Turning Corners and Finding Open Doors

Picture from a quote I found on an old calendar.

It’s Gratituesday! Today I’m grateful for open doors.

About a month ago, maybe a little more, I felt life turn a corner. Nearly a tangible sensation, I felt lighter, aimed a different direction, moving forward on more level ground. Where I had been for the past year or so inclined at such a sharp angle I could barely hang on. And then, I felt different.

You see, as I turned that corner and the ground leveled out some, I spotted an open door.  Am I ever grateful for open doors! It’s as if someone let fresh oxygen inside a carbon dioxide filled room. Whoosh!

Hey, I’m even grateful for doors just barely cracked open. That sliver of light showing through can make all the difference to my stumbling around in the dark or making progress.

There’s been some door slamming going on in the world around me over the past year or so. The shock of a slammed door, even an expected one, sets my hackles rising and raises my stress levels, although you’d never know it on the outside, or so I’ve been told. I’m always FINE. (Have you seen the movie “The Italian Job?” They have a different definition of the word FINE: Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic, Emotional. Yup, I was just FINE.)

So, several doors slamming right around the same time. Closed doors. Opportunities gone. An era over. Life lived small. Seasons ended.

I try not to freak out over the slamming, closing, lost, missing, ended stuff. But I’m an insecure being wrapped up in my attempts at faith and hope but surrounded by these personal storms, getting drenched with a blown out umbrella and no rain jacket.

neurosis. (n -rō’sĭs) A psychological state characterized by excessive anxiety or insecurity without evidence of neurologic or other organic disease, sometimes accompanied by defensive or immature behaviors. This term is no longer used in psychiatric diagnosis.

According the Dictionary.com and current psychiatric reasoning, I’m not neurotic. I just get really anxious and feel insecure about life, occasionally, sometimes, often, almost always. Especially when the doors all close behind me and I’m waiting, watching for, praying about and working at finding an open door. I’ll even take an open window, I can climb through windows.

Lots and lots of light slipped in through chinks in the walls and chinks in my armor.  In fact, there was a skylight blazing a couple of times a week. It hasn’t been all darkness and doom. Joy has happened amid the undercurrent of loss and lost. There’s been help, lots of it. And hope. Mostly, but not always.

I’m not one to pronounce gratitude for those closed doors, though. It’s not in me to do that. I don’t see it as a requirement for Sainthood or for Decent-personhood either. Although I can recognize value after the fact in what I learned stuck behind a door.

A couple of doors opened when I turned that corner a month or two ago for which I’m ever so grateful.

The next time a door starts to creak open, I’m pushing my foot in so it can’t close up. I’m ready for full on, unfiltered sunlight. I like the happiness, the whateverness of something different.

 ~~~~~

“When someone you love says goodbye you can stare long and hard at the door they closed and forget to see all the doors God has open in front of you.” ~ Shannon L. Alder