Griego: Pair pray as move draws near

Monday, April 23, 2007

The Christian wife and her husband do not initially agree on whether moving to Border Street is really what they have been called to do. They struggle with it in different ways. Hers is more a question of surrendering to God. He, too, grapples with the trust that faith requires, but his concerns are also more practical, the worries of a husband and father who wants to do right by his family. So, they pray.

They are renting out their own home in Littleton and must move out by April 30. They decide they will keep the Border Street duplex - which they purchased solely to remodel and resell - on the market, but look for an apartment elsewhere to rent. If, by the 30th, they have not found another place, they will move to Border Street.

She is reading more about real estate investment and positive thinking, underlining passages, scribbling notes in the margins, studying paragraphs the same way she does her Bible, which is bookmarked in many places with paper tabs. She has been driving through the larger Border Street neighborhood, getting a feel for the place. Yes, there is graffiti and trash and many foreclosures, but she is drawn to the neighborhood for the same reason the American Spouse once was - it is full of life. The American Spouse's ardor for the neighborhood has since cooled. Over the last year, she has come to see that life here can be messy and full of drama and may contain the occasional infestation of bedbugs. But the Christian wife remains undeterred and one day she makes a cheesecake and takes it to Longtime Eddie.

She read in the paper that Eddie agreed that God has a plan for them on this street, though, Eddie said, that plan might not include living on it. Patience, he counseled. She believes if she can talk to the neighbors, then together they can make Border Street the block they want it to be.

"Come in, come in," Eddie says and she walks into his little house and compliments his wood floors.

"So, are you going to move here?" he asks.

"We might," she says. "The market is not good for selling right now."

"The one thing about this neighborhood is that it represents a lot of neighborhoods," Eddie says. "It's mixed like a lot of neighborhoods. It's funny. When we first moved in, it was a white neighborhood, and then the Hispanics moved in and now the Mexicans. There's a difference between us, you know, we were born here. These people coming in from Mexico, they're good people. A lot of them want to be Americans." He shrugs. "A lot do. A lot don't."

"Well," she says, "my husband and I are looking for a change and . . . "

"You know when you pray," Eddie interrupts, "God answers."

She blinks and pauses. "Yes," she says. "I feel right now that I just need to move on the path that God has placed me on and we've started to move in . . . "

"We might all be brown, but we're not the same," Eddie says, trampling over the tail end of her sentence.

For days, he has been thinking about what he would say to her if she visited him and now that she is here, in his living room, he is determined to stick to his script. "We're the same in our hearts, but we're not the same. Our backgrounds are different."

"Isn't that true of all races?" she asks, and changes the subject herself. "Can I see your house? Do you mind?"

No, not at all, he says and leads her down the short hallway. "I just want to see the layout," she says. It's the same floor plan as the Legal Permanent Resident's home a few doors down. That house has been vacant since its foreclosure and she and her husband are thinking about buying it, too, as part of their fledgling business/ministry to provide quality, affordable housing. The kitchen and bathroom would have to be gutted, she says, but the rest of the house is not in bad shape and it has a huge garage.

After the tour, she and Eddie walk down the street, so she can show him the work she and her husband put into the duplex. Eddie's impressed. "The house is excellent," he says. "As far as this being a bad neighborhood, it's not."

"I don't think it is," she says.

"The only thing that has ever happened to me was once I left my back door open and someone came in and took my kid's socks," he says, grinning. But, he tells her, between the foreclosures and the rundown property on the block, he is worried about neighborhood property values.

"You know what I would like?" Eddie says. "I would like the city of Denver to treat poor neighborhoods the way they do rich. I would like someone to help us like they do in the suburbs. Look at what you've done here. This house is like new, but the neighborhood . . . "

"That's not the government," she says. "That's a homeowners association. You know, I think there's a misconception about the suburbs. What I hear from you about people parking in front of your houses or trashy yards and loud music, I have that in my neighborhood and I live in the suburbs. I've had to have people move their cars so we could get out of the driveway. What I see there is no different, just a little bigger houses and more white people."

"Well, we pay taxes just like the people in Highlands Ranch," Eddie says.

"Calling the police because a party is too loud, code violations, that's what government is good for, but the rest, it really takes the neighborhood," she says.

"People are afraid," he says.

"I know that," she says, "but if there are more people like you here, and I believe there are . . . "

"Oh, yeah," Eddie says. "There's good people here."

"Then we can make this neighborhood one to be proud of," she says.

At that moment, she is not sure whether she and her husband will move to Border Street. As days pass, it becomes more certain. It's no longer an issue of whether, she says, it's for how long.

Cool, Eddie says, when he hears the news.

griegot@RockyMountainNews.com