Effectively Dealing with Life’s Closed Doors

?“Come, my people, enter into your rooms and close your doors behind you; Hide for a little whileuntil indignation runs its course.” Isaiah 26:20

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“And I placed boundaries on it and set a bolt and door. And I said, ‘As?far?as?this?point?you shall come, but no?farther…” Job 38:10-11

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At some point during each year of your life, you will experience a different season. Winter becomes spring, spring becomes summer, summer eventually becomes fall, and fall will find its way into winter. The changing of each season is a closing of one door, allowing for the opening of a new door, with renewed hopes and dreams. Winter ushers in the cold, with a dormancy of nature, with longer periods of darkness and shorter periods of light.? Spring brings with it an awakening of the dormant aspects of nature, a renewal, the sunshine, and an air of brightness. Summer ushers in a greater sense of warmth, shorter periods of darkness, with longer periods of daylight. And then there is fall. Fall is the closure for summer, in preparation for winter, with a mixture of the three seasons that precede it.

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Imagine if winter never ended, spring refused to leave, summer decided it would continue its elevated temperatures, and fall lingered forever with a daily canvas of orange, brown, and gold. There is a reason why God made four seasons when he created heaven and earth. He knew that you and I, as well as nature would need to have variations of light and darkness, as well as hot and cold, for our very survival. He also knew that each season had to bow out by closing its door, giving way for the door of the next season to make its grand entrance. Every season has a term and a time, and for every closing, there is either a reopening or a new opening.

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“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1

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It is important to recognize that in life, doors will open, and doors will close. Some doors close slowly, allowing you time to make the right decisions and to make the right moves. Some doors close abruptly, without warning, such as death. And some doors seem to slam in your face, impacting you negatively, emotionally, psychologically, physically, and spiritually. Many relationship doors and doors that forge connections with people seem to close abruptly without warning. However, there were signs and red flags occurring along the way. You didn’t want those doors to close, and you continued to keep them open, when they should have been closed.

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There will be doors of good and doors of evil; doors of love, and doors of hate; doors of loss, and doors of gain; doors of strength, and doors of weakness; doors of success, and doors of failure; doors of sorrow, and doors of joy; doors of tears, and doors of laughter; doors of sunshine, and doors of rain; as well as doors of happiness, and doors of sadness. The greatest level of confidence in life is knowing that when one door closes, another will open…eventually. On many occasions, it seems as if the doors of negativity tend to remain open far too long.

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A closed door often implies disappointment, a setback, loss, finality, and the end. On the other hand, a closed door can be seen as an opportunity for you to redirect, refocus, revamp, and reconsider your decisions. A closed door can serve as preparation for you to get ready for a great comeback. Closed doors can sometimes be experienced as disruptions of your life’s journey, while God meant for them to be an interruption to gain your attention and get you back on track. Some doors are temporarily closed, allowing you to grow in your beliefs, your thoughts, your mindset, your expectations, your faith, and your preparation to move to the next level of your life.

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A closed door can also be seen as a covering and a protector for and of your psychological, emotional, physical, spiritual, and economic wellbeing. Sometimes a closed door has nothing to do with you directly. It exists to move you beyond a level of selfishness to selflessness. A closed door can be an opportunity for you to think about we and us, instead of the usual, me, my, and I. A closed door can be a covering to protect you from hurt, harm, or danger. It can be used to keep you in line, to help you to become more patient, to move you to the right place, to place you in the right room, with the right person, or with the right people, in the right position, to help you to establish clear and consistent boundaries, and to strengthen your faith,? ?A closed door in your life can also be seen as a deterrent to keep you out of the wrong room, to move you away from the wrong people, as well as move you away from detrimental and harmful people, situations, and circumstances. Sometimes you are better off with some doors being closed on you. Let some closed doors remain closed!

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The problem comes when you try to keep doors open that probably should have never been opened or that need to be closed. Some of your life doors are meant to close, allowing you to see and behold your purpose in life and for life. In all actuality, you must assess, evaluate, and decide how much you contribute to opening doors of negativity, as opposed to opening doors of positivity. You must also decide how much you contribute to keeping doors of negativity open, while blocking doors of positivity from opening.

