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I haven't been able to do much this week. Shingles is the pits. I never understood how bad it was until I got it myself. I've had to deal with the disappointment of unmet expectations on top of feeling horrible. However, the past 2 days I've actually been able to leave the house, which feels like a giant victory.
There has been a bit of a buzz around our house, because the house has been so empty for so long, people are starting to notice that something is going on. In particular, the kids are.
Our neighborhood is full of children. We live less than a block from a large elementary school, and also an awesome ice cream store (I have had time to enjoy that, even in my invalid state). Thus, we have a large number of families and children walking and riding their bikes past our house and church.
We debated moving at the beginning of summer vs. the fall. We were leaning towards the fall for a variety of reasons, but a friend told me how foolish that would be. "People are outside in the summer". She told me. She was 100% correct. People seem to be everywhere, and school isn't out f
or 3 more days.
Today, on one of our many trips to run errands, I stepped outside and a little girl on her sparkly pink bike said, "I like your bleeding hearts."
I walked over and said "thank you very much. We just moved here on Tuesday, so there are a lot of weeds around them, but they look nice."
She told me that she saw them while going to the ice cream store with her family. I was so glad this was actually a place I had been to. We held a short and sweet conversation about our mutual love of ice cream, and she pedaled away.
Today I'm grateful for bleeding hearts and ice cream stores, because they were the seeds of the gospel. We didn't have a conversation about Jesus, I didn't even ask her for her name, but I know she loves chocolate ice cream and that school ends on June 4th. I know that she loves beautiful flowers, and I think she found out that these new neighbors aren't too bad. I truly think it's these conversations that soften hearts and that illustrate the love of God through the broken and imperfect people that Mac and I are.
I don't know when those conversations about Jesus will happen with her or the other children of our neighborhood, but I do know who will be interested in visiting when we start weeding the flower beds, and I think that's a pretty great place to start.
