Closing the Heavy Door

I didn’t know there was a heavy door. I have always heard about God opening and closing doors. “When one door closes, another opens.” Somehow those are supposed to be comforting words, and maybe many times they are. But no one talks about the heavy door. I didn’t even know there was a heavy door in my life. I have been closing it for over ten years now, but the closer I get to it being closed, the heavier it is becoming. 

What do I mean by heavy door? Every single person in the Bible had a moment. The moment that God told them to do something unusual, incredible, and absurd. God told Abraham to pack his family and go, with no directions, just start walking. God told Noah to build an ark when there had never been rain. God told Moses to go talk to Pharaoh and demand that he release the Hebrews to go to a new place. Esther had to go before the king and gain his approval, and then go again without permission with the possibility of death. Her uncle encouraged her, “You were made for such a time as this.” All the disciples walked away from their careers to follow Jesus, and Saul became Paul. Everyone of these people had to choose to close the heavy door. The moment where their past became their past and God became their future. The decision to let everything go that they had ever known and become someone entirely new. We hear their stories in hindsight with 20/20 vision of how it all worked out for them. We didn’t get to see the day in and day out of shutting their heavy doors. We didn’t get to see the crying, pleading, broken hearts, and the questioning of themselves and everything they have ever known. The glimmer that we do get, like Lot’s wife who turned into a pillar of salt by turning around when she was told not to by God, is miniscule, yet powerful. We are able to remove ourselves from being them, the ones who closed heavy doors to run hard after God. I mean, God didn’t really call us to close our heavy doors, did he?

Today I face closing my heavy door. My entire past is being erased, or completed, and the time has come for the door to close. I have been, unknowingly, closing this door for ten years. Yes, I said ten years of closing this heavy door. Ten years ago my life shifted in a sudden and devastating way. My husband passed away unexpectedly leaving me a widow with five children. Although I knew that was a goodbye that I would possibly never recover from, but thankfully did, it was only the first great goodbye. There would be many goodbyes to follow. Each goodbye was another step forward in closing my door. In 2020, during the Covid shutdown, God told me to close my salon storefront and begin to write. Another huge goodbye to something I had poured my heart and soul into for the seven years that God ordained it. Then the last goodbye that was a gut punch was the ending of a relationship I thought was forever. I was thrown away like trash, utterly discarded. I was talking to God one day, with tears streaming down my face wondering why I hadn’t been chosen. Then God, the Great I Am said to me, “I have chosen you. I have always chosen you.” For the first time in my life that was enough. The heavy door began to close at a greater speed. 

If you have ever closed a literal heavy door, once it starts closing the sheer weight and magnitude begins to pull you faster until you get to the door frame that seals it tight. You must then put the gusto back in with all your might to push it finally closed. I am pushing with all my might as God gives me strength to complete the most important goodbye of my life. 

Over the last year, God has done incredible healing. Slowly but surely, each healing was another step of pushing the door closed. One step at a time. Erasing a hurt, completing a relationship, revealing who I am and who He designed me to be all were steps pushing this heavy door closed. I didn’t realize that I was pushing the heavy door, but I could feel the sense of newness coming. 

I am beginning to feel the weight of the door. The closer it gets to the goodbye of yesterday and all I have ever been. The grief of the unknown and letting go of all I have ever known. I am in full recognition that this heavy door will have loved ones, memories long faded, and pieces of me behind it and that weighs heavy on my heart. Closing the heavy door is not something I have ever had a conversation about. It wasn’t something I understood would come. Every believer will have a heavy door. It will be at the place of full surrender to God. There will be your moment. The choice you make to do the laborious work of closing the heavy door, leaving everything behind, and walking into the light of your future with the Lover of your soul. 

You are not closing the door alone, God is helping. It is a door so heavy that without God it would be impossible to shut. But God knows how incredibly beautiful it is on the other side so He will continue to walk with you, as you take each step, make the next right decision, and continue to follow His narrow path to the greatest love story ever known called Life.

I implore you Christian to find your heavy door. The one that will change the trajectory of your existence here on earth. I can promise the view on the other side is going to be stunningly beautiful. Life with Jesus always is! Goodbye to the old, for the new has come.