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Many of you have experienced relationship doors closing when you wanted them to remain open. All doors that seem to contain relationships might just be doors leading to situations. Because a relationship is for the long haul, it takes two people to engage in a true relationship. Hence the vows taken when two people marry, ‘until death do us part.’ On the other hand, a situation is for convenience. It is tentative, and for the benefit of one and not for two. The door to a situation was never fully open, but somehow is pushed open or propped open without love and without commitment. The door should have been left in the closed position from the onset. If you are looking for a positive and healthy relationship, why do you keep accepting situations?

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If you would like to engage in healthy and successful relationships, it’s imperative that you stop engaging in unhealthy and failing situations. Had the door not closed on the situation in which you engaged for many years with a cheating, disrespectful, noncommunicative, broke azz remained open, you would have missed the open door leading to the respectful, loving, and caring Boaz. You must stop opening doors of misuse and abuse and start paving the way for doors of love, respect, care, and acceptance to open. Get rid of the zero, allowing yourself to be recognized and accepted by a hero. Oil and water don’t mix!

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Because God made humans, other living creatures, as well as things of nature with seasons in mind, it is a reality that throughout your life, doors will close on love, doors will close on the life of loved ones, and doors will close on many things, many people, and many events for which you are not prepared or expecting. When their terms expire and their expiration time arrives, doors will close whether you are ready or not. The problem isn’t so much that doors close in your life, as it is how you deal with the closed doors of life and how you get back up. Life and fate will allow some doors to reopen, if and when the time is right, and if God gives them the order to reopen.

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If it’s meant for you to reengage with your mate after a breakdown, a breakup, or a divorce, it will happen. The late, great Luther Vandross once sang, “Love is better the second time around.” Sometimes it’s best to leave the closed door of what you thought was love, as opposed to lust, in the closed and bolted position. It is unhealthy and detrimental to your very being when you try to keep hallowed doors with broken hinges and broken locks propped open, when they can’t remain open on their own. A reminder, people don’t change, they grow!

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As humans we often make choices and decisions based on where we are and with whom we are sharing life at a particular time. The life doors that you decide to open and the person(s) you decide to open them with or for, might fit for that time, whatever the reason, and only for that season. However, when the term and time expire on the person, the people, the situation, the decision, the place, as well as the event, it is time to close the door, let go, and let God. You will not move forward as long as you keep looking back, going back, and walking backward. When you truly close doors on the expired, you must not keep cracking the doors open to check on the expired contents. You must get up, look up, step up, hold yourself up, and behold the doors of newness that lie in front of you.

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“Trust in the?Lord?with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6

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It is important to recognize that some doors might seem difficult to open. However, with prayer, perseverance, determination, faith, hope, and trust in God, the doors that are meant to open for you will open. No matter how much envy, how much jealousy, how many haters, how many barriers, and no matter how many roadblocks are placed in your way, and along your path, doors that are meant to open for you will open. Doors that will bring you love, truth, success, health, peace, understanding, wealth, prosperity, along with any other blessings you desire and deserve, will be there for you, and the doors will open for you. There will be no devil in hell or anywhere else that can or will keep the doors of your blessings closed.

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It is up to you to gain and use discernment when deciding which doors you will close, as well as which doors you will allow to open in your life. Discretion should also be used when making these decisions. The death of your loved ones is a door that will close many times over and over again, until it comes and closes on your life. However, you must decide that because the doors of death have closed for loved ones in your life, you will choose to stick around to see and behold what is behind the doors of life for you. You will choose to open doors of a healthy and fulfilled life, with love, wholeness, and happiness. You do have a choice in the matter, and you can choose which doors you can and are willing to open and close! As was stated in the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley, ‘you are the master of your fate, and you are the captain of your soul.’

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“I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.” Revelation 3:8

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As long as you are alive, and as long as you are willing to keep living, you still have opportunities for other doors to open. Physical as well as the proverbial doors of life are meant to close and open. Your level of psychological, emotional, and spiritual preparedness for such openings and closings will determine your level of overall survival in life. One thing is for sure, doors of opportunity never close; they always remain open! The decision comes down to, whether you choose to let go of the closed doors in your life, close the doors that need to be closed in your life, and boldly walk through the open doors of opportunity in your life.

