Border Street: Christian couple try to keep faith
By Tina Griego, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published March 19, 2007 at midnight
T he Christian couple decide to hold an open house for their duplex on Sunday afternoon. The week before, the Christian wife and her mother walk up and down Border Street and then spread out to surrounding blocks taping yellow fliers to front doors: "Come Celebrate! A New Beginning In Your Neighborhood!"
They put up signs along the main road and at each end of the block, too, but the Christian wife later finds one tossed in the neighbor's front yard.
The morning of the open house, they load up the couch and matching overstuffed chair from their home in Littleton and haul them over to the duplex. They arrange them in the living room along with a white wicker coffee table and a silk tree.
They put a small side table next to the front door and place on top of it: business cards, a sign-in sheet, an old-fashioned lantern and two framed pictures, one a drawing of the three kings, or perhaps it is the wise men, on their way to Bethlehem.
The other is a black-and-white photo of a baby. She stares directly into the camera. This is their daughter, Sierra. She was 14 weeks old when she died. The Christian wife had just returned to work when this happened, when a co-worker knocked on a bathroom door where she was pumping breast milk to tell her she had an emergency call.
The baby had been napping at her babysitter's. The doctors attributed her death to sudden infant death syndrome. That night, the Christian husband stood over her crib and shook the railing and shouted, "No, this can't be happening."
The Christian wife later wrote all of this down in her journals. It was December 1999. They would lose two more children in miscarriages. The losses would lead them to church, to a blossoming of their faith and the belief that everything happens for a reason and that life itself, its value, its meaning and reward, lie in the act of giving.
The Christian wife puts out cookies and lemonade on a small table in the corner of the kitchen. Then she sits outside and waits. After Sierra died, after the miscarriage of their second daughter at 22 weeks, she became pregnant again, and this time their baby grew and thrived, and the Christian wife watches her now, a 5-year-old with straight blond hair and chubby cheeks riding her bicycle with a 5-year-old Border Street girl named Maria.
Later, the daughter wanders through the duplex. "This is the closet. As you can see it's pretty big. These are new doorknobs. This is the heater; you might want to clean that, it's pretty dusty." Her mother laughs.
Across the street, the Naturalized Citizen and his brother are washing their trucks and the Patriarch is sitting in his front yard drinking a beer, taking a break before he installs a new arbor in the front yard. An hour passes. No one shows up. The Christian wife starts to say something and her eyes tear up. "I'm sorry," she says. "I might cry."
She starts again: "I'm beginning to think that God is calling us to live here. That maybe that is our mission project, to live among people here."
The day before, she wrote in her journal:
I am in such anguish - why I don't know. I sense (maybe more like know) God is calling me to live in our property. My thoughts are filled with serving, reaching out to this community, going door to door serving the residents through food and hospitality . . . It is a neighborhood needing revitalization, needing a new hope.
Living on Border Street was never their intention. They bought the duplex in December with the intention of renovating it and reselling it at an affordable price. One day, they hoped, their profits would allow them to build a Christian retreat house in the mountains.
"Our friends and family are not called to do what we're called to do and they would not be OK with us living here," she says and then shakes her head. "I don't know that. I have asked them, but it would be like living two separate lives. And, gosh, we are so white."
Her husband laughs. "Really white."
"Every time I follow God, it's like, 'How is this going to work? What am I stepping into?' " the Christian wife says. "I think the Hispanic population here - and this is just my impression - doesn't have the same mind-set as the people we helped in the colonias in Juarez. They didn't have anything there and they were so grateful for the help. But, here, do they even want to be helped? Do they want to establish community? The community needs something to bind it. Are we crazy to think we are the ones to help do that?"
When a person believes that everything happens for a reason, that we are all here to serve a purpose, nothing is coincidence, and so the Christian couple look back now to see an alignment of events that lead to this day, to this duplex and this street. They have been wanting to leave Littleton and they have already rented their house there to a woman who will move in in May.
The Christian wife bursts into laughter and says: "How much we prayed while working on this home for God to prepare the hearts of the family who would one day live here."
She shakes her head: "Surely, God, you didn't mean us."
"Who the heck are we to think we could make a difference here?" her husband says.
The conversation ends with the arrival of the Naturalized Citizen's wife and a gaggle of women and girls. The duplex fills with their oohs and aahs.
"It's so pretty," they say. "It's perfect."
But, besides their Realtor, no one else shows up. Just as they are getting ready to leave, the Fast-Food Worker Wife comes by and then her husband and son. They leave their telephone number on the sign-up sheet.
Across the street, a group of about eight men are leaning on the fence at the Naturalized Citizen's house. They are drinking beer and talking loudly in Spanish. The Christian wife arranges leftover cookies on a platter. Her husband carries the sweets to the men across the street.
Featured
-
Through Your Lens
Submit your photos or see the Editor's Choice slide show here.
-
Rocky Multimedia
The news comes alive in our videos and slide shows. Catch up on what's happening today.
-
Holiday Lights
Is your house the jolliest on the block? Submit your holiday lights display.
-
Holiday Gift Guide
Looking to get a jump-start on the holiday shopping season?
-
Mount Crushmore
Which four Broncos greats should be immortalized on Mount Crushmore? Vote here.
-
Bronco Dean's rant
Listen to Bronco Dean's midweek rant on the Chiefs.
-
Broncos Video
Get the latest from Dove Valley as the Broncos prepare for Sunday's matchup.
-
Calendar wallpaper
Download this month's desktop wallpaper calendar
-
Sam Adams' Open Mic
Open Mic: Stirrin' the Soup with Matt Iseman
Post your comment
Registration is required. Click here to create your free user account, or login below.
Comments are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. Violators may be banned. Click here for our full user agreement.