Close the Door

Go ahead and give yourself permission. Close the door. It’s been open for too long anyway. If Jesus wants to re-open it, trust that he will. It’s in his hands; it always was, you just didn’t want to let it go. Let it go now, my friend. You don’t have to hold onto it anymore. What happened in the past is not your fault. Close the door and begin to move forward in your life. Allow the past to be in the past.

This is what I’ve been trying to tell myself for nearly ten years and for some reason I have never been truly able to believe that I was worthy of letting it all go and walking away from something that was such a big part of my life for so long. It doesn’t matter what the IT is, we all hold on too tight to something that we believe is an important part of our past, or a piece of our psyche, or something that makes us who we are today. The truth of the matter however, is that we could be so much more if we would allow ourselves to embrace whatever is the here and now of our lives. God doesn’t want us looking backwards and thinking “what if?”. He has intentionally put people, places, and events in front of us for our future to make us happy, to give us hope, to have us looking forward to things to come.

For so long I have been lost in my feelings, wondering what I did wrong and how I could have done something differently. Even though, in my head, I knew it wasn’t all me or all my fault, I was taking on so much guilt I couldn’t really function outside of my job. In my heart, I felt broken and unable to make connections because I wouldn’t allow myself the grace that was being offered to me on a daily basis. It took a session with a really good therapist for me to visualize actually closing the door and walking away.

I envision opening the brown, wood door. I walk through the door, pausing with it halfway open, then step through it, feeling a breeze on the other side. I shut the door behind me and continue to walk forward. The breeze feels good on my face, and I turn it upwards to the sky, seeing blue sky and clouds with the sun in the distance, warming me as I continue my slow walk away from that door. As I get further away from the door, it becomes blurry in the distance and the space between us fills with more peace and comfort than I have felt in a while. I find myself wanting to keep moving towards the sun, whereas in the past I have hovered close to that shadow hugging door. I feel free moving into the light, covered in hues of blue and lavender, and gold. I am smiling now and when I look back towards the door, it is shut, and I am good with that. Finally.