feel called to be like Jesus and be compassionate. At the same time, I don't want anything to do with these folks because they've proven themselves dangerous (or they at least want to be perceived that way, what with the "gun waving" story and all) and untrustworthy. What does compassion look like in this case? Simply leaving them alone? Not provoking them in any way? Saying something? Or, do I simply ignore compassion and think only of protecting myself and my home? Admittedly, I lean towards that last option, mostly out of fear of them - fear of getting hurt or fear of my home being damaged in some way.
So there it is..I have no answers or pithy conclusions to come to. I don't like my neighbors, and yet, as I type that, I hear "love your neighbor as yourself" in the back of my mind.
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