What to Do When a Door Closes

You know when something feels like a chore instead of a joy? Something is off. Either you’re burned out or you’re not in your sweet spot. Maybe both. Vocations and relationships can both oscillate between exuberance and burnout, all in one tidy little pendulum. That vague feeling that something is blasé is a mild version of what can happen when the pendulum gets stuck on one side.

When a situation becomes so painful, so traumatizing, so heartbreaking, it becomes obvious that it’s a turning point. You know a door is closing in your face. You can almost smell the wood. You’re not in your sweet spot—not anymore, at least. The joy has morphed into a toxic mess.

A closing door is one of life’s more difficult hurdles. This isn’t redirection, which is much more manageable: a little turn here, an adjustment there. Instead, I mean a door slamming closed, the deadbolt banging into place. This is more than just a pivot. It’s like entering another dimension. Maybe betrayal is at the heart of the event. Maybe someone else’s self-preservation caught you in their fire. Whatever the cause, the shock is part of what makes it all so awful.

My pastor has described these times in life as being like getting your legs chopped out from under you. You’re walking along, hustling, grinding, achieving even, and then, “Thwack!” All of a sudden, your legs are lopped off at the knees, and you’re alone, teetering there, bleeding.

A friend once told me that it takes “men with chests” to do what our husbands do. She was referring to C. S. Lewis’ book, The Abolition of Man, and his thesis that men with great moral courage are necessary to do what’s right. One must have compassion, courage, and conviction to do very difficult work: a chest that’s not empty of virtue.

The same is true for women. I see it every day in the military spouses in my community. It takes guts to stand alone while your person is God knows where, doing God knows what. It takes great moral courage to tramp along, a baby on one hip and a toddler on the other, up the switchbacks of life. Just to put one foot in front of the other can require us to pull from reserves we didn’t know we had. Women I know get asked, “How do you do it?” The answer is that they are people with chests—bold hearts—doing what they have to because that is what courage and circumstances require.

But what about when, in the midst of doing the hard work and the right things, the door slams and leaves us stunned? When our legs are lopped off mid-stride, even though we were in the habit of slogging along the high road? That “thwack” feels like an indictment, a betrayal. It’s a shock we never saw coming. I think they call this “getting kicked when you’re down.”

This is the moment which requires the greatest of all moral courage—which we can only possess in Christ. Like Job’s wife, we wonder in the secret places of our hearts whether it’s better to curse God and die (Job 2:9). It is then that the only strength left to draw on is Christ’s. The only plan left to trust in is his.

I wonder if God allows circumstances to bring us to the end of ourselves for the same reasons he did with Job, but my knowledge of my own sin quickly disabuses me of any spiritual pretensions. We are all losers compared to a man about whom God bragged, “There is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil” (Job 1:8 ESV).

Why do bad things happen to good people? That’s the question, right?

We live in a sinful world. That’s the obvious and unsatisfyingly true answer. Sin infects. It is a poisonous gas that infiltrates everything. The only solution is to always be at the ends of ourselves, because that is where God reveals himself in his glory.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. If you want to make him sad, try to save some of that manna. Store it up for tomorrow. When it turns to mold by morning and you’re hungry, that’s when you remember, once again, that God alone is the provider of our daily bread.

“Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Jas. 1:16-17).

The truths I know are simple. If you have lately been brought to your knees, too, you’re in good company. There are plenty of us here. The good news is, we couldn’t have saved ourselves anyway. We’d have botched the job. Total reliance on God for every good and perfect gift is where he wants us to be. For the stubborn, like me, he must bring us to the end of ourselves first.

Rhiannon Kutzer is a homeschooling mom of five and proud Navy wife. She works hard to be what Chesterton called a “Jill-of-all-trades,” chronically trying new projects for the sheer joy of exploration. She’s addicted to coffee, enjoys dark beer, and loves to be in the mountains. You can find her on Instagram @rhikutzer.

Photograph © Jessica Felicio, used with permission