When God Closes a Door......

The completion of this line from "The Sound of Music" is "somewhere He opens a window." My last blog post was very much about a door that not only closed, it slammed shut with not even a crack of light. I am a person that has lived my life with the belief that everything happens for a reason. My challenge comes when I don't see the reason right away. I believe that God has a plan for me. I have always believed that. The verse I keep focusing on this year is from the book of Jeremiah, Chapter 29, Verse 11, "For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." However, my impatient, human, need to be in control nature, demands the blueprint when really what I need to do is trust. I'm not saying that I should sit around on my hands and wait for God to bless me and run my life. I need to play an active, vital role in my life, but when things don't go the way I thought they would, I need to trust in that invisible blueprint. Eventhough God has opened that window time and time again in my life, when that door slams again, I panic! It throws me into despair, and worse, I start flying against the closed door like a trapped bird who somehow got into a house and is desperately trying to get back to the open air and freedom. Another quote I love from Helen Keller speaks to that very issue, "When one door of happiness closes another opens; but we often look so long at the closed one that we do not see the one which has opened for us." The very next day that we found the college door closed, a window opened to give us a great place to live that we had wanted. Does that solve the college issue? No, but it proved to me that there is "hope and a future" It may not be the future I planned, but I can certainly trust the Planner.