The key

Illustration: Faye Kliewer

My friends were having breakfast at a restaurant. They told the waitress they were waiting for one more person.

“She locked herself out of the house,” they explained.

“Poor girl!” sympathized the waitress.

“Well,” replied my friends without a whit of compassion, “she does it all the time.”

“Oh,” said the waitress. “She’s chronic then.”

Sadly, they were talking about me. And it’s true. I am chronic.

When our son got his driver’s licence, he and I developed an ongoing rash of key issues. Our habitual disorderly conduct was completely inconceivable to my husband, he of the military-minded, precise, rational-thinking personality.

It happened because I kept my house keys and truck keys on the same ring. When our son borrowed my truck – which happened so often people thought it was his truck – I had no house key.

Sometimes it came to pass that, even on days when our son wasn’t driving my truck, he still somehow took my keys with him. In one way or another, the key thing kept happening.

The obvious solutions were only obvious at inconvenient times, like when I was left to walk, cancel appointments, wait on the porch like the cat, or search hopelessly for windows that my husband might have forgotten to lock (he of the military-minded, precise, rational-thinking personality).

Partly to compensate for all of the trouble and partly to keep me occupied so my husband could shop unhindered at the sporting goods store, our son invited me out for dinner. Naturally he drove my truck for the occasion. When we emerged from the restaurant after a lovely time together, we discovered the truck lights had inexplicably been left on.

The truck, of course, wouldn’t start. Humiliated again, we phoned the one to whom this would never happen to rescue us. Expecting him to be out having his way with the fishing lures by now, I was relieved when he answered the phone at home.

“The reason I’m here to answer the phone,” he explained acidly, “is because someone has my car keys and I’m stuck at home. I couldn’t come help you, even if I wanted to.”

I adamantly protested our collective innocence, naively believing it to be true, while our son reached into his pocket. Sure enough. He pulled out his own keys, and my keys, and then his father’s keys too.

“Hmm,” he said. “I wondered why my pants were so heavy.”

There are worse things in the world than sitting on the front step waiting for someone to come home and let me in. There are even worse things than knowing my friends and the waitress are chatting about me over breakfast while I am wedged in the bedroom window, stuck half in and half out like Winnie the Pooh in Rabbit’s doorway, waiting for someone to see a part of me and call the fire department. Whatever inconveniences come our way, there is really only one time when having the right key is a matter of life or death.

Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6). When I invited Jesus to be my Lord and Saviour, he came into my heart to stay. I can’t lose him or misplace him, and no one can borrow him or take him from me.

So I won’t be waiting around outside when I come to the pearly gates. And my friends won’t be chatting without me on the other side of the jewelled walls.

On that fine day Jesus will be the Key that opens the gates and I’ll be having breakfast with the King.

Ingrid Koss works as a gardener, caterer, writer and editor. She is a member of McIvor MB Church in Winnipeg.