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?“I will place on his shoulder?the key?to the house of David;?what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.” Isaiah 22:22

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With the closing of the summer season and the opening of the fall season, this might be the optimal time for you to begin to take a panoramic view of your life, specifically the various doors that are currently open in your life that need to be closed, as well as the doors that have been closed, but you won’t allow them to remain closed. Your ability to close and open doors in your life is a mindset! It is time for you to make up your mind, change your mind, and explore how often you are allowing others to control the opening and closing of your life doors. How often are you relinquishing your power to others, rendering yourself powerless?

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What about your relationship doors, your situation doors, your employment doors, your financial doors, your spiritual doors, as well as other doors within your life? You have been praying for a new and more lucrative job position. However, the door to the job you desire will remain closed as long as you keep the door open by remaining in the job you dislike, while taking no action to secure a new job.

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You pray, asking for truth, but somehow, you keep doors of lies open. Doors of truth won’t open and cannot open as long as you keep engaging in lies, engaging in deceit, while associating and affiliating with liars. Close the doors on lies, deceit, and liars for doors of truth to open. You keep seeking positive change and positive outcomes in your life, while holding doors of pessimism, skepticism, doubt, and lack of motivation open. Until you close those doors, doors of optimism cannot and will not open. Your quest to open doors of love will not occur until you close the doors of selfishness, self-hate, hate for others, betrayal, disrespect, and actions of disingenuous behaviors. You claim to want justice in life, while you keep doors of injustice open. You treat your employees unfairly, you punish those who shouldn’t be punished, and you won’t vote. Opposite doors have difficulty being open at the same time. One must close for the other to open. Which doors are you willing to close? Yes, God CAN and WILL close and open doors. But what are you going to do???

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Take out a pen and pad to begin to answer the following questions. What are the messages God is trying to tell you that you continue to ignore? What are the red flags that you have been ignoring in your relationships, your situations, your circumstances, and on your job? What about your emotional, psychological, physical, spiritual, and financial state in life? What doors do you need to close and move forward, without continuously looking in the rearview mirror of your life? What keeps you from loving yourself enough to move forward as you look through the windshield of your life? What can you do and what are you willing to do to close doors of negativity, allowing doors of positivity to open? What resources (human and others) do you need to help you to close the negative doors in your life?

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Not only does God have the power and the authority to close doors, but God can also open doors that no man, no woman, no boy, and no girl can close.? And if there is no door, God will either make one for you or find you a window to open. God can, and God will make a way, not only for you to access the positive doors in your life, but for you to also gain entry through the doors that lead to your life’s destiny. Unlike mortal men and women who talk and speak about “equity,” God is an ‘equal opportunity God!’ God is the passage to and through any and all of your life doors. He can defend, he can destroy, and he can get good out of all evil!

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Dealing with life’s closed doors can be very challenging. Trusting God and moving forward after doors have closed in your life can be even more challenging. It is time for you to close the doors of mess, stress, loss, and pain in your life and begin to focus on God’s promises for your life. It is also time for you to close the chapter of this phase of your life, allowing yourself to experience the gains of the next chapter of your life.? If you are facing challenges and fear in dealing with closed doors in your life or with you closing those doors that need to be closed in your life, and moving forward, seek the help of a licensed mental health professional or a certified life coach to help you along your journey. Keep praying and believing in God for your open doors of positivity. ?Get up, stand up, look up, speak up, look forward, as you keep hoping, and keep the faith! There are doors ready to open for you. Remember, God can, and God will! And because God CAN, YOU CAN!!!

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“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8

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“Those that entered, male and female of all flesh, entered as God had commanded him; and the?Lord?closed it behind him.” Genesis 7:16

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Don’t forget to read Dr. Joyce’s blog, titled, “Engaging in the First Session of Psychotherapy Treatment” ?https://doctorjoyce.blogspot.com

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