Doors

If you've followed my blog over the past year, you've heard this next story before. But it's a little different this time:                                                                      

    

The door had slammed shut. Or had it? I stared at the words on the page, but they refused to cower. 

“I’m so nervous for you!” my brother had exclaimed as I fumbled with the seal. He hustled out of the room. I had only laughed. My mother would not look at me; she remained in the kitchen where she enveloped herself in the savory smells of dinner. 

In my hands I held a letter. My first brother, my second brother, and my third brother had all once held a letter similar to this one. In a family that God has called to remain debt-free, scholarship letters are often the key to the door of college and life beyond. Reaching for a jimmy wrench in the form of a loan was not even an option—God had just not led us that way. But we had never suffered for it. My brothers all had Bachelor’s and even Master’s degrees safely tucked in their back pockets, and they had never owed a cent to anybody, thanks to the Great Key Maker.

I examined the key in my hand, and it was not a key at all. It was a stick.

 

I actually laughed; I did not know what else to do. I had been scanning the mail for weeks in search of my key, consciously choosing to breathe and trust. The Great Key Maker always delivers, right? He had never let me down yet.

            

 I stared at the stick in my hand.

“Dinner time!”

I pasted on smiles as I consumed a meal fit to make any other mouth water, but everything tasted bitter. Conversation flowed all around, but I was trapped on the other side of a relentless door, shriveling. My world was constricting, and all I could see were closed doors with no keyholes and no Key Maker.

           

As soon as clean-up was over, I grabbed my stick and my weighty Book of Key Maker’s promises, and I marched to the Key Maker’s house just down the road. But before I could share words with Him, I had to share tears with Him first. Many tears. Tears that rained anguish and disillusionment yet had the same salty taste of faith; these are the tears that dissolve bitterness. And there, before the Silent Key Maker, I handed over my prized door. My chest burned as if a hot knife had made an incision in raw flesh. 

           

 “Now what, Lord?” 

            

The shadows lengthened in the cavernous sanctuary, but I heard nothing.

           

 As I rose to change seats, the Key Maker directed my gaze to a different door. This, too, was in an envelope, and in curly script the front said, “You’re Invited.” I knew exactly what it meant. The Key Maker was inviting me to go through a door of his own making, and all I needed was a tiny key called faith to see what was on the other side. 

            

I chose to accept the invitation. 

           

Taking the Key and Door Maker by the hand, we turned the key in the lock together and pushed it open. A breeze cooled my hot cheeks, and a dusky vista stretched out, jagged with unmapped mountains and valleys. In the distance, the dimness of pre-dawn rouged the horizon. And then he started speaking.

             

“You wanted that other door more than you wanted me,” he said.

           

 “Of course not,” I protested.

           

 “Oh, but you did, and I know why. Do you?”

           

“Well—um. No.”

           

“You don’t really know my opinion of you. You have heard it, but you’ve refused to believe it,” he squeezed my hand. “And because you don’t know my opinion of you, you decided that you needed other people to validate you. And because nobody is pursuing you, you decided to pursue everyone’s good opinion. You thought that door was the way to get it. I am right.”

           

It was not a question, but I nodded anyway. 

           

“Don’t you want to know what I really think of you? Ask me your question.”

             

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. I loosened my hold, but his grip was warm and firm.

           

 “Ask me your question.”

           

I peered at the dim landscape, particularly at the path disappearing around a dark corner below. The sun refused to rise.

           

“Ask me your question.”

           

“Okay,” I said, my face warm again. “Um, do you think I’m captivating?” 

             

Yes. 

            

It was both the loudest and quietest word I had ever heard, charged with a love and joy that zapped my skin and shook my whole body. I blinked as a rainbow of colors hazed my vision, and my heart swelled as something filled it. When I could see again, the sun had risen, and the Door Maker was smiling at me.

           

“Let’s begin,” he said. We started down the path. 

