CLOSED DOORS

I’ve heard it said that when one door closes another door opens, but it’s hell in the hallway.

I hate the time in the hallway.

As I sit today I’m watching my son attempt to go through a new door. I don’t know yet if he will make it through, I don’t know if arms will welcome him on the other side, I don’t know if the door will slam shut without his hands even having a chance to push against its closing.

I fear the closing of the door because of the pain that follows. 

I am old enough to remind myself that this is the matter of life, we do not get everything we want, we are not granted access to every opportunity we wish to take. I have also seen enough to know that sometimes the closing of a door is the only thing that allows our eyes to see a better one waiting for our hand to open. 

It is the pain that I wish to avoid, the heartache that spans the gap between the path we wanted to take and the journey we come to realize is far better than we imagined.

I don’t want disappointment, I don’t want tears, I just want easy and everything as I think it should be. Especially for my son.

But this is not the way of life.

One door closes, another door opens, and we must mourn the hallway.

To find the courage to brave the inevitable hallways that come, I remind myself of closed doors in my life, especially the one that led to much of what I now experience as my day-to-day reality. 

With a then two and four-year-old, the closed door of my husband’s job loss felt staggering. His position had been eliminated, our financial security taken with it. Fast forward fifteen years and he now leads a thriving business. Our financial landscape looks far different than I could have ever imagined, creating possibility for our children that I never believed we’d be able to give.

I am so thankful for the closed door.

But I hated the hallway.

The hallway was painful and confusing, with little vision for what could possibly lie ahead. We went through all of our savings, drained our retirement. There was unemployment and public assistance, food stamps and the cashing in of WIC vouchers at grocery checkout. We moved to a small rental and sold a paid off car only to have the cheaper one we bought need a new engine within weeks.

The internal accusations of failure were relentless, the darkness of the hallway, real.

When I look back now I can see the gift of the closed door, but in the middle it felt like anything but. It was disappointing, it was tears, it was not easy nor everything as I thought it should be. 

But there was another open door, and a beautiful one at that. 

What I want is to avoid the hallway moments, for myself and for those I love, but this is not how life works. We will all have our in-betweens, the seasons where the path falls out before us and it is far too dark for our eyes to begin to grasp another way around. 

We will all have our hallways. 

And we must all find the courage to look again for an open door.

I tell myself my stories of closed doors not to ignore the grief, but to cling to the hope. Not to pretend I should be strong enough to hold my head high in the hallway, but to remind myself that it will lift again.

I will mourn the hallway.

And I will look toward the open door.