How to Love Your Neighbor

I thought that How to Love Your Neighbor Without Being Weird by Amy Lively meant the broader sense of "neighbor", as in everyone. But she really means neighbor as in location-wise, neighborhood, right in your own backyard type thing.

 "A Woman's Guide to Sharing Her Faith While Making New Friends
Many women are comfortable hanging out at church but also long for a spiritual connection to their community. Amy Lively shows you how to love those strangers next door even when you're fearful."

Which is good. Charity starts at home, right? But I didn't get out of this book what I had hoped. I do think it would be lovely to have deep friendships within the neighborhood. I think it would be amazing to have a "neighborhood cafe" within my home where the neighborhood women can connect. 

It sounds all so out of reach for a mother busy at home with children. If I invited an elderly neighbor over my children would be pestering us with questions. If I invited another mother and children here everyone would be running amok and we would be supervising them, not having a deep and meaningful conversation. This book seems to speak to the older woman, or at least one who has an empty nest or hours child-free throughout the day.

Not only that, but what if you don't live in a neighborhood safe enough to knock on doors and invite strangers into your home? This book seems to be excluding several sectors of the public.

That's not to say that it's not a good book. The ideas and the way Lively made her Neighborhood Cafe work sound ideal. I just had to stop about half way through as I didn't feel it was the book for me in my season of life.

This book was given to me by Bethany House Publishing in exchange for my honest review.