Part II, the rest of the story...

‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.  (Mark 12:31 NLT)
So here is the really cool part of yesterday's post.  Last November we lost two of our goats, Sandy, Madolyn's precious pet, and Gidget, the goat that Lane & Jay had driven to Tennessee the year before to buy.  Those two and our two others, Pearl & Dottie, were pregnant.  We were preparing for lots of babies in February.  Unfortunately, there was a meeting of sorts between Sandy, Gidget and our neighbors' dogs.  We didn't realize it at first and were blaming the coyotes.  When the second time came around, we figured it out.

Needless to say it was not a good situation.  Sandy & Gidget did not survive.  Everyone was upset and angry.  There were no major blow-ups, no harsh words, nothing that even left hard feelings between us.  Our neighbors were gracious.  They made several offers.  We declined.  We are neighbors, we told them, our kids go to school together, we now attend church together.  We can't have this coming between us, and these things do just happen sometimes (shush, I know they happen way more at our house than others, but still...)  We have to work this out.

I have lived in the same spot, sorta, almost my entire life.  I was born and raised there, moved away for about four years, built a house and moved back.  When I saw that my previous neighbors put the For Sale sign in their yard, I was bummed.  Who on earth will move in?  What if they're awful?  What if they do this or that?  What if they are hard to get along with?  What if...  We were so thankful when someone finally bought the house next to us, and even more thankful when we discovered who it was because we already knew them and they had kids about the age of ours.  How awesome to live seven miles from town, out in the middle of nowhere and actually have neighbor kids, within walking distance, that you can play with!

So back with my original story, we came to an agreement with our neighbors, they would get rid of their dogs and we would just forget the whole thing.  We were good.  We moved on.  Fastfoward to the 4H livestock auction.  As I was saying in the previous post, I was struggling to get a good picture of Madolyn and Dude in the show arena, but for some reason, (ugh) this young man would not let go of Dude's tail.  Apparently, he thought Madolyn could not handle her little Dude and was trying to "help" out by hanging onto his tail.  It was annoying the heck out of me.  My mind was screaming, "LET GO OF THE GOAT.  SHE CAN HANDLE THE GOAT.  YOU ARE MAKING HER LOOK LIKE SHE CANNOT HANDLE HER GOAT!"  Outside appearance, however, I was zooming in, zooming out, reaching here and stretching there with my camera, muttering "get out of the way."  No picture.

And then it was over.  I had no idea who bought the goat, but I saw the smile come across my very anxious daughter's beautiful face and knew all was well.  My mom leaned over and told me that our neighbors had bought the goat and given it back.  Oh, the joy that filled my soul...(you know the song...sing it.)  Seriously, if I were a crier, the tears would've flowed.  I stood up and looked at them and mouthed "Thank you" with a smile.  They knew, I knew, we all knew why they had bid on Dude.  It was precious. 

4H teaches many lessons, but so does life.  What was just several months ago a very upsetting ordeal had resolved with a very happy and surprise ending.  We offered forgiveness and had let it go many months ago; they offered love and have hopefully received the peace they needed from the situation.  We are to love our neighbor as ourselves.  It is the greatest of His commandments.  We love our neighbors, and they love us (I think). 

If you didn't read yesterday's post, I mentioned that at one point during the auction, Madolyn told me something about God working things out and how things happen for a reason...funny how things come full circle, huh?