           

 A week later, I stood gasping next to a chasm deeper than imagination. In reality, I was reading on a car trip home from Niagara Falls, but there was no water in this gorge. My book did not describe a chasm, but I felt it. I saw the blackness of its depths and smelled its stench of death, and a spear twisted in my gut: this was a world without the Door Maker’s Love. I shuddered and fought the urge to scream. 

           

Climbing into the driver’s seat, I gripped the steering wheel with clammy hands. As we carved through the dark mountains of Vermont, I gazed into that loveless abyss and wondered if the Door Maker had actually created it and let go of my hand. Then I felt a firm squeeze.

           

“Do you think my Love falters? I’m not going anywhere.” The chasm vanished, and I started breathing again. 

            

A few days later, the Door Maker and I stood at the foot of a craggy mountain that rent the sky as if to declare its presence. Yet it still stood shorter than some other mountains in the distance, and music drifted down the path leading up it; the music sounded familiar. 

           

“Here, this is for you,” said the Door Maker. “Though it looks different from what you were expecting.”

             

I knew why that music sounded familiar—its strains resembled the music that had echoed from behind the other door I had once wanted. I hesitated at the foot of the path. “Is this okay?”

           

“Dear one, I wanted a college education for you all along. Why else would I have given you that desire? I just didn’t want you to want it more than you wanted me. I’m the only one who can fill you.”

            

“Why didn’t you just tell me then?” 

             

“I did. But I had to show you,” he nodded to the scar on my chest, now healed. 

              

I ran my finger along the ridge just below my collar bone where I would never forget it; then I squeezed his hand. 

           

“By the way, I have other mountains for you to climb too. I’m bringing four girls into your journey. I want you to love them.”

           

“How, Lord?”

          

“As I have loved you.” 

            

One black night a couple of weeks later, I sat with one of these girls. Her dark hair sprang down her back, while scars very different from mine crisscrossed her arms. The wind moaned in the trees just outside the closed-in porch while rain wept on the window panes, but for a long time we did not say a word. She had cut herself again, and I had grappled, not with her, but with her enemies. But we pulled the downy comforter more tightly over us and faced our helplessness together. Words came, but they were unnecessary. 

            

Another companion on my journey concealed hurt and anger with smiles as she watched her family tear apart, while another ached to solve everyone’s problems but could not open up to share her own. The fourth girl fought and won battles alone, unseen, and forgotten. I strained to hear what their hearts were saying, and I waited. 

             

Months passed, and the Door Maker poured Love into me as we forded swamps with songs and clambered up snowy mountains by moonlight. I came off of my beloved craggy mountain often to spend time with my new companions: the scarred ninja, the bleeding damsel, the tightlipped superwoman, and the overlooked champion. Sometimes we climbed mountains together. Ice crystals budded on our eyelashes as we ascended, but laughter warmed us as we pressed higher. As my heart intertwined with theirs, their pain throbbed in my ears, and the smoke of sizzling flesh burnt the air as a hot knife cut me yet again. 

           

“Door Maker, why does this hurt? You told me to love these girls.”

           

“I told you to love them as I love them,” he replied.

             

Accepting my new vulnerability, I continued to pursue my new friends with all of the creativity the Door Maker had given me. I led expeditions, wrote glow-in-the-dark messages, crafted treasure hunts, delivered six a.m. coffee, picked flowers, and hung two hundred and ninety-two Crayola crayons from the ceiling. Joy flooded my heart as I discovered new ways to cry out, “You are loved, loved, loved!” 

         

However, as I loved, beasts stalked my path, growling lies. They questioned me, my task, and my motives. I doubted my purpose and my purity. “Should I go somewhere else, Lord?”

        

“Wait. Love as I have loved.” 

         

And so I did.

         

One night, I crept down a dark hall and knocked on the scarred ninja’s door.

          

“Come in.”

          

I entered. Light beamed from the overhead light and radiated off the lime-colored walls. Peace flowed from the girl’s dark eyes as she cradled a letter she was crafting in her lap. My eyes absorbed the first line before I could stop them. It said, “Dear Jesus.”

