Knock Knock Knocking On The Door

Last week, it was a friend of mine’s hen day. I wanted to spend as much of the celebrations with her as I could. So in order to do this, it took some epic planning on my part. If I was going to be out all day and all evening, then the little people that live with me, needed to be covered all day and all evening too.

I wanted them to have a fun day, and for it not to be too much of a task for the people watching them, so that basically meant splitting them all up. It took me an hour and twenty to drop them all off, to the wonderful willing babysitters (and their unsuspecting husbands/partners).

I got back home and beheld the first joy of the day; the house was quiet. Ahh…I breathed in the silence. The house was also a mess. The husband had left early for the stag equivalent, and I’d had to get five of them ready and out the door by 9am, which isn’t my greatest strength on a weekday, let alone on a Saturday! So a quick tidy up and then I dressed up as Minnie Mouse. I don’t normally dress up when the kids are out, but we were requested to come as Disney characters. 

After a top-quality game of Volleyball with two Pocahontases, (or is it Pocahonti if there is more than one?), and various other characters, I enjoyed a lovely afternoon; eating cake, playing games, guessing who twenty pairs of knickers were from, and I won a Whoopee cushion, a fishing net and an innuendo apron! 

Two babysitters offered a sleepover. Or at least, gave in to the request of one. So I only had three kids to pick up and settle into bed, before the last babysitter for the evening turned up. Quick release of the Minnie Mouse bunches meant I had wavy-ish hair, so a blast of hairspray, a quick outfit change, and some mascara, meant I was ready to leave again.

A lovely evening was had with the hen and the girls. I had a cocktail called Barbara, and she was a beaut! The husband text me to say there was money on the kitchen table to pay for the taxi home at midnight. And I text him back to say I'd like him to bring the money out to me, because I knew I didn't have keys.

As I arrived home in the taxi, I rang the husband. No answer. So I went and knocked on the front door. No answer. So I rang his phone again. No answer. So I knocked on the kitchen window. No answer. I smiled one of those false teethy smiles at the taxi driver. He didn’t really smile back. I knocked on the kitchen window again. No answer. I rang his phone again. No answer. I went back to the taxi driver and said how sorry I was and that I did have a husband somewhere in the house, in a ‘trying to be jokey not stressed’ tone. I did the routine again; front door, phone, window, phone. I went back to the taxi driver and asked him nicely if he could possibly, maybe, perhaps stop clocking up the money and informed him I would try round the back of the house, insisting again that there was a husband in there somewhere.

In the dark, trying to get into our back garden, I couldn’t decide whether the husband was indeed dead or work out just how to kill him. I knocked on our back door. No answer. I knocked on the lounge window. No answer. I rang his phone. No answer. I looked up and saw our bedroom window. And knew it was the only way...  I hoisted up my long dress, tested how slippery my flip flops were, and started to climb the shed up to our bedroom window. I got to the top of the shed slope, held on to the wall and my dress somehow, and knocked on the bedroom window, as loudly as I could - at midnight, after my relaxed cocktail evening, in my dress!

Eventually a man who looked like he had no idea whatsoever why someone would be knocking on his bedroom window, opened it in a startled, sleep deprived way, to a manic woman shouting something about a taxi driver and hyperventilating the words, “ANSWER YOUR PHONE. ANSWER YOUR PHONE”.

Well which Bible verse shall I link with this little gem? 

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you"?

How about "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come and eat with that person, and they with me"?

No, I think I'm going for the parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18. She wanted justice against her enemy. In other words she was pleading "Help me, Help me" until she got the help she was after. The encouragement here is of course to pray, and to keep on praying. I needed the husband to open the door, (or the window as it turned out), and I had to keep knocking until he heard me. 

Now God hears us the first time we pray, but He does ask us to persist in prayer, to be faithful in prayer, to climb a shed in prayer sometimes. The end goal for me was to pay the taxi driver and get into my house. If I had only knocked once and then given up, I wouldn't have been able to do these things, and I really really needed to. 

What are the things that I really really need to see God answer? And to what lengths am I willing to keep knocking for them? And what am I learning while I have to wait?