My Friend Jean

I’m writing out a few stories of the transformative moments around my journey at NeighborLink as a way to reflect, document, and share how NL has been such an integral part of life for me. I end my time as Executive Director on January 29th, 2021 after 13 years.

I met Jean for the first time in the fall of 2006 after I had been doing a number of NL projects and increasing my courage to take on more complex and bigger projects. Based on her post on the NL website, she needed to have her 1.5-story house painted, which I thought sounded like the perfect project for me to take on next. I had some experience painting, my community of friends who were up for serving was growing, and I had been making some money in advertising that I knew I could cover the cost of the paint supplies to do it.

I showed up to meet Jean and scope the project after calling and talking to her on the phone. Within 15 minutes of standing on her front step, I was overwhelmed by her story and the seemingly impossible list of code violations (which I had no idea what those were and how they worked at the time) that she had to have solved within weeks from that day. I remember standing there thinking that all these repairs she needs to be done are beyond me and what I can contribute financially and that it would be ok if I walked away because the project was too big. But, I felt convicted to stay the course, do what I knew I could do, and pray for a solution to the other needs.

Jean had some health issues of her own and her son at the time had a liver transplant 2 years before I met them and was still suffering with the side effects of that major surgery. They both worked up to the point of the surgery, lived in the house and maintained it for years, and lived in a perfectly good neighborhood where life seemed to be manageable for everyone around them.

Michelle and I (we weren't even dating at that time, which will be the story for tomorrow) began forming a plan, getting materials, and convincing our community to show up and help. We set a date, had 20 people show up, and got 70% of the house painted in one day. Like any volunteer project like this, they start with lots of people and energy, but around noon people start going about the rest of their Saturday. As the afternoon winds down, you're left with just a few remaining people and an incomplete project wondering what's next.

NL projects took on a whole new meaning at this point. I had begun befriending Jean and her son, Todd because planning a project like this takes time and coordination. It also required me to prioritize nights after work and additional weekends of going back to finish the painting and fulfill the commitment I made. It also provided me the opportunity to wrestle with the tension of all those CODE Violation projects yet to be addressed and to come up with a solution, which was to fundraise $600 to cover the material costs since a contractor had been willing to help her fix the issues for just the cost of materials.

I finished the house painting project at the end of the Fall and Michelle started dating. We decided that taking a food basket on Thanksgiving would be nice, and it was. Then Christmas, we showed up and learned that Todd has a complication and passed away just a couple of days prior. Heartbroken, we didn't really know what to do other than to keep checking in on Jean, which we did for the following year along with mowing grass and other chores.

We spent years serving and helping Jean and learned far more lessons than I can write in this post. It wasn't always easy and we fell out of touch as we started having kids, got busier with life, Jean's family and neighbors started helping out a lot (which was great), and Jean's health declined. I lost touch with Jean and failed to follow up with her for well over a year when Michelle would ask me if I had. Jean passed away a year or so ago and I missed my opportunity to keep that relationship going.

My relationship with Jean really illustrated what neighbor-to-neighbor expressions of God's love really meant, because I got as much out of the relationship as I hope I offered.