No Soliciting

We moved into this house last April, and we quickly learned that people try to solicit just about anything at your front door. We have had countless young people who have said that they are trying to get off the street, so they are selling their mystery cleaning liquid, or they need you to pledge money to "earn points" towards their goal, etc. We constantly have men trying to sell us the paper, kids trying to raise money for their basketball teams, vacuum salesmen, etc. I am a sucker for all these things, but I am married to a "NO" man. It is good and bad, I would probably say yes to too many, and be taken advantage of, but I can always hear his voice in my head saying "ABSOLUTELY NOT." We had a bad experience last fall of a vacuum salesman staying past his welcome on a call night of Brandon's and it made me (and Brandon) very uncomfortable. Shortly after this, Brandon made a handmade sign for our front door that said "no soliciting." I wanted to rip it down because it was tacky and I felt so rude, but he said that he refused to take it down since I am here with 2 kids by myself so much. This weekend, I hosted a baby shower at my house, and I thought it may be rude to have the sign up, so I took it down and forgot about it. Until yesterday...
I was vacuuming in our bedroom when Kate came and told me that there was a man standing in the door. That will make your heart speed up a little. I turned off the vacuum and ran to the front door and sure enough, there was a man on our front porch. (I just wish Kate knew the difference in "in the door" and "at the door".) I opened it and kept both kids behind me and he said that he wanted to do some yardwork for me. This is not a huge surprise because Brandon had to leave 86 piles of leaves in the yard to pack into bags later. He told me he could do it "real cheap" and when I told him no, he rode away on his bike with the rake tied to the back. :( I really thought, for $20, that may be nice for Brandon to not have to worry about it on his day off. But the Brandon in my head told me that $20 needs to go towards bills!
A few hours later, both kids were napping and I was on the couch working on some sewing designs. Our doorbell doesn't ring, it just vibrates, so I looked at the reflection of the clock and saw another man standing there. I decided to ignore it until he started pounding on the front door. I went and opened it and he told me he didn't want to scare me, but that he needed some help. He and his wife live a few streets over and they had a baby 8 days ago. He said he had recently lost his job and that his power got shut off yesterday. He said he would do any yardwork I needed and clean all the branches off the roof, he just needed to earn $49 to get his power back on. It physically hurt me to tell him no, but I knew that there was a chance it was a made up story, and we don't have $49. I told him that I was sorry and that I would pray for him and his family. I shut the door and started crying. I pray that he made that $49 and his power got turned back on (if that was true). It just made me realize that I complain about so much that I want, I need, or that I wish I had- but I have 2 healthy kids in a warm house.
While it was a touching story, I am still putting our sign back up today. Brandon is right, I am too big of a sucker to handle these guys!
Another note- Kate decided Sunday that sleep is ok... so we have been napping and sleeping all night since then. I would love to know what goes through that head!