When the Fence Gets Blown Down

In my neighborhood the most common sidewalk decor these days is fencing.  When Hurricane Ike blew through League City, he decided to rip off shingles from roofs and tear up fences.  Along one of the major streets in my neighborhood there is one house, in particular, that seems to have captivated my attention every time I pass by.  Here is the backyard of this house...

Until the fence was blown over, I did not know that there were four automobiles and two campers in the backyard.  They hid it well.  There fence fell down and their backyard is naked and their junk is all out in the open.  This got me to thinking about the storms in our lives.

How often do storms in our lives tear down fences that we've built so that people can't see our "junk"?  Privacy fences don't just come in 6 foot sections.  We build privacy fences in our personal lives every day, fearful that if anyone saw what was in our backyard, they wouldn't like us, wouldn't respect us or wouldn't think we were who we claim to be.  I see it every single day, and I even find myself caught up in it sometimes.

Several years ago, my wife and I went up to Kansas City with some of our friends for a small vacation.  One of the things that blew me away was the neighborhood where we stayed.  I went out the backyard and it was like a small park.  There were no privacy fences and the only fences that were there were small chain-link fences to keep animals close to home.  The houses all shared this big back yard.  Wow!  I remembered the days when I was growing up and we didn't have privacy fences and how we knew our neighbors better and we talked more often with them.  Part of me really digs that scene.

More importantly than our wooden or chain-link fences are the fences we erect around our personal lives.  We hide so much from people who want to share our journey.  I believe that this "hiding" is not from God.  We were meant to know and be known, but we have chosen to project an image of ourselves that keeps us from being and experiencing all God wants for us.  Each of us needs chain-link friends that can see our junk, and still love us anyway.  Each of us needs to be a chain-link friend where we can see other people's junk and not freak out!  I have a few of these relationships and they are immeasurable to me.  To those of you, I say thank you and I just might call you at 2am sometime...