Going out with the Neighbors

When I was a child I remember dressing up for Halloween twice.  Once as some sort of Indian princess and once as a present.  You read that right.  Every little girls' dream: dressing up as a box.

At some point I think our family decided that Halloween was evil and it was better to rent a movie and watching it in a dark house while trying to ignore the sound of knocking and giggles that marched up and down the street past our house.

As a mother, I don't know why Halloween started to be a big deal for me but it has become something we start talking about in August.  It's all about the costume and never about where we are going to go and what we are going to do.  This year, after moving to a new neighborhood, I decided I'd really like to get to know all of our neighbors - so we invited almost everyone on our block over and our growth group friends from church helped us host games, snacks and chatting while the kids mowed their way through 6 lbs of candy.  I almost sent each child home with a barf bag.

I mean, what other day in the year does everyone expect to come face to face with the rest of the neighborhood?  Sure it's scary to invite a ton of strangers into your home, but now when I go around inviting everyone to church for Thanksgiving it won't be so scary and they'll know to expect me to do the rounds again around Christmas.

I'm tired of living my Christian life in a box and I certainly don't ever want to raise these guys in one either.