           

“Sorry, I know it’s after 9:52. I’ll just grab my stuff and get out of your way.”

           

“It’s okay,” she said as I gathered my things. When I finished, her steady gaze sought out mine. “I love you, Kayla.” 

             

“I love you too.” So much, it hurts. I glanced at the letter in her lap, mildly pleased that I knew the person she was addressing there ranked first above me in her affections. Still, as I returned to the shadowed hallway, a thought panged me. Do I love him more too?

              

Love is a strange doctor. It can sedate its patients or slice them open until they nearly bleed to death. It also can tell patients to exercise an unused muscle before turning around and telling them to rest and eat. After giving me his door, the Door Maker had taken my shriveled love balloon and filled it to capacity. Then he told me to inhale that Love and practice blowing it into the balloon again for others. As my lunges grew stronger, I forgot the Love that powered my exhalation to people, and I wrestled to remember the Love I had for the Door Maker. 

           

“Here,” the Door Maker said when I told him this. He pulled out another balloon.

           

“I’m just so tired of pursuing people,” I complained. “Why can’t someone pursue me for a change?” 

            

The Door Maker’s eyes arrested me. They were deeper than any ocean, and they rippled with pain as he stretched the balloon out. “Why,” he said, “I have been pursuing you every day.” And with that, he breathed into the new balloon until it expanded to the size of a mansion. 

              

My own breath fled as I saw that Love, so expansive and complete. The scars on my chest pulsed, but they were pleasantly warm over the fullness of my heart. “I’m sorry,” I said.

              

“It’s okay,” he smiled, the ripples gone. “You have done well loving people here. Now let’s see how you do loving people over there.” He pointed to a mountain in the distance, so tall that the clouds wrapped it like dark smoke. I wondered if the mountain had ever seen the sun.

              

“It hasn’t,” said the Door Maker. 

              

A few months later, I entered the smoke on that mountain. The rugged and exotic beauty of the country enthralled me, reminding me of the Door Maker, especially since among the most beautiful things were the doors. Yet I woke to the mournful call to prayer before sunrise and sighed, knowing that these devout people were not praying to the Door Maker of Love but to a distant door maker of prisons. 

               

One night, I stood on a rooftop looking over the city. Clad in flowing black with my hair hidden away by a headscarf, I blew green apple-scented bubbles into the darkness. They hovered in the stifling atmosphere and popped over the bustle of boys yelling on their motor bikes, cars honking, and men striding down the street to socialize at a local coffee shop. I stared at the dim lights below and the thick smoke above as I talked to the Door Maker. 

            

“They’re just a mass of people under a cloud. I don’t see how I can love them.”

            

“Let me show you,” he whispered at my elbow. The smoke cleared, and as I blew my bubbles, larger bubbles filled the air. They were not round or empty; they were full of the heaviest kind of Love ever seen, as if all of the oceans in the world and more were packed into each one. Each bubble had a focal point upon which it was resting: the head of each man passing below in the street. Then the smoke closed in and left nothing but darkness.

               

And they don’t even have a clue! So many will die—have died—having never even heard of that Love. Salty tears blinded me. 

             

“Do you see now?” the Door Maker asked.

             

“Yes.” Another incision parted my chest.

             

Over thirteen months have passed since the door slammed shut and I stared at the stick in my hand. People say that when God closes a door, he opens a window. I disagree. He closes windows and opens doors. When I gave up my window-sized door, he pushed me through a real door more wondrous than any I could have conceived. He showed me Love, and he showed me how to give that Love to the people close to me. Then he showed me more Love and how to give that Love to people far away. And with his Love, he gave me purpose: to live that others may know that Love. This Love is the only reason I am a whole person today, and it rips my heart apart to imagine so many people never even hearing of it. 

              

I need to help people find that Door. 
            

“Redeeming Love has been my theme, and shall be, till I die.” -William Cowper