Moving from the suburbs to urban Dallas opened a new kind of hope in me – The Dallas Morning News

Years ago, in my mid-20s, I dated a guy who put me through an unusual test to find out if we were compatible.

He arranged for me to meet his college roommate while I was on a business trip in Chicago. The friend and his wife graciously invited me to stay in their home in the city.

When I hailed a cab after work to meet the couple, I handed the driver the address my boyfriend had given me. The cabbie looked at me in disbelief.

Lady, you sure you want to go into that neighborhood? he said. I dont even go there.

Of course, I said, confident that Mark wouldnt send me anywhere dangerous.

Within minutes of driving into the heart of the West Side of Chicago, I realized I was wrong. The college friend lived in a neighborhood terrorized by drug dealers and gangs.

Before I went to bed that night, I learned my hosts had been broken into 10 times since moving there. The wife didnt walk out the front door with her toddler without looking first to be sure she wouldnt interrupt a drug deal.

What Mark hadnt told me was that his best friend was a pastor who believed that the best way to follow Jesus greatest command to love your neighbor as yourself was to become a neighbor to the kinds of people Jesus cared for most: the poor and disenfranchised.

Mark wanted to find out whether my faith was sturdy enough to transcend a lifestyle of white privilege. Like this pastor, one of the ways Mark practiced his faith was by helping people whose greatest fault was to be born in the wrong ZIP code. He worked for the police department, counseling first offenders.

I was furious that my boyfriend had plunged me unprepared into an urban war zone, but the incident provoked deep talks late into the night about what it meant to love your neighbor as yourself, and who really was our neighbor?

More than 30 years later, I still wrestle with that question. It wasnt as difficult when I lived in the suburbs. My neighbors looked and lived pretty much like me. When I wanted to help those less fortunate, I wrote checks to nonprofits and charities. I didnt fear for my safety, like my friends in Chicago. The worst crime in my neighborhood happened the night teenagers smashed raw eggs on the windows of our parked car.

But once my kids were grown, and I found myself single again in midlife, I left the suburbs for a more exciting life in the city.

Within a few months of settling into my new house just east of downtown, I realized that only blocks away, my neighbors didnt live or look like I did.

What I thought were fireworks at night turned out to be gunshots. When a neighbor on my street was held up at gunpoint for his cellphone, I was afraid to walk my dog, and when a teenage girl returning a movie rental to my local Walgreens got snatched in the parking lot, stuffed in a car and murdered, I felt mild panic any time I refilled a prescription.

Armed security officers patrol the streets near my house, and one day I stopped an officer to ask why it was so dangerous here. He chuckled, looking at me as though I had just stepped off a horse-drawn buggy from Amish country.

Welcome to urban life in Dallas, maam, he said.

The rate of violent crime in Dallas has spiked since I moved inside the city limits. Gov. Greg Abbott has sent in trooper reinforcements. We now have the distinction of having the highest homicide rate of any city in Texas.

I thought of the pastor and his wife in Chicago, and I became determined not to let my fear trump my faith. Instead, I began looking for safe ways to reach out to my new neighbors. I volunteered to work with underprivileged children in elementary schools close to my house. When a spot opened on my neighborhood association board, I became the one-woman welcome committee.

One day on a walk, I saw an African American man and his young family in a front yard near my house. It seemed brave for a black family to move into a predominantly white enclave.

Hi! I said, one hand outstretched, the other holding the leash to my wiggly dog.

My name is Peggy, and Im the neighborhood association representative who welcomes newcomers. Do you and your family live here?

Yes, we do, said the man, who looked to be in his late 30s. A woman chased a giggling toddler across their lawn.

I live just a couple of blocks over, I said, and if theres anything I can ever do to help your family feel welcome, I hope youll let me know.

I was feeling pretty good about my gesture until my neighbor reached a hand into his blue jeans pocket, pulled out a business card and handed it to me with a smile.

Thank you for the kindness, he said. And please let me know if theres anything I can do to help you.

I glanced down at his card as I walked my dog back toward home. The glitter in the upper left-hand corner was the gold state seal of Texas. Eric Johnson, the name said. My Texas state representative, and now my new mayor.

One of my millennial daughters suggested it was racist for me to assume a black man in the neighborhood needed my help. I told her I was just doing my best to live out the golden rule. Thats getting harder as the citys crime rate climbs and the number of police officers on the street declines.

Im ashamed to admit Ive grown wary of people who dont seem like me, no matter what their color. I was pumping gas at my neighborhood 7-Eleven this week, my back turned, when a woman approached me, asking aggressively for money. Startled, I jumped back toward my drivers door. The woman angrily snapped, Whats wrong with you! Dont you even know how to f-ing talk to people?

Not anymore, I thought. I might show compassion to a homeless woman by handing her an umbrella in the rain through my cracked car window, but face-to-face with an unknown neighbor, I shrink back.

