An unwelcome visitor

Early this morning, about 5:00, while all of us were still sound asleep in our beds, the doorbell rang. I've experienced a few knocks at the door in the middle of the night, and there is nothing that will get me out of bed quicker. You just can't hit "snooze" on the doorbell.

Since it was an odd hour to come knocking, I decided to shout through the door instead of just swinging it wide open to see who might be there. When I asked, "who is it?", the voice from outside responded with obscenities. The more I asked him who he was, what he wanted, who he was looking for, the more he piled on the insults and obscenities. And, he kept banging on the door, trying to push it open, and ringing the doorbell.

It was obvious he was drunk, but the scary part was not knowing if he was just a mildly belligerent but basically harmless drunk, or an armed and dangerous, violent drunk. So, I kept the door shut.

One of the first things I told the guy was that if he didn't go away, I would call the police. He said he didn't care and that he was staying. So, I hollered at Robyn to call the police. While we waited for the cops to arrive, which seemed to take a while (Robyn called again to let them know the situation was pretty urgent), I tried to tell our visitor that he was at the wrong house. It was useless; he was convinced he was at the right house and wasn't going anywhere until I let him in. I'm thankful the kids couldn't hear the man, because although their vocabularies would have expanded significantly, it would have been with words not suitable for a pastor's children!

Robyn and the children stayed upstairs. Maggie and Moriah actually slept through the whole episode, but Meredith and Sander were pretty scared. Meredith prayed that the police would come soon, and Sander was shaking all over.

I was very relieved to see two police vehicles drive up yo the house, with their spotlights on (one of my thoughts was actually, "I'm so glad to live in a place where I can trust the police to do the job that needs to be done here."). I watched out the window as the two officers, a man and a woman, talked to the man, put handcuffs on him, frisked him, and led him back to one of the cars. Thankfully, it didn't look like he was armed or meant any harm. After they arrested him, one of the officers talked to me and didn't seem too worried about it. It appears he was just stoned out of his mind and was at the wrong house. His belligerence was because he thought I was giving him a hard time for refusing to open the door.

I couldn't go back to sleep after that, though. In my mind, I don't believe he is going to come back (unless he makes the same mistake twice!). But, I will feel better after a quiet night or two.

When we talked about it with the kids, I said that we should not only give thanks to God that it wasn't a more serious situation, but that we should pray for this man (I also explained that he had drunk too much wine or beer). Sander did pray for him tonight when I put him to bed: "Thank you for the man who knocked-ed on the door last night, thank you that the police camed-ed, and thank you that he drink-ed too much wine"!