Thankful Thursday

It's been a little while since I've posted in this what was meant to be weekly series.  Whoops.  We're now onto our fourth week of holidays, or I guess in my case: unemployment.  But I like to think of it as holidays, or even a really long maternity leave, because I don't plan to get a job before the baby arrives, and after will be a whole occupation in itself.

Here are some things that I'm thankful for this week:

Games with friends
We've had two nights of dinner and games with friends this week.  We haven't played games much lately with the stress of the end of the year at college so it was nice to have some fun.  I love that so many of our friends and neighbours enjoy playing board games and card games which means we have so many people to play with.  It was lovely to be able to catch up with these friends and hear about their holidays and chat about life. 

The health care system in Australia
We really do have such a good health care system here.  I haven't had to pay for any of my pregnancy appointments because I'm bulk billed as a low-income patient.  But even despite this there is good public health care available, free!  I had a hospital appointment this week and my glucose tolerance test today and it was all so easy. I'm hoping that my test doesn't turn up gestational diabetes but we'll have to wait and see.

Generous community
Two ladies in my community have just had babies and are also moving out at the end of the year.  Both of them have offered me lots of maternity clothes, more than I even need or could fit in my wardrobe.  I'm so thankful for their generosity and the blessing that it is living in this community.

What are you thankful for this week?

(By the way, my parcel arrived as expected two weeks ago!)

My neighbour makes me paranoid

Let me start by clarifying that not everyone who lives in my block of units is from college.  Some of the units are privately owned and rented.  The units either side of us fall into this second category: not-college people.

We've had difficult people living on our left the whole time we've been living here.  You may remember me writing about our noisy neighbour in first year.  He moved out towards the end of our first year and since then we've had a noise-sensitive neighbour who has gotten progressively more hostile and paranoid.

Mostly he just glares at us, and will never respond when we say hello.  But we've also heard from other neighbours that he thinks J and another college student are hacking into his computer and stealing things.  We think he probably has paranoid schizophrenia, and I find myself sadly thinking: how do you love someone who is determined to hate you?

But God did just this, didn't he?  The whole world was determined to hate him yet he was determined to love us.  While we were still his enemies he sent his son as a gift to us (Rom 5:8).  If God did this for me, how can I not also love my neighbour who hates me?  Jesus even tells us to do good to those who hate you (Luke 6:27).  But how do I do good to this neighbour who wants nothing to do with us and believes lies about us (and will probably take anything we do the wrong way)? 

One way that I try to love him is by walking quietly on our stairs.  Our stairs are against the wall we share with this neighbour and they can be quite noisy (if his stair-walking is anything to go by.  Seriously, it sounds like someone else is in the house with you!).  I know he is noise-sensitive so I try to keep our noise levels low.  How much of this is being loving and how much is fear of him reacting, I'm not sure.

On to why I'm paranoid.  Because I know that our neighbour hates us I'm afraid that he's stealing our mail.  I'm sure this is a silly fear, but we've had two undelivered parcels this year and I'm anxiously awaiting a parcel that Australia Post tells me will arrive today.  What if it comes while we're out?  What if our neighbour takes it from our front door step, or signs for the parcel himself, saying he'll pass it on but really just keeping it from us? (Sometimes the posties don't care who signs for it, which is admittedly helpful if a college friend is the one who signs for you).

But I now realise that I'm doing just what he's doing.  I'm being paranoid that he's out to get me.  I'm believing untruths about him (or at least worrying that they're true) when there's no evidence for it.  So loving my neighbour in this situation is not worrying or thinking the worst of him. 

I'm not sure how else to love and do good to our neighbour.  Anyone have any ideas? 

What this community has taught me about being generous

People in our community are so happy to just give things away, rather than trying to sell them!  I was particularly struck by this when I saw a friend on Facebook trying to sell his stuff before he went overseas.  It was such a contrast in my eyes.  Fair enough if you need the money, but I feel like the students here probably do need the money, but they have an attitude of generosity and happily give their things away to other students.  

Just as an example: we've had two offers of a cot for the baby, and they didn't want any money for them (I asked!).  Someone is giving us her stick blender when she moves out.  We've had many offers of baby things that we haven't always been able to accept because we just don't have room for it yet.  And this is just a taste of the generosity of this community.  

And it has taught me to be generous too.

We have college friends who lives just outside our college community (down the road a little bit), but who are still considered part of the community.  I think they know us best and so often will ask us for help in the form of "Can I borrow some baking powder? I thought I had some but it's baking soda."  They also used our washing machine for a few weeks while theirs was broken.  

And a couple of days ago another friend from our community knocked on our door twice, the first time to borrow some cocoa powder, and the next time a muffin tray.  The other day a friend knocked on my door to ask for some sewing advice (not that I'm anything of an expert!), and then again later in the week to show me the finished product.

