If you polled the people at Riverbend who know my little family of four and asked them to pick one word they would associate with us, I can guarantee the large majority of those answers would be the word garbage. There is no other way to say it than that my 5 year old son is obsessed with any and all things garbage, and as odd as it may sound, it is what we as a family have allowed to become a “big deal”.
To fill in a bit why this fact is important, I’ll share a little bit more about my family. My husband Brian and I have been married almost 7 years and have two sons, Owen (5) and Ellis (2). Prior to entering “retirement” when Owen was born, I was the children’s librarian at the Lower Macungie Library and served as a volunteer in our church’s youth ministry. When Owen was born, and those two roles came to an end as I had previously known them, I found myself struggling with how God would have me serve in this new season. After a couple of weeks of praying and talking with Brian, the simple way I felt God lead me was to be in my community.
Well, that sounds kind of obvious, but as a “people person introvert”, joining a group or walking up to a stranger anywhere is not at the top of my list of fun activities. Yet as I continued to pray and think through how this could look lived out in my family’s life, I began to see places where I could naturally build relationships. The workers at our local grocery store who we saw every week. Neighbors who we normally just waved to on our walks and kept going. The vendors at the Easton Public Market that we visited as a family every Friday night. These are not people we see as “projects” but people we want to get to know and be known by. And we wanted to become more intentional about it.
Back to garbage. Two years ago, an idea kept popping into mind to have my garbage truck loving preschooler make a picture for the garbage and recycling men he loved to watch from our window each week. For a good month, I pushed the thought down every time because I thought they would think I was crazy. Just a month before we were set to move, I finally followed through on the idea, with some chocolate chip cookies for good measure, and we left our gifts on the cans. So began our friendship with Mr. LeRon, and even though we moved, we still occasionally exchange notes with him through the new owners. Next there was Mr. Matt, who came to pick up the trash at our new house. Soon after we got to know Mr. Matt, we found out that our garbage company was selling their business to another company and we would have all new garbage people. We’ve since gotten to know Mr. Brooks and Mr. Joaquin, Miss Peggy and Mr. Eli, Mr. Andrew, Mr. Torres, and a handful of other garbage people as we make our weekly visits. Owen decides every week what goodies they will get… pictures, treats, drinks. Garbage day has become a weekly special event in our home. Before kids, I never would have imagined I would embrace learning about and playing imaginary garbage routes, but I have.
Reaching into the community hasn’t always been as easy as taking the boys outside on garbage day. Brian was recently diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. This brought an unexpected hospitalization in December, regular maintenance visits to his GI for medication infusions, a resection surgery that was scheduled just as COVID was beginning, canceled, and then recently performed. We decided early on that his medical team would be an extension of our “neighborhood”. These acts aren’t any great thing on our parts, but we hope to reflect the love we have for Jesus and our desire to love on and encourage the people we rub elbows with in the course of life.
I love that in being purposeful about building relationships in our community, our sons are learning from childhood that they can use the things that excite them and the gifts they have to love their neighbors. This is something that took me into adulthood to truly get, but it’s just a part of our normal life for them. It’s caused me to step outside of my comfort zone and expand my view of who our “neighbors” are. When we began to live missionally within our community, our goal was to teach our sons. In reality, this way of living has taught us.
“Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.”
Psalm 37:3