I've always wanted an egg person. I know plenty of women whose best friends live next door, or across the street, or seven houses down. My husband and I have lived in our neighborhood in for almost nine years and I barely know any of our neighbors. It isn't that I haven't made an effort. I smile, I wave, I greet. I even deliver holiday goodies. Our neighborhood, however, is full of empty nesters and couples who work full time. The stay-at-home mom of young children demographic isn't thriving and I happen to belong in that demographic. So, I don't have an egg person.

What's an egg person, you ask. An egg person is the same as a cup of sugar person. Or a stick of butter person. An egg person is the neighbor you can go to in a pinch. When you lock yourself out of the house, you can knock on your egg person's door and they will invite you to come in and hang out until your husband gets home with a key. When you cut your hand trimming bushes, your egg person will watch your kids while you head to the emergency room. When you are out of town, your egg person waters your flowers and picks up your mail. Most importantly, when you are in the middle of an emotional crisis and desperately need brownies to solve your problems, but you only have one egg and the brownie mix calls for two, your egg person saves the day. You can walk to her house, knock on her door, and she will gladly give you an egg out of her own fridge without even an inquiry as to why you need it.

An egg person is essential to good living, in my opinion, and I don't have one. When I'm in the middle of an emotional crisis and brownies are the only thing that will help, I have to drive to the grocery store for a missing egg. I find this very depressing.

The neighbors who used to live across the street from us were potential egg people, but they moved to the lake years ago and have rented out their house ever since. The first family that rented was from Sweden. They were quite nice and even a bit fascinating, but they weren't egg people. The second family to rent came from Japan, here in the United States for three years. The husband speaks little English. The wife speaks less. We first met her just days after they moved in when, believe it or not, she locked herself out of the house. My husband found an open window, she crawled through, we were the great American heroes, and our relationship with the new neighbors began.

Throughout the next few months, our neighbors came to visit on a regular basis, usually showing up when we were outside playing. Along with a baby, they have a daughter who is the same age as our little girl and, surprisingly, language barriers don't seem to be an issue for six year olds. So the girls played together while I talked to my new Japanese neighbor, who nodded her head but rarely attempted to respond to my incessant efforts at conversation.

After about a month of hanging out together in our yard, the neighbors knocked on our door one afternoon. I had bread baking in the oven so I invited the neighbors inside to play. The mother was very hesitant to come in, but once she did, she uttered the same phrase over and over. "So happy. First time." Trust me, if I had known inviting my neighbor in my home would have made her face light up so brightly, I would have done it weeks earlier.

The relationship progressed, although 'progressed' probably isn't the right word because there is very little progression in a relationship between two people who are unable to communicate with one another. I'm ashamed to admit it, but there were times when I wished for different neighbors. I wondered why I couldn't have a friend across the street who would be able to sit on the porch with me and talk about husbands and children and botox and the Bible. Instead, our doorbell would ring and I would feel a twing of bitterness in my heart about having to entertain someone who couldn't understand a word I said. And trust me, I was saying a LOT of words. On one occasion, I launched into a ten-minute tirade about our backyard and how it used to be filled with "all trees" until we had landscapers remove the trees to put in grass. At the end of my lengthy monologue, my neighbor held out her arms in the manner of someone shooting a bow and arrow and said, "Ah, archery." I guess "all trees" sounds a lot like "archery" to someone trying to learn one of the most difficult languages in the world.

Despite my occasional frustrations, our neighbors became regulars in our lives. I made them bread for Thanksgiving. They brought our children gifts from their trip to Disney World. I made them candy for Christmas, wrapped in a brand new kitchen towel. They brought the kitchen towel back, not realizing it was meant to be part of the gift. In January, we received a written invitation to our neighbor's house for lunch. We politely accepted, set a date, and spent days preparing our children for the possibility of what might appear on their plates in the home of a Japanese family. On the day of the lunch, I had many concerns. How do we share a meal with people when we can barely speak to one another? What if the food is unrecognizable? How long should we stay? How can we show our gratitude without words?

When we arrived at our neighbor's home, the wife was in the kitchen making sushi. It looked just like the sushi my husband and I often enjoy at local restaurants. A good sign. I relaxed. We sat down to lunch. There were no forks, only chopsticks. I got nervous. The food was set on the table and my nerves grew. My children would never be able to fake interest in raw tuna and seaweed salad.

Lunch ensued and the kids, as they often do, surprised me. Our son found pieces of rice and avocado in the sushi. Our daughter discovered edamame in the seaweed salad. My husband tried to make small talk with the husband while I kept telling his wife how amazing the meal was. Then, out of nowhere, God appeared. I don't think the neighbors saw Him because they're Buddhists, but I did. Well, I didn't actually see Him. I heard Him. God spoke in the form of a Japanese man who left his family, his friends, his culture, his home to spend three years working in a foreign land on the other side of the globe. He showed up in suburban Atlanta over a table full of tea and miso soup and He said one simple sentence, in broken English.

"We so nervous, we thought we just order pizza."

The tredpidation I had been feeling for days dissolved into disgust. I had spent hours worrying about visiting someone's home who couldn't speak my language. What I'd failed to do, however, was consider how it must feel to move to a country you've never seen, to a city you can't navigate, to a neighborhood full of strangers.

We had been studying the book of James in my weekly Bible study. How appropriate. For weeks I had been discussing God's ideas of loving neighbors as yourself, and loving one another, and loving as Jesus loves, and loving deeply and loving, loving, loving. And all that time, God was trying to tell me something important. He had been speaking specifically to me.

It's been close to two years since we met our neighbors from Japan and recently, we had a breakthrough. The doorbell rang and my daughter called out, "The neighbors are here!" I opened the door and over the course of the next few minutes my neighbor attempted to tell me something from the steps of our front porch. I kept trying to invite her in but she wasn't interested. Finally, I gathered that she had something she needed to do at home and she wanted her girls to stay at our house while she did it. Now, you must understand, this family had been in my house at least once a week for well over a year and the mother had never been more than a few steps away from her children. If her six year old wanted to go upstairs with my daughter, she scooped up the baby and followed right behind. Of course I brought up the rear, probably clambering on about trees or archery or something else that seemed relevant in my life that day. Yet now, despite our inability to understand one another fully, my neighbor was leaving her most prized possessions in my care. She left her daughters in my home while she returned to her house across the street. I was shocked, proud, and, honestly, honored. She couldn't speak to me, but it didn't matter because . . . she trusted me.

Once again I heard God's voice, only this time, He was speaking in perfect English. He reminded me that He puts people in our lives for specific reasons. He reminded me that He is the creator of all things and the orchestrator of every experience and encounter. He reminded me that my words will always have the potential to be significant but it is my actions that show who I am - who HE is. God reminded me that the best way for me to share His love is to give it away.

I don't think I can just walk across the street, knock on my neighbor's door, and ask for an egg the next time my life requires brownies. I think I'll probably have to go inside my neighbors' house, open their refrigerator, and point out exactly what I need. But that's okay. Because in the most unlikely of circumstances, God showed up when I needed Him most. He spoke directly to me with the simplest of messages. Love. And finally, I think I have an egg person.