Closed Doors
“Life is all about the dance. The colors. The sunny afternoons and cold mornings. The starts and stops”.- sundaewrites
What are Closed Doors?
For some, it could mean an end of a chapter while for others, an end of a season.
End of a chapter means you’re finally done and you’re supposed to carry on to the next. So the story keeps on unfolding, and it’s altogether new to you. It is possible though that you could have brought along characters from the earlier chapters of your life or maybe lessons from your past.
End of a season means you could just be taking a break or a sabbatical. It’s the journey of hills and valleys. After a while, you come back to the same season, but this time, you know better and you‘ve grown stronger.
In life, we will come face to face with a lot of closed doors:
- Graduating from College
- Graduating from Singlehood
- Graduating from parenting small kids
- End of a career
- End of a project
- End of a relationship
- Failure of a business
- Failure of a lifelong dream
- Failure of a marriage
Though some doors are meant to be closed forever, some are just waiting to be reopened for you to come back in and finish what you’ve started. Every closed door presents an opportunity, to grow, to rest, to re-evaluate where you are and where you want to go. It gives us space to think, a chance to reboot, to renew, regenerate and refocus.
So how do we deal with closed doors?
We welcome it. We don’t resist it.
At some point, we need to stop fighting battles that we are not meant to fight. We need to stop holding on to things we’re supposed to let go. We need to stop anything that doesn’t serve us or make us better.
What we’d rather do is begin to summon that courage to step into unfamiliar waters or cross that river. We need to feel the ground we’re standing on and focus on the road up ahead instead of looking back. We need to run through the rain instead of wishing it to stop. For life, is all about the dance. The colors. The sunny afternoons and cold mornings. The starts and stops.
Do we need to worry about closed doors?
Four years ago, I lost someone. There was no way for that loss to be reversed. So I questioned life, I questioned God. Demanded answers that in my heart, I already knew but refused to accept. So I kept banging on heavens doors for answers to my “Why”.
Then, I got tired. I lurked in darkness until I realized dwelling in that state is not serving me anymore. So my “Why” turned into, “What now”. As I opened my self to receive answers to this question, new things started to unfold. Things I never thought of focusing my life on. Things that allowed me to re-ignite my desire to live and do it to the full.
Some of us live through two seasons during the year, some four. Regardless of the number, you have to live through them to understand and appreciate one full year. If you’re reading a book, at any point you’d know how many chapters there are to go before you reach the end. But if you’re the character in the story, you don’t know that. So you do the best you could to make the best of what you have, relish it and still give something away.
In life, you don’t show up just to get, you show up to give. Trust me, being able to give, is a much better place to be in.
Everybody loves a happy life. But a life story with no struggles, setbacks, detours and closed doors, is not as exciting to hear compared to a life story that has. Nobody can relate to a life with no pain, and nobody can be proud of a life lived devoid of meaning and purpose.
Are you still staring at a closed door? If it belongs to the past, leave it. There are still plenty of new doors waiting to be opened. In God’s universe, there’s an abundance of everything and it’s ours for the taking.
Question:
Are you looking at a closed door right now? What choice are you making? Comment here.
Originally published at sundaewrites.com on February 10, 2018.
