Love Thy Neighbor

Its no secret that I can not stand my neighbors. They throw parties all the time, waking me up in the middle of the night. The one interaction I had with the man of the house was him telling me very rudely to move my truck that was parked in front of his house. I had been parking there because someone broke into that house and it was vacant. I had no way of knowing he bought it and was moving in. I have even had to call the police on them for being too loud. They mow their lawn once a year. Literally.

My neighbors became all I thought about. I learned their names. I found their Facebook. Where their kids went to school. Where they work. There is way too much information available online. I thought of ways to anonymously mess with them. Let's just say I have a devious mind. Ask my ex-husbands. They became the object of my obsession and I was filled with hatred for them. Its all I thought about.

That's when I realized that when you allow hatred to fill you up, there is no room for anything else. Its a sickness. Its not like love. With love you are open ended. By this I mean that I can love and still have room for my life and still have room for my work and still have lots of room for what ever else I need, but with hatred its like you are bursting at the seems, unable to let anything else in. So today I had to pop that blister and let the hatred ooze out of me because with it there I can think of nothing else.

The reality is that aside from the party where I called the cops my neighbors have done nothing to me to make my life any different. Its the way I am dealing with it that makes it bigger than it is and that's just nonsense to me. I have had bouts of hatred before with people in my life and I always end up learning about myself through them so for that of course I just have to thank the Lord. Its not easy to admit these things. Its not easy to say yes I'm a bad person and sometimes I hate people and it is dam sure not easy to let it all go when they are still there, but this life we are living is about us. Its about our lessons. Our life. Our successes. Our failures. Nothing else.

I'm just so thankful that I always have God to come back to and He always makes me so accountable. All I have to do is seek God and suddenly my life gets back on track. I am so flawed, but with God's help I am whole! And He is there for all of us, not just me. Not just the people in church on Sundays, but for all of us no matter where we are in life and that's why I write about these things that are real. Because I am real and with Jesus I am complete.      

So today I will love my neighbor as myself. And tomorrow. And every day after that because that is what God wants me to do.

Mark 12:28-31
And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.