Ive been told you have to get used to crime in big cities, but I needed a personal border wall. I installed security lights and an alarm. Friends with big dogs recommended I get a German shepherd. Then, in a move that would make my Chicago friends shudder, I bought a shotgun powerful enough blow a hole through three walls at once.

How could a Christian who advocates for gun control and is trying to love her neighbor also be willing to kill him? Had a gun become the antidote for my growing sense of powerlessness?

When I told a police officer acquaintance that Id bought a gun and practiced firing it at a local range, he congratulated me and asked if I understood the rules of engagement before shooting an intruder. I wasnt sure, so I invited him over. He walked me through what happens when someone breaks into your house, usually during the day.

Whatever you do, dont shoot him as he comes through the front door, the officer warned. If he falls on your front porch, you could be charged with murder.

And dont slink through your house cocking the gun at the first noise, pointing it around every corner. Hell jump you, grab the gun, and turn it on you.

So, what if someone breaks in? I asked. Do I just wait till Im cornered?

No, lock yourself in your bedroom, crouch next to the bed with the shotgun propped on the mattress and point it at the door. Cock the gun, shout a warning, and if the intruder kicks in the door, shoot to kill.

Somehow, I couldnt picture Jesus, whom I professed to love and follow, killing the people who wanted to harm him, and who in the end did. I argue to myself, But he came to save the world, and for reasons I dont fully understand, he went to a cross to do it. Im just trying to save myself.

When I taught third and fourth grade Sunday School, one of the favorite Bible stories was one about a lawyer who asked Jesus, Who is my neighbor? Jesus answers with a parable about a Jewish traveler who was robbed and left for dead on the side of the road. Pious religious leaders walk past him. A Samaritan, then an enemy of the Jews, stopped to help him. He takes him to a nearby inn, leaving money for the innkeeper to care for him.

One night I found myself smack in the middle of a scene from that story.

In June, when that violent summer thunderstorm swept through the city and knocked out power for miles, the lights went out in my neighborhood. The heat was thick, indoors and out. As the sun went down, I lit a few candles and stepped outside to survey the damage. Everywhere I looked, trees were downed and scattered as though the skies had emptied a box of Lincoln Logs. One large limb had fallen on my house. The streets were empty; the silence eerie.

Then I saw was a woman I didnt recognize, about a block away, walking down the middle of the street toward the railroad tracks. She was holding the hand of a young child. They looked lost.

Hello, I called out. Are you OK?

She turned in my direction. No, she said. I need help we dont have electricity or food and all the stores and restaurants are closed. Im just trying to find someplace that has power.

I had only a minute to decide which role in the story Id play: the religious leader who ignored the wounded traveler or the good Samaritan who took a risk with a vulnerable stranger. This could be a scam, I thought. Looters might take advantage of the power outage, and she could have accomplices waiting in the wings.

I invited the woman and her child into my darkened home and fed them by candlelight.

It was no Norman Rockwell painting. The woman and I were wary of each other. She said little and avoided eye contact. It wasnt obvious the child was hers; there seemed to be no attachment between them.

It would have been a stretch for me to offer them a bed for the night, but I didnt have the heart to put them back on the street. My husband of a little more than a year was out looking for a grocery store with power, while my 2-year-old granddaughter slept in our back bedroom.

When he returned, we agreed hed drive the woman and child to a hotel and cover the cost of their stay until power was restored. He inadvertently took my cellphone, because we were charging it in his running car.

For two hours, in a darkened house with a sleeping toddler, I had no link to the outside world. Why was he taking so long? My mind replayed every scary movie Id seen. What if she had a gun in her purse? What if shed killed my husband and stolen his car? About that time a dark sedan with dimmed lights pulled up in front of the house. These were her accomplices, coming for me, I was sure. How would I protect my granddaughter?

I reached for my weapon, hands trembling as I loaded the shells and did exactly what the officer said not to do. I prowled through the house, shotgun propped on my tensed shoulder, waiting for my enemy to break in.

I kept my gun near until the car drove away and my husband eventually returned home. He was late because there was no room at the inn. Thousands of Dallas residents had left their powerless homes for hotels, and it took a long time to find one.

The next morning, we received a text message from the woman. She said wed never know how much our kindness meant to her and that she felt as though God was looking out for them.

It still bothers me that I would suspect a stranger in trouble might be my enemy. Living in the city has tested my faith in ways I couldnt have anticipated. But one thing Ive discovered: Ill hold on to hope that no matter how dangerous my surroundings or how great the risks, whatever other weapons I may have in my arsenal, I will reach first for love.

Peggy Wehmeyer is a writer in Dallas and a former religion reporter for ABC News. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

Read this article:
Moving from the suburbs to urban Dallas opened a new kind of hope in me - The Dallas Morning News

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero