Close the Door Quietly

I woke up happy for the first time in a long time. The weight of the past. The unfinished house. The frustration of being left behind. The loss of my parents. Being unable to attend church. The absence of going to work. All of these things have been a very heavy presence in my life lately.

In recent days some things have come to an end. The end of keeping a door open. The finish of being frustrated. A final good-bye to what was. A clear and evident choice to quietly close the door.

It is not easy to move on. So many things keep preventing us from taking certain steps. We live in the false reality that maybe we could have done something different. We leave the door open for a little longer in hopes that perhaps we could go back and say some things we should have said when they left. We hope for one more encounter to plead our case. We wait for an apology we know is not coming.

At some point we just have to close the door quietly and choose to move on. To take the next step. To go forward with life and not returning to what was once the life you knew. There is a freedom in closing the door. Though slamming the door would give a part of us great satisfaction however, it is not as satisfactory as quietly letting go. There is a finality to doing it quietly. A peace takes over when we gently walk away.

I can’t say there won’t be reminders of the past once the door is closed, but when you roll up at a stop light and in the car next to you is your past you can continue to sing your worship song as if they were just another driver on the busy road of life.