Neighbors

Strange events happen to me sometimes, and I recently had an urge to put some of them to digital paper.

It was late at night a few months ago. I don't remember what I was doing that night, but I was returning home at around 11pm. Driving down the street that leads to my apartment complex I saw a strange sight. I made out the shape of an older woman in her nightgown - she was standing on the inside of the gate facing out and had both of her hands on it. I opened the gate using my clicker and the woman stumbled forward into the middle of the street. As she approached closer I could tell that something was wrong. I lowered my window and asked her if she was OK. She came up to my window, grabbed me, and told me, "I am not feeling good."

She was definitely very drunk. I parked my car and proceeded to talk to her for a bit; Stanton is not a safe place for anyone to be wandering around at night, especially drunk. I introduced myself to her and she told me her name. I'll refer to her as Ann from now on. Ann told me that her husband had passed away, she was in deep debt, and she had been in and out of alcohol abuse centers multiple times. She apparently lived on her own and had few close friends and family to care for her. I escorted her to her friend's(?) house who was decidedly unhappy about seeing my neighbor in her state. After some discussion and back and forth we both escorted An to her apartment in Briar Oaks.

Do you ever experience a situation that strikes you? Maybe that feels surreal or a situation in which you remember details very vividly? I can remember walking Ann up to her apartment that night and very vividly remember seeing the disheveled state of her patio and living room. Chairs and pots in disarray, looking like they haven't been tended to in months. Old newspapers, TV dinner trays, and trash scattered about. Thinking through that scenario, the sorrow that I felt being there with her is still very palpable to me today.

What words of comfort did I say? Did I take the time to preach the Gospel to this woman? What words of mine could have assuaged her and met her in her time? And there's the rub - I did talk to her for sometime, I brought up talking to social workers, gave her some phone numbers for assistance, but I never followed up with her nor did I explicitly express the Gospel in words to her. I have not seen her since that night several months ago. God be merciful to me and enable me to love people to the extent that you love me.

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