I'm not saying that I'm the fount of all help in our community, this stuff actually happens all the time between everyone.  Sometimes people will send an email to ask the whole community or sometimes they'll approach someone individually.  

I have realised that I love being asked to help. I love that people think to ask us for help. I feel that often people don't like to ask for help, or think that they are being inconvenient or a free-loader when they ask to use something you have.  Sometimes I feel like that!  But I actually enjoy helping people in this way.  So that has changed my attitude to asking for help.  

I remember a sermon I heard a few years ago, and the preacher said that being a good neighbour can sometimes mean asking them for help (rather than offering help), because it gives them a chance to bless you with the skills and resources that they have.  I can certainly say that I have enjoyed blessing my neighbours who have needed help.  

I'm now in the process of cleaning out our second bedroom to get it ready for the baby.  It's currently a study and store room so it really needs a big cull.  Occasionally I find myself wondering what I might get if I tried to sell some of the things I want to get rid of, but that's a rare thought.  I really want to be generous and able to bless my community by giving things away.  This community has been a blessing to us and that has in turn encouraged us to be generous, with our time, resources and attention.  I hope others around us can see this generosity and know we are Christians by our love (John 13:35). 

Living in a fishbowl

We don’t often think about our curtains and blinds.  The way they let in or block out light as we desire.  Sometimes we might get frustrated when they don’t work as effectively as we think they should, or when we have to clean them (I’ve never tried washing curtains but venetian blinds are a pain to dust).  But I think we often just take them for granted.  All windows have them.  Except when they don’t. 

There are some significant renovations going on in our block of units.  Basically the whole front of 11 of the units needed to be replaced.  The wooden frames would be replaced with metal.  That meant the whole front had to come off. 

Here’s what it looked like for one of the units (friends of ours recently moved out of this unit). 

Here’s our house with the whole front gone.  We put up plastic painting sheets as makeshift walls to keep the dust off our furniture. 

Unfortunately the workmen had to pull the edge of it down so that they could get in.  They put the new frame on the same day but the insides weren’t finished until several days later.  So we lived in our blind-less, compacted living space with our plastic sheets hanging from the ceiling until the inside could be finished.  I felt like I was living in a fishbowl. 

Thankfully our friends who were away on holidays and had lent us their car had also generously lent us their house and bed if we needed it.  So we took refuge in their house most of the time.  We decided to sleep in our own bed, despite having no blinds, knowing that if the sun didn’t wake us, the workmen starting at 7:30 would. 

 

We’re still waiting for the blinds to go back up, but when we got back from our week away the inside panelling was finished and even the door was painted.  I stuck some newspaper to the window following some of the other units so that we would have a little bit of privacy.  Here’s hoping the blinds will go up soon so we can spread our furniture out again!

Do you stop?

He was standing on the side of the highway, next to his car, waving a hand in the air.  I was driving and asked J if I should pull over.  We had almost driven past him.

I pulled over.  The man had sheepishly run out of petrol, 20 kilometres from the next town.  We didn’t have any petrol in a can as he first asked, but we agreed to take him into town to buy some.  He told his wife who was waiting in the car what was happening and then came with us. 

It turned out he was going the same direction as us, for the same reason.  Visiting family for Christmas.  He told us all about his son, his grandchildren, where they were at school, what they were interested in.  And it turned out he was a Christian too.  We’d heard of the church he went to, and even visited the church his son and grandchildren went to in our home city. 

To be honest, we had both been nervous about stopping for someone in the middle of nowhere.  For me, the fact that he was a older man allayed some of my fears.  It was a relief to find out that we weren’t just helping a stranger, but a brother in Christ.  I always feel safer and more comfortable around Christians.  But we didn’t know this when we stopped. 

On our drive we’ve been listening to an audio recording of the Gospel of Luke, read by us and some of our fellow students.  One of the parables that Jesus tells is of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37).  This story is Jesus’ response to the question “who is my neighbour?”  Jesus turns the question around.

Which of these three do you think became a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”  The expert in religious law said, “The one who showed mercy to him.” So Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.” (Luke 10:36 –37)

I was reminded that anyone in need is our neighbour.  And by helping we were being good neighbours.  I don’t regret stopping for this stranger and driving 40 kilometres more than we had to.  They were both so appreciative and couldn’t stop saying so.  Perhaps I won’t be so nervous about stopping for someone next time. 

Stop and chat

“I didn’t want to live here.”

We had our community end of year party last night and this phrase came up a couple of times during the open mic time.  It was true for me too.  I didn’t want to live here mostly because the name of the community sounded funny (I won’t mention it here for internet security reasons).  I knew nothing about any of the college residential communities before we started college but this one was at the bottom of my list purely for the weird name. 

