How Can I Get to Know My Neighbors if I Don’t Have Young Kids Anymore?

You see kids riding bikes, scooters, skateboards, hover carts back and forth, back and forth, and you feel a twinge of longing. If only my kids were still that age, it would be a whole lot easier to get to know my neighbors.

You wonder if you’ve missed it—this window where the commonality of parenting brings families together. Your kids are grown and moved away, or a decade older than the elementary school and younger crowd. You feel like you can’t relate.

You’re in and out, chauffeuring teens all across town. Or you’re home all the time but rarely have a reason to hang out outside.

And yet, there’s this tug on your heart to get to know your neighbors.

You long for community right here in your neighborhood.

Deep, inner-circle friendships with a few that live in close proximity.

A true village that knows needs and fills needs—people that actually need each other.

Your church is wonderful, but you mostly see those people on Sundays. You feel somewhat more known by your community group, but still, group gathering feels like another once-a-week event. You’d call these folks in a dire emergency, but not for the little stuff like when you need someone to pop over to let your dog out or lend you a tool you’d only use once.

Your heart is not content with shallow conversation. But you’ve lived here for years, and most of the conversations you’ve had in your neighborhood have felt like small talk.

If that’s you today, I want you to know that God knows the desires of your heart. He feels the ache right there with you.

Created for community

That pull to connect, to know and be known—He knows. He knows it well because it was He who planted it deep within you.

He authored community. He embodies deep relationship. He is three in one—Father, Son, and Spirit. Though a triune God is hard to wrap our minds around, we know that He is relational. It’s inseparable from who He is.

It surfaces, too, in His creation, runs through our DNA. “Relational. It’s who we are, because it’s who God is,” as Jennie Allen explains it.

But what do you do with this desire to lean into relationships when it feels everything stands in the way?

If this is your question, it’s a fair one. It’s easy to see how it’s easier for everyone else, to see all the things in the way than how there is a way through.

And yet, I’m here to tell you that age and life stage differences be woven together into a beautiful tapestry. Ann Voskamp once said, “The thread of your life becomes a tapestry of abundant colors only if it ties itself to other lives.”

Truth is that we don’t have to be just like our neighbors to be so much better with them. In fact, our together is so much stronger and more resilient if the strengths and unique insights of multiple generations are entwined together.

We can build tapestries in our neighborhoods, because a whole lot of isolated threads are no longer isolated when they are woven together.

The differences can unify rather than divide. The apparent gap means that you can fill in the gap for others and they for you.

You need people, and they need you.

You need people not exactly like you, and people not exactly like you need you too.

My life leaves traces of this evidence in the many conversations my husband and I have had with neighbors a couple decades wiser than us. The lawn my husband turned around, thanks in part to tips learned from a neighbor. The table, handcrafted by a neighbor, I clear of my laptop and stacks of books when we gather for a community meal.

I need the ones that welcome my kids as if they were grandkids. The ones you can ask for a second opinion. The ones who begin to feel like family.

And chances are, if you need a community that feels like a village, others around you feel the same way.

Get to know my neighbors

Somedays you need to be reminded of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous line: “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” Sometimes you need to let go of trying to find similarities before engaging with your neighbors, and instead focus on what you can do to be a friend. Somedays you just need to find out for yourself what would change if you chose to lean in, reach out, open up?

And sometimes you discover it can really be as simple as being genuinely interested in those around you.

Inspirational speaker, life-coach, and author Rasheed Orgunlaru shares great insight that can be applied to how we approach our neighbors. He charges, “Be genuinely interested in everyone you meet and everyone you meet will be genuinely interested in you.” The people we connect with best aren’t always those who share mostly similarities with us—it’s those who we can tell are genuinely interested in getting to know us, the real us. We may not feel we have much to offer, but we at least have this—genuine interest in others.

What would it look like to step out beyond the doorframe of your front door, out beyond your biases and expectations, and show genuine interest in getting to know a neighbor who is not in the same season of life as you?

Could you look someone in the eye, offer a smile, let them feel seen, cared about, even in a small way?

The key to not overthinking is to just start. Accept that you’ll flounder and at times you’ll feel awkward. Accept that sometimes you’ll reach out and it won’t pan out. Accept there will be learning curves and life lessons worth learning.

If you’re the super practical type, here are some specific ideas to try that can help bridge generational gaps:

• Invite a neighbor (not your age) to walk with you

• Share something that comes naturally to you

• Host a book club or regular game night

• Coordinate holiday-themed events to bring neighbors together

• Bring welcome baskets to new neighbors when they move in

• Offer to let a neighbor’s dog out when they are out of town

A prayer to take with you today

May we be those willing to see those right next to us. May we be those who unify rather than divide. May we be we those who trust God’s with us even when we don’t feel very brave. May we be the friend we want to find.

Just a friend over here in your corner,

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Wish you knew your IRL (in-real-life) neighbors?