It’s 4pm on a weekday. The children have just woken up from their naps. They are a whirlwind of energetic chaos, as they tear through out your home that was perfectly cleaned just seconds before they woke up.
Your mind is racing with questions of: What’s for dinner?
Is hubs working late tonight?
How soon can I put the kids to bed again?
Then like a shot gun set off in a cave, there is the sound of the doorbell. Your heart races as you go to the front door with the kids close behind you like guard dogs. Your hand reaches the door knob and slowly opens to… a marketer!!!
God help that poor soul that built up the courage to ring your door. Because we all know he just might get a volcanic explosion of all your previously pent up frustrations from that day.
Now if I may propose a question: What is the direct influence of a stay-at-home mom on the outside world? Other than keeping her kids from escaping to the outside world without a warden. Of course I’m only slightly joking.
But my mom friends and I have often discussed our desire to impact the outside world while stuck most of the time inside our homes. We attempt to do so through social media and blogging; but what about that moment that someone rings our door bell?
Something you may or may not know about me is that I used to knock on doors. I worked for a charity organization that knocked on doors to get sponsors for children in developing nations. The reason I took the job was because I had previously traveled to developing nations doing humanitarian work. I knew for a fact that child sponsorships were a great need to these nations and it did a world of good.
After my experience of knocking on doors I gained a great patience and love for Jehovah’s Witnesses, Telemarketers, Kids selling cookies… you name it!
When someone knocks on your door to offer you a service or to inform you of their God’s love… they’re well intentioned and they don’t desire to ruin your day. Also may I offer, you don’t know the baggage that person is carrying when they’ve come to your door.
I was only twenty-one years old when I knocked on doors for charity. I don’t know if you’ve seen my pictures but I’m not a very big girl. And yet I’m bigger now than I was six years ago. The right sized gust of wind back then could probably blow me over. And yet I had men twice my size screaming in my face as they opened their doors… women too. Yelling at me like it was the devil himself that rang their door bell.
I remember gaining the strength to go to the next door after that, while holding back tears. And if I was lucky, I was let in by the sweetest people. Often times old ladies. Some times families that were about to sit down for dinner and they’d suddenly invite me to join them.
Many of the people I worked with that knocked on doors as well, were rarely seen without a cigarette in their mouths or one close at hand. They would literally pull their cigarette out to give a greeting at the door and the moment the door was slammed in their faces, that cigarette would go right back in their mouth. At the end of every work week they were quick to meet at a bar to get completely wasted and high.
I felt sorry for them. I could tell they were completely worn down by their jobs. I didn’t stay at that job for very long because I was working there with the intention of moving to Australia right away for school. But the hurt of having people scream in my face and slamming their doors in my face; it’s a hurt that is hard to get rid of. It felt just as bad as being bullied everyday at school.
However there were those that built me back up after I had been torn down. There were those who said in a loving manner, “I’m not interested but please come inside and get warm”. “No thank you, but do you need to use the bathroom or have a drink of water”.
Many of these people became my friends. There are some I’ve stayed in contact with because we got the chance to connect and find common interests. They reminded me that there’s nothing wrong with me for people to be mean, it’s just the job.
That being said, Stay-At-Home moms, we have a job to do. Can we be the ones to make door-to-door people feel human and not like poo? Because honestly being mean to someone who comes to your door, it’s still bullying. And you know that endless spiel they give you that makes you want to slam the doors in their faces? It hurts them to say it probably more than it’s hurting you to hear it. I remember hearing those words on replay in my sleep.
So please impact the outside world by being kind and showing love at your front door.
