Wide Open Spaces

When I was a teen, we had an eight-track recording of Christine Wyrtzen, daughter of Jack Wyrtzen of Word of Life fame. My sister and I played that old tape countless times. One of her songs, Back Home, often came to mind years later as I traipsed the inner city streets of Chicago during my college years. I was pleased to find she still sings but couldn't locate this song online. Sing it with me if you remember it:

Back home, where the air is cleaner,
Back home, where the grass is greener,
There's nowhere else on earth
That I'd rather be.

Oh I don't mind the city
A week at a time,
But apartment life for me is simply way out of line.
I feel the open spaces calling out to me,
Back home where I live.

Having grown up in the country on seventeen acres that bordered my gram's nearly ten acres, with not another neighbor's house in sight unless we walked to the top of our field, I have to say I'm a lover of Wide Open Spaces. When my husband and I were looking for a home to buy, all I saw was brick wall after brick wall . . . eight - ten - twenty feet from the next one. The house would be cute until I walked into the bedroom, looked out the window and saw the neighbor's house.

Then we toured an unimposing little two-bedroom ranch around the corner from my inlaws. I only agreed to look as a courtesy. (Come on, how many of you live next to your inlaws!) The kitchen was a shoebox; the diningroom was crowded with her oversized china cabinet. The owner made it a point to note the paneled bedrooms - she was clearly proud of that "real wood paneling." I was not impressed. Then we moved to the backyard and I gulped. For, as long as I looked straight ahead, I could see nothing but yard and trees! Talk about Wide Open Spaces. Suddenly the place didn't look quite so bad. And so the little house with the big backyard became ours.

Fast-forward nine years. We're still here. And I just got done reading Lisa Samson's newest offering, Quaker Summer, which I recently reviewed. And I'm wondering . . . are those Wide Open Spaces really all they're cracked up to be? We just put up a privacy fence on one side. The other is flanked by overgrown forsythia planted many years ago by our other neighbor. We say our front door is always open but we rarely talk to our neighbors. And I'm just wondering . . . do those Wide Open Spaces represent a distance I strive to keep from others who may need me to reach out to them? I can't help but thinking the mass exodus from city to suburbs to country has caused Christians to move away from people who need us most.

I still love that song, "Back Home." And I'm still a lover of my Wide Open Spaces. But I don't want to remain unaware of those who never get to enjoy them. Who wake up in the morning on the street with a hangover, or huddled in a corner, fearing yet another beating. Who have nowhere to escape but drugs or alcohol. Children who have to beg for yet another meal. Elderly people, long forgotten, with no one to listen to their musings. I love the peace and quiet I enjoy in my Wide Open Spaces. But I'm not sure Jesus wants to be confined to them.