When God Leaves the Door Closed

Welcome to the Overflow! And happy New Year.

Whether you’re an old friend or a new one, I’m glad you’re here. This is a place where faith is spilled and souls are filled. I hope you’ll make yourself at home and stay a while.  If you like what you find, feel free to sign up on the side bar to receive a trickle of inspiration in your in-box now and then. Or connect with me on Facebook or Twitter.

Better yet, we could meet face to face!  I’m scheduling speaking engagements for 2019 & 2020.  I’d be delighted to bring a message of encouragement to a ministry event near you. (If you’d like to know more, contact me at overflow@aliciabruxvoort.net)

Today I’m over at Proverbs 31 talking about that holiday we used to celebrate with meals under the table, cereal in the sink, and chocolate cake for dinner. (Oh, and I’m talking about the way God speaks “backwards” sometimes, too.)  If you haven’t had a chance to read it, you can find it here.  But before you go, I’d love to tell you what I learned years ago from a flush-faced toddler, an overstuffed storage closet, and a crying mama-moment.

When we moved into our first little rental house on a sleepy street with slender snaking sidewalks and broad leafy trees, our toddler was fascinated with the back door. Two hops from the kitchen sink and three steps from the basement stairs, the back door wasn’t anything special. It was rusty and weary, scratched and worn.  But the world beyond it was wondrous.

On the other side of that weary old door was green grass to tickle our son’s slender toes and sunshine to kiss his pale freckled nose; a shiny red wagon for pulling and rolling and a winding path for meandering and strolling.

Just beyond its paint-chipped frame were swings for swinging and mud for squishing, sand for digging and puddles for swishing. When those squeaky hinges swung open wide, our two-year-old’s world opened wide, too.

Of course, since he couldn’t reach the tarnished door knob by himself, Lukas soon mastered the art of knocking. Countless times a day, he would toddle across the sticky kitchen floor and thump on the back door with clenched fists and the persistence of the parabled widow.

Open the door, please!  Open the door!

Our young one learned quickly that if he pounded long and loud someone would respond to his rhythmic rap and give the door a push.

However our son’s persistence didn’t work for every door in the house. Tucked between the hallway and the kitchen was a door that would not give way to Lukas’s pounding pleas. While it mirrored the back door in size and shape, this door didn’t lead to a wondrous world of green grass and blue skies; it gave way to a floor-to-ceiling collection of stuff.

Everything that didn’t have a place in our boxy little rental house had been shoved into that solitary storage closet. The catch-all closet housed teetering boxes of photo albums and crammed crates of Christmas decorations, a slapdash collection of sporting gear and uninspired piles of crafting supplies. It harbored stacks of old textbooks and a handful of power tools, a myriad of bicycle helmets, and an oversized wok. And standing guard over all the stuff  was our overused hand-me-down vacuum cleaner.

Opening the storage closet door was a surefire way to tip the teetering things into a toppling catastrophe. And this mama knew that the resulting landslide of paraphernalia could smash our unsuspecting two-and-a-half-foot-boy in a swift second.

Because I knew what was behind the door, I said no.

At first, my no’s, didn’t discourage my hopeful toddler. After all, the back door had taught him  the power of perseverance. But over time, he realized that his magic knock had no power over the storage closet door. 

My answer wasn’t swayed by persistent pounding or tenuous tapping. It didn’t hinge on my mood or my love. He could pound and plead, but that door stayed shut.

Eventually, that meager storage closet became a mammoth source of frustration for my strong-willed boy,  My steadfast no’s incited flush-faced anger and spirited screams. Each time he toddled past that door, Lukas kicked it with a sullen harrumph, and more often than not, he plopped down beside it and declared his disgust with raucous wails.

One day, as I dangled on a spider-web-thread of patience, I slumped on the floor beside my yelping child and began to cry right along with him. I was tired of our daily battles and tired of his frustrated fits.

After I gently kicked the door myself (okay, sometimes a cranky toddler brings out the cranky toddler in me, too), I reached dramatically for the doorknob above our heads.

I jiggled the knob just long enough to get my boy’s attention with the rattly echo, and I then I held his icy blue gaze.  I unclasped my fingers from the door knob and cupped them around my son’s pink cheeks. Then, through a stream of snot and tears, I declared. “I love you too much to open this door!”

My spirited son swallowed his own screams and stared at his crazy mama.

We sat there in a stale mate, neither one of us moving or speaking, until finally, I exhaled a jagged sigh and murmured, “Could you please just trust me?” 

My question dangled in the air between us and reverberated in my twenty-eight-year-old soul.

 When I asked my own son to trust me with that closed closet door,  I felt the Lord echoing the same question to my discontent heart.

Will you trust me with your closed doors, too?

My life in my second decade (and my third and fourth, too) was filled with unanswered prayers and impossible pleas.

My prayer journal contained scribbles of unmet expectations and unsettling no’s.  And sometimes, what my eyes could see impacted what my heart believed. That door just won’t open, so…

Maybe I’m not doing enough for God.

Maybe He doesn’t really answer every prayer.

Maybe He doesn’t care about the desires of my heart.

But as I leaned up against that closed closet door, I realized that my response to God’s no wasn’t much different than my flush-faced toddler’s ire.

I wanted God to be a my genie-in-a-bottle, not the guardian of my doors.

I wanted His yes’s, but I wailed against his no’s.

I longed to experience his wonder, but I didn’t want to embrace his wait.

I couldn’t possibly comprehend what was beyond the door of my persistent pleadings, so when my Heavenly Father refused to turn the knob, I quietly questioned his faithfulness.

But on that particular day in our little rental house on a sleepy street with slender snaking sidewalks and broad leafy trees, I began to realize a simple truth that has slowly changed my heart–

The closed doors in our lives aren’t a reflections of God’s limits, but an expression of his love.

As God’s children, we are invited to seek and knock, to ask and pray.

But we are also admonished to trust and wait.

And when we stand before a locked door, we can either respond with fits of frustration or an overflow of faith.

It’s not a matter of God’s trustworthiness; it’s a matter of our trust.

You’ve trusted me as the keeper of your soul, He whispers. But will you trust me as the keeper of your doors as well?

Nearly two decades later, I’m still learning that God’s inexplicable no’s are always wrapped in immeasurable love.

But on that day in our little rental house, I took my first shaky step toward surrendered trust. As a streak of sunbeams danced with the dust bunnies on our dirty hallway floor, I pulled my toddler onto my lap and planted a kiss on his soft head of hair. Then I wiped both of our tears with the back of my hand, and I offered up this humble prayer–

“God, I know you love me. Help me to trust you more.”

My prayer didn’t immediately assuage the pain of those closed doors in my life. But it reminded me that God’s affection can’t be measured by his yes’s or no’s. 

Sometimes His love looks like a wide open door and other times it looks like a door closed tight. The uncomfortable truth is this–

God’s love is mighty enough to knock down doors and merciful enough to hold them shut.

And the question that God whispers to our pining hearts this new year and every day to come is an echo of one tearful mama’s murmurs over a frustrated two-year-old  years ago….

“Could you please just trust me?”

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, do not lean on your own understanding.” Proverbs 3:5, ESV

How are you being challenged to trust God as you step into the new year? Leave us a comment and we’ll cover you in prayer.