But now, like others reflected last night, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else while we’re studying at college (and even post-college too!).  I don’t know of anywhere else where you can have a meaningful conversation with your neighbours as you hang out your washing on the same line, as you walk to the car, as your children play together in the playground, as you study in the rooms specifically designated for study, as you stand in your front doorway, as you take out the rubbish, as you check your letter box, as you drive to college together, as you borrow things from each other and return them later. 

Last night one of the leaving students encouraged us to make the most of these opportunities for conversations.  After all, if you can’t talk to your Christian neighbours in this safe and loving community then you certainly won’t be able to talk to your neighbours when you move away from living in Christian community. 

I haven’t been good at using these opportunities.  But last night I was encouraged to change.  Often I would pass people hanging up their washing as I walked to the studies and I would say hello but not much more.  It’s easy to tell myself that I was just busy with assignments or blame it on my introversion.  But sometimes I would wonder and worry if it seemed like I was being rude. 

One of the wives who I’ve become friends with over the two years we’ve both lived here told me that when she first met me she found me intimidating because I didn’t talk much.  I didn’t talk much because I was shy and didn’t know what to say!  She showed me that my silence can be misconstrued and I certainly don’t want that. 

So neighbours, friends, I humbly apologise for the times when my conversations with you (or lack there of) have been cut short, awkward, rude, unloving or distracted.  I truly didn’t mean to come across that way and I really do want to get to know you better.  I’m sorry for my introversion, shyness and awkwardness. 

Because of last night I’ve decided on next year’s community–living motto for myself (which I will start on right away and not wait for next year).  Stop and Chat. 

I will hang my washing outside more often, as much as I can, and I won’t opt to hang it inside just to avoid a conversation at the washing lines.  As I walk to or from the studies I’ll stop to chat with the parents and children  in the little playground.  When I hear children playing outside I’ll go out to spend time with them and their parents. 

All this I will do because relationships are more important than what is gained from being reclusive.  Supporting each other is more important than studying.  People are more important than personal planning. 

I may need help, reminders and support.  But I don’t want to waste this time we have living in this wonderful community.  Thank you Christian neighbours for being so loving, welcoming and such great examples to me.  I hope I can be the same. 

The finish, the fun and the farewells

College is finished for the year.  The exams are over, the parties have happened and we're now on holidays!  Here's a bit of an update about what's been happening these last few days. 

This semester seemed to be much more intense than first semester.  We had what seemed to be a number of 'big' subjects this semester, with lots to remember for the exams.  I'll write soon about some of the things I've learnt this semester at college. 

Our last exam was Old Testament on Thursday morning.  It was a relief to be finished after that.  The exam was much better than I thought it was going to be which was a nice way to end the exam period.  Then the parties began.

On Thursday night we went to the Graduation dinner at college because I'm a graduating student.  We hung out with the other graduating diploma students who were similarly dressed and not quite as formal as the fourth years (no one told us there was a dress code...). 

Friday was 'Final Friday' at college.  We had a community chapel that spouses and children were invited to and then shared a lunch afterwards.  Someone from each year level spoke briefly about their year level and the things we were thankful for. 

In the afternoon and evening we had a party with the other first years who live around us.  We had a dance party with the kids (well the women danced and the men sat in the other room drinking and talking).  We ordered take-away and then after dinner we played a game called 'Times Up'.  Most people know it here as 'The Hat Game'.  You play in pairs with a stack of cards that have book titles, TV shows, songs and other things written on them and you have to get your partner to guess what is on the card.  In the first round you can describe it like in 'Articulate'.  In the second round you can use only one word, and in the third round you act it out like Charades.  You play until the stack of cards is exhausted and each round uses the same cards so part of the trick is remembering what's there. 

On Saturday we had the end of year party with all the college students in our community.  There are twenty families living here so it is a decent number when we all get together.  I was making macaroons for the party.  My first batch which I made on Friday afternoon didn't go so well.  The mixture was too runny so it came out of the piping bag too fast, spread too much on the tray, and didn't rise properly.  I was a bit disappointed in them. So on Saturday morning I made some more, making sure that I added a bit more of the dry ingredients so the mixture wouldn't be a runny.  This batch thankfully worked much better (but I still served both at the party).  Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of them but you all know what macaroons are supposed to look like, imagine them like that!

I spend some of the afternoon looking after two children of one of the other students.  Apparently the younger one and I bonded because even when dad had come back at dinner time (community dinner as part of the party) she came to sit with me as we ate.  It has been lovely to be able to look after kids in this community and be helpful to their parents.  They love that those of us without children are free to do things such as baby sit and we (well at least me, I don't presume to speak for anyone else), I love doing it: helping them and spending time with their kids.  So BHG, if you need a baby-sitter I love doing it. 

