On the Street Where I Live

Hi Substack people! I’m slowly getting my feet wet on this platform. Maybe ankle-deep now but going for the deep end.

I just want to drop in today for my first post to tell you about the street I live on. (Who writes about their street?) A verse in the Bible says “The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. Yes, I have a good inheritance.” Psalm 16:6 NKJV.

But in this case, for my story, I like the version found in The Voice translation:

“My home is surrounded in beauty; You have gifted me with abundance and a rich legacy.”

My parents built this house in the 60s and lived here for three decades. It then passed to Bob and me in 2001. Much of the inside has been renovated and looks nothing like it did then. But some of the same people still live on this street and five generations of our family know this home.

It struck me the other morning as an anomaly that people often are on the street in their pajamas. More than one person, and in fact, sometimes me — either getting the garbage can up to the road or putting something in the car. I used to worry that someone might see me, until I noticed Maria every day in either her pjs or her robe, walking her dogs. And I thought I like this. Then I ran into Fran another morning and she said, 

“I’m still in my pajamas.”

“No worries,” I replied. “It’s the norm for Alderman Drive.”

And then there’s my daughter, Texas. She’s all over the neighborhood in pajamas.

That might not seem like being “surrounded by beauty,” but depends on how you define beauty. Knowing this is a safe place where folks are comfortable enough to just be who they are in the moment — I think it’s a beautiful thing. 

We have a widower who mows the whole length of our dead-end street every other week. He even pruned an ugly, overgrown tree that was an eyesore. I smile whenever I turn onto Alderman Drive to see that tree standing proud, showing off its perfect form.

After the last hurricane, neighbors pitched in dragging broken limbs, scads of Spanish moss, and debris from our yard. We could never have cleaned up without their assistance.

While I live on Lake Clay, a clear sandy-bottomed Florida lake, it isn’t that view I cherish most. The old oak trees dripping with Spanish moss are lovely, and I’m mesmerized by sunlight dancing on the water in the morning. It’s the love and care of neighbors, however, that makes me glad I live here. They bring food when someone comes home from the hospital, or attend a neighborhood BBQ to celebrate the life of a resident who died unexpectedly. That’s a beautiful thing.

A few years back I came across a verse in Acts I hadn’t noticed before.

“And he made from one person every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being...” 17:26-28a.

It struck me that God has chosen that I live on Alderman Drive for this time in history. And that my purpose is to find him here because, without him, it would all just be random and haphazard.

Once in a while, in the evening after dinner, Bob and I take Finnegan, our one-year-old Yorkipoo, for a walk down our street. We say a prayer over every house — that the people living there will seek God and find him. And we thank Jesus that he appointed this particular place for us to dwell.