Walls. Keep heat in. Keep wind and snow and heat and rain out. Make a place for windows and doors. Hold up roofs. Make fences. Create a backdrop for pictures, bulletin boards, mirrors, random stuff like baskets and dolls and bows. Display fantasies.
You can attach things to them like spice racks and gun racks and medicine chests. You can lean things against them like ladders. You can paint them different colors and add different textures and make them look like something they’re not with a mural or grafitti. You can decorate them with ideas.
Some are in houses. Some are in skyscrapers. Some are around individual properties. Some are relics of a former building. Some are in my head.
Walls can be made from wood or wood and sheetrock and insulation and siding or strawbales or mud or brick or concrete and steel or leather or polypropolene ….or thoughts…..or words.
I built a wall. At first, it was in my mind. Then, it began to affect my behavior. It couldn’t be touched or seen with the naked eye, but it quickly became tangible when it involved averting the eyes, waiting to go out the front door until the neighbor was inside, refusing to make any overtures or thanks for what I considered annoying solicitude. It became an obsession, my wall, to watch my neighbor’s house and wonder if they were watching me. And the sign on my outer wall said, “No Trespassing.”
Then my neighbors moved away. There was no one to watch. No one put our trash out when we were gone. No one cleaned up our yard when we didn’t have time. No one told us when there had been a robbery or when the water was brown. No one sent over chicken curry balls.
I no longer needed my wall. I knocked it down. I went outside without looking to see if I’d have to visit. I picked up my own branches and swept my own driveway. And I sighed for what I’d lost because of that wall. There might have been paradise on the other side. There were certainly guardian angels. Now there’s just a vacant set of blue walls with peeling paint and unblinking eyes.
My wall had locked doors. No welcome mat. Like a wall in a prison. Now I am bereft of neighbors more generous than I.
Lord, I won’t learn from this unless you do it. Please do it. Be the Door in my wall. Let me be the door keeper in Your house.
Oh, Mom. This made me cry. I have these walls, too. You put them up to “protect” yourself, then find they’re actually holding you captive…and at that point they’re so hard to break down, even if you hate them.
It’s a good thing that God is so good…and mighty to save.
Amen.
You know what? In case you haven’t done it, you can pray for that angelish neighbor, and God will send him/her a greeting from you. I know it for a fact.
That really was a confirmation for me because I did pray for them–that they would have real friends in the place where they’d moved. Now I’ll pray that they’ll have a greeting from me…..that I never gave them while they were here…..
I love to hear the rest of your story.