I would like to welcome my husband Landon to our
blog. Landon, thank you for your contributions to our family blog….
When Neighbors Take Marriage and The Home Seriously
We are fortunate to live in a neighborhood of
midtown Jackson where we are literally surrounded by church members and close
friends. We can step out on our back screened porch to see the porches of four
different families from our church. In fact, one of our next door neighbors is a
family of one of the pastors in our church. They are our family’s dearest friends,
entertainers, counselors, babysitters, and playmates. They are just flat out great
neighbors; all twelve of them.
While Ross and his wife Kathy have ten children (2
boys and 8 girls), they also counsel the majority of couples (including us) in
our church before marriage. One of the reasons Ross is our church’s go-to guy
for pre-marital counseling is because he clearly explains how marriage between
man and woman reflects Christ’s love for his church (Eph. 5). And not only is
this topic one that I have heard him talk about at church or in counseling
sessions but again and again, I have heard the theological significance of
marriage and children brought up at dinner as our family sat around
the already crowded table in our pastor’s dining room. Each time, it’s a topic
that garners rolled eyes and huffed breaths from the teenagers as they listen
to the shtick that they have heard time and time again from their relentless
dad. But they listened more than I thought.
A few weeks ago, their middle school daughter’s
birthday was coming up and she was told she could have two friends over to
spend the night. She attends public school in Jackson and had befriended two
sisters whose parents were going through a divorce. So Ross and Kathy’s
daughter, as winsome as she is funny and sometimes dramatic, asked if she could have the
two girls over because she wanted them to see what a normal family looked like.
As I stood in the backyard hitting a tennis ball back and forth while Eli ran
back and forth like a ball boy at Wimbledon, I asked her about her birthday
sleepover. As she began to talk, I listened to her desire to bring these two
girls into a loving home that she had experienced her whole life. How precious
it was to hear her describe how what she had seen and heard from her parents
created in her a desire for others to experience the same. While she didn’t say
it explicitly, what she had seen and experienced from her parents was a
microcosm of the self-giving love that exists within God himself, a love that
forever draws others deeper into its perfect communion.
Those few moments of conversation while playing
backyard tennis reminded me the importance of teaching in our home. Deuteronomy
6 emphasizes constant teaching for a reason. Our children are listening and
watching. What we believe and cherish most deeply will play out in our bodies, just as Jesus said. And they will
likely play out in our children’s bodies too. And we desire what is played out will
match what is described and proscribed in the Scriptures. I just hope Eli and
Madi would experience God’s self-giving, inclusive love in our home that they
too desire to bring others into it, just as our next door neighbors have
demonstrated so well.
