Do You Love Your Neighbors?

My family moved to the middle of nowhere in the woods to get away from people, so when we found out that we would be getting neighbors, we were a little apprehensive. Would we like them? Would they like us? Would we still have the privacy that we craved?

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As it turns out, we had nothing to worry about because, and this really is the best way I can think to describe it, God plucked out two of the most incredible people and plopped them down right next to us to be our neighbors.

The instant level of and companionship we felt with our neighbors is something special. While we've only known each other for about six months, we've already grown comfortable with each other.

Our lady neighbor is basically a younger version of me and I've told her a few (dozen) times how thankful I am for her friendship and that our relationship could have gone one of two ways - it could have been amazing or it could have crashed and burned because she and I are so, so much alike. I am thankful our friendship has gone the amazing way because I feel like I don't just have new neighbors, but I have new friends and that really is the best of both worlds...to live next to people I know will have my back and best interests at heart.

Although we've gotten pretty lucky and made some great friendships with neighbors we've also had some rotten bananas in the bunch and we're certainly not alone there.

Do you know the names of your neighbors? Do you know anything about their lives? If you said no, you're not alone. Did you know that 25 percent of people say they don't even know the names of their neighbors? Even more, the same number of people, 25 percent say that they've gotten into a fight with one of their neighbors and that the number one thing that's led to a fight has been noise.

There's never a guarantee that you'll end up with good neighbors, but I'd encourage you to at least try to be friendly. You never know when you'll need them or they'll need you and there's something comforting about knowing that the people who live by us have our backs and even more incredible when they become friends.

Also, if you've got great neighbors but haven't let them know how much you appreciate them in a while, this would be a great time to let them know, especially with everything going on in the world these days. We need each other now more than ever.