The Doors of Life

In my life, I have noticed a pattern that takes place. At any moment I am going about life the way I best know how, relying on God for guidance and wisdom in making decisions, when all of the sudden, an opportunity comes along. Often this is not an opportunity I asked for and sometimes it’s one I didn’t even want, but it is an opportunity nonetheless. When this event happens, I am given an option, stay where I’m at, or walk through the open door.

I am going to borrow heavily from this metaphor for this post, but I want to convey two specific ideas, one is very common, the other idea not so much. The first idea is this…

Life is Full of Open Doors

Some might call this a fork in the road, a new opportunity, fate, karma, the light at the end of the tunnel or God’s will. Regardless of the term, we all know it to be the fact that decisions take us from our current circumstance to where we will be next in life. This could have anything to do with a location change, job change, marital status, friendships, money, housing the list could go on and on. I remember being in high school ready to make the big decision of my life that everybody asks you at that age, where are you going to college and what are you going to do with your life? It just so happened that my grandfather knew the president at one of the colleges I was considering and gave him a call on the phone. After chatting, the president said if I was interested in going to that school that I should also give him a call. I did, and less than a year later I was attending that school as a freshman. My sophomore year of college, while my parents were visiting college, I told them I was “done” with girls for now. I told them that there was nobody at the school I was attending that I saw as a potential life’s mate. Every girl was either too this or too that for me, and I started giving them examples. Less than two weeks after that conversation, I met the girl who would become my future wife. Halfway through my masters I chose to move out to Phoenix, Arizona and help a new church plant. I had only visited Phoenix once before and it was only two weeks. I had no family or friends yet out there and yet I chose to go anyway. Even now, as I am writing this post, I am writing from a city which my family and I chose to move to because we followed what God had for us and walked through an open door.

So if this is such a common thing, why do we fear walking through the open door. I’ll give you a couple of reasons that I personally have paused before barging through the open door of opportunity.

- Unfamiliar territory — Some claim to love new and exciting things. Some people literally make a lifestyle of traveling new places, living in foreign hostels, and constantly meeting new people; vagabonding is not a new concept. But most of society, when pressed, really does not like change or the unfamiliar. Unfamiliar territory is just that, it’s unfamiliar, uncharted, and most of all uncertain.

- Care for those I love — in the case of a location or job change, I have often considered for long hours on end whether or not to uproot my family from their community and everything they know to move to a new city and meet a whole new group of friends. As of right now, my wife and I have lived in two different major cities since being married, neither of which were our hometowns We have moved a total of 6 times, and each time before we made the decision, there was a moment where I questioned if this was the right thing.

- Lack of confidence — time and time again the opportunity that I have in front of me is completely dependent on my ability, talent, and leadership for it to go off smoothly. For not being a very outwardly emotional person, I have deep seated feelings and often self-doubt that go on inside my head. I have been privileged to know a lot of a talented and smart people and if I’m not careful I will start comparing myself to them and thus cancel out any progress in my own life.

- Prior commitments — Sometimes when we are presented with an opportunity, no matter how much we want to reach for it carpe diem style, we have prior commitments that hold us back. I’m living in a generation of people who are my age who hate “adulting.” This is a word that describes any kind of grown up action or responsibility that requires them to act like a real grown up.

- Fear of failure — I have talked some about failure on my blog in a prior post. But fear is a reality that we have to get over. The minute you came into this world, and technically even before it, you had a reason to fear in life. Get used to it, stop avoiding it, it will be there until you die.

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” — Mark Twain

Life is Also Full of Closed Doors

Here is the side of the thought that most of us don’t take time to think about. In every door that opens itself to you, by the very nature of it being open, that means there is a closed door as well. Think about it for a second? Think about everything in the past that you have hoped for, wish for, maybe even prayed for…go ahead I’ll wait. Now imagine for a second if you would have gotten every one of those things. Scary isn’t it? I remember a very distinct time in college when I was talking to a roommate who was considering being in a relationship with somebody. He was unsure of pursuing the girl so he waited. Some time passed and eventually the girl who he had been considering asking out made some really bad decisions and literally made a wreck of her life. I remember walking across a parking lot with him towards class and turning to him and saying, “God is a God of closed doors just as much as He is of open ones.” He nodded his head in agreement. There have been times where I have conquered fear, courageously walked through my open door and have felt like the door shut so hard behind me it hurt. My goal for pursuing this thought is simple, realize that both are a part of the God’s plan for your life. If you are still seeking God and haven’t accepted Him yet as your Savior, that’s ok, I hope one day you will choose to do so. One day if you choose to become a believer you might look back and realize God had a plan and a purpose for everything that has happened in your life. If you have accepted Christ, and you are a believer, you know the words I’m telling you are truth.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future…Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path” — Steve Jobs

A few additional thoughts…

• Stop trying to force your own door to open — I’m sure you have never been guilty of this, it’s only me, but sometimes in my life, I thought I knew best and tried to force a door open on my own. I can tell you for certain every time I’ve done that it’s ended in disaster.
• What do I do while I’m in the doorway? — So you know the door behind you is closing and you know the door is in the middle of opening in front of you, but it’s not quite wide enough for you to walk through yet, what then? There is a lot of maturity that can be gained in the waiting period between stations of life. I remember in high school listening to a sermon by Pastor Tony Evans. He preached a message about being stuck in a holding pattern as a single person and how you could grow in the midst of being “stuck.” This has been a reality for me in many areas of life. Learn to make waiting productive.
• Other people are getting open doors, what about me? — A sign of a mature person is often seen in how they respond to others’ success. When your co-worker gets the promotion do you talk bad about them? When you see a relative goes away on an exotic vacation that you could never afford are you happy for them and their family? Or is your natural inclination to all these circumstances to pout and be childish?
• I have a lot of doors to choose from, how do I know which one? — I recently posted about having people around you who you can trust making a tough decision, the post was entitiled My Personal Cabinet. Click the link and go check it out.
• Open doors come to those who already are moving — Have you ever heard the old saying that goes like this, “if you want to get something done, give it to the person who is already busy”? I was listening to Michael Hyatt’s podcast recently and he said something very profound. He said, “I think sometimes we have this mythical idea that we’re going to sit still till we get clarity. I find that clarity actually happens as we move toward the destination.” Did you catch it? “Clarity actually happens as we move toward the destination.” So I have news for you, if you are sitting around waiting for the magical day to happen, that lucky moment, fate to shine upon you, the good Lord to bless you, it’s probably too late. Seeking a blessing is never an excuse for passivity. I will leave you with a quote,

“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.” — Saint Augustine

Comment below and let me know where you are at in your journey. Just had a door shut in your face? Not sure which door to choose?