The evening's activities were the highlight.  Some of the wives had organised a sort of trivia night and we played in teams based on our year at college.  Needless to say it was hilarious.  It was also a time to farewell the students who had finished college and were leaving the community.  We heard about where they were going, what they would miss about our community, and what they were looking forward to in their new job and community.  It will be sad to see them leave because they have all been so welcoming of us, so helpful and most of all such great examples of godliness. 

After all of this we had an open mic time for anyone to come up and share something.  People talked about what they loved about our community, gave advice about getting involved and what to expect next year when new people move in, the ways they have been loved, and reflections on their time here.  I didn’t get up to speak (still being a bit too shy and disliking public speaking), but I heartily agreed with what everyone said.  I feel truly blessed to live in such a community. 

No longer empty

I didn't feel quite right announcing that one of our neighbours had moved out.  If I had it would have felt like I was celebrating.  Because I'm talking about the noisy neighbour I've previously written about. 

Truthfully, I did feel relieved to hear that he was moving out and it has been very nice having a bit more peace around here.  It really has been quieter, even though there are still lots of kids of college students running around and making noise.  That's a different kind of noise to yelling and heavy foot-falls up and down the stairs.  I feel safer walking out our front door knowing that he's not there because, to be honest, I was a little scared of him.  He's been gone for a few months now so the place next to us has been empty and very quiet. 

But for the last few weeks we've been wondering if someone has moved in.  It may sound a bit odd that we didn't know if we had new neighbours or not, but it has been hard to tell.  We definitely know it if someone walks up or down the stairs, but sometimes we would hear people there one day and then nothing for a few days.  And this happened for a few weeks.  It seemed like perhaps these might have been inspections by prospective renters. 

But if we knew what moving in sounded like we never would have wondered.  We definitely have new neighbours now.  We've seen people moving furniture in and heard the kind of walking around the house (and up the stairs!) that only comes from moving heavy furniture and boxes.  We're not sure yet if it is a couple living there, or a single man (or a man setting up and then partner to follow).  We haven't met them yet but I think one of the other college students around us has, and so far they've been very quiet.  I look forward to meeting him/them and I'm hopefully that we can have a better relationship than the one we had with our previous neighbour. 

A lesson in humility

I've often felt like humility is the opposite of boasting: being quiet about success, or even attributing it to God for extra spiritual points.  But I learnt tonight that it's much more than that. 

Tonight we had an encounter with our neighbour, the noisy one next door.  We were on our way out when he asked to speak with us. 

We stood there, unable to get a word in as he accused us of a lot of things that weren't true and lectured us about being respectful neighbours by being quiet on our stairs.  I got slowly angrier at his hypocrisy, arrogance and lies but didn't want to show anything.  It was a lesson in humility to listen to him and not defend ourselves and to apologise for not being quiet.  I shed my anger once we got into the car by telling J all the reasons our neighbour was out of line and pointing out his hypocrisy and lies. 

As I reflected later on I knew that there was nothing else we could have done.  Part of me wanted to argue back and tell him about all the noise that he makes and his disrespect of his neighbours, but I knew that wouldn't be helpful in any way and would just put him off side even more.  We took his accusations and apologised.  This is how I felt I should respond as a Christian. 

After all, we have the ultimate example of humility in Jesus.  Though he was mocked and scorned, Jesus never said word against the accusations thrown at him (Mark 14:55-61).  He humbled himself even to death on a cross.  And that is what saved people from sin and death, not a verbal defence against his accusers. 

I don't think I'm very good at it, I didn't like doing it, but God is teaching me humility. 

Guess who's coming to dinner?

As I may have mentioned before, we are living in a community of students from Bible college, and one of the things we do is share meals together.  In summer we had weekly barbecues together at the big grassy backyard of some of the houses.  In winter we have 'Winter Dinners' which we organise with a roster to take it in turns to host or be guests, and hopefully by the end we have a chance to have dinner with each family.

Love your neighbour

This weekend just been, someone told me that she really liked the honesty in my last post, so here goes with a new one. 

In some ways, loving the physical neighbours my husband and I have is really easy and quite a joy.  We live in a community of other students from college and there’s so many ways that we love and support each other.  We share meals, pray together, drive in to college together, pick each other up from the airport (thanks so much to those who did this for us this weekend!).  It’s (mostly) easy to love Christians and I absolutely love living in our community. 

But if we love only those who love us, that doesn’t say much.  It is good for Christians to love each other, as this is an example to the world (John 13:35), but that’s not enough.