It was nearly a year ago that I wrote a post about the door to a big chapter of my life closing, and what felt like, the door to my biological father’s family closing, as we moved to Kansas City from Sioux City (http://www.melissaohden.com/articles/one-door-closed-another-opened).
When I wrote that post, it was with both sorrow over how that part of my life, the regular contact with my grandfather and great aunt, the possibility of my close proximity to other members of my biological father’s family somehow equating to contact or a relationship with them, and yet, eager anticipation over the new chapter in my life that was just beginning. Maybe you can relate to that from a move, a new job, a new baby, or maybe even a loss or hardship? When one door closes, whether through our own choice or God’s will, (that maybe doesn’t feel like something we are all together comfortable or happy with at the time), the truth is that another door does always open. Maybe it doesn’t open to the exact place we were thinking it would, maybe it includes difficulties or hard lessons, maybe it includes or excludes people from our lives that we didn’t plan on, but another door always opens, and my life is again proof of that.
When one door closes, it’s easy to get fixated on it. Instead of looking ahead or being open to the next door opening, it can be hard to remove our stare from the closed one. Although our move was our choice, a happy one that God showed His blessings and will through, I will admit that I still stared longingly at the door closed to my life in Sioux City, the door that I saw as my only real chance at a connection to my biological father’s family.
‘If only I could have both doors open simultaneously,’ I remember thinking last year about this time. Maybe you’ve been in a similar position, yourself? We want the open door, but we still wish for the closed door to be propped open, if even just a crack. Little did I think about how one door closing, that invoked in me both great happiness (for the life changes) and great sadness (for being away from what I saw as my only opportunity for communication with my birthfather’s family), would lead to a whole other door, one that had felt like it was bolted shut with multiple locks and chains, being blown wide open.
The door that is now hanging from it’s hinges, after being thrown wide open last spring is the door that led to my birthmother and her family. Although I could write a number of lengthy posts about what an enormous blessing it has been to be connected with my cousin, half-sister, birthmother, and still others through emails and correspondence, I’ll keep it short and simply say this: as hard as it has been to learn more truths about the abortion that I survived and how it’s touched and changed so many, the blessings in getting to know about my biological background, and more importantly, getting to know them, has been much greater.
As I stared so intently at that closed door last spring, I realize now that I was failing to trust that when one door closes, another one opens, and that God’s plans are much greater than I can even fathom. I am so grateful that despite my sorrowful longing to prop open the closed door, that God threw open the heaviest door yet. I am so thankful that despite my thoughts to the contrary, that closed door wasn’t slammed shut. I still have contact with my birthfather’s family, it’s just limited and different than it was before. And that’s okay. Change happens. Life happens. God’s will happens.
If you find yourself right now gazing longingly at a door that has been closed in your life, I pray that you trust in how when one door closes, another door opens, and that God has good things in store for you behind that next door.
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