Open Doors

Ever have a door shut in your face? It's embarrassing and humiliating. You have to be made of pretty strong stuff to endure it. Yet life is full of slammed doors, dreams dashed and goals unrealized. How do we handle the door that has been shut right before our very eyes? After the weeping and the grieving, the subsequent anger and resentment and ultimately resignation to the fact, what then? In the midst of an uncontrollable situation, do we have any control? The answer is, yes. There is a life within us that is governed by our own resolve. No one can touch that internal governance unless we allow them to. There are strong gates, boundaries, sentries that are set before the city of our soul. We determine who or what enters in. Though the billows may roll on the outside, tidal waves of tragedy and disappointment, there is a place on the inside of us, a retreat, where we can experience peace and tranquility. It takes time to go inward. It is a journey not unlike a submarine ride to the bottom of the ocean floor. It's deep. But it is worth the trip, for there we can relax and ponder the rat-race of society and the cruelties of which mankind is capable, and know that we do not have to participate. It is there that we can contemplate an open door, heretofore invisible to us. It is in the confines of that inner place, the place where God comes to visit, that we become aware of opportunities, capabilities, and new horizons. Sad that we do not take advantage of that retreat more often.

Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing
that we see too late the one that is open.
~ Alexander Graham Bell ~