Have You Opened the Door?

“On Wednesday morning, the first rays of sun were peeking around the clouds,” my daughter Charity wrote. “I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. Strange dizziness clouded my mind. I have a fever, I thought. I must be getting sick. Objects around me seemed to move with each turn of my head. I walked to our tiny bathroom. Cold tile greeted my bare feet. I reached for the cabinet’s portal and grabbed the thermometer. I lifted it to my ear and waited until it beeped.

“I read the number. That’s when the fear started. Just a whisper of confusion. Something was happening. My temperature was perfectly normal. Something else was making me dizzy.”

From that morning on, Charity’s abilities fell away like puzzle pieces. Events swirled completely out of control. Like a vicious tornado, her illness caught all of us in its churning vortex. Within a mere twenty-six days, we watched helplessly as she lost the ability to walk, talk, and think. She went from a healthy twenty-six-year-old wife and mother to an invalid, completely paralyzed, fighting for her life and unable to move–except for her eyes. Those big blue, expressive eyes broke our hearts.

Specialists in white coats, their stethoscopes hanging from their pockets, all began their visits with the same question: “How did it begin?”

In perplexing rote, we recounted that morning. “She woke up feeling dizzy, like she was getting a cold.”

All the wise specialists and all the wise surgeons who couldn’t put her together again murmured, “That was likely the portal.”

When the door to susceptible health opened that Wednesday morning, it allowed something much more sinister to enter.

When I heard those words—susceptible health—throughout Charity’s illness, I often thought of the truth they represented in my own spiritual health: Open the door of temptation, and sin enters.

In the first book of the Bible, God told a jealous and angry Cain, “Sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it” (Genesis 4:7 NKJV). The first murder recorded in the Bible happened when Cain refused to shut the door to lurking temptation. Cain did not rule his anger; he allowed it to smolder, directed at his brother Abel. While they were in the field together, Cain killed Abel. Although God warned him about the open portal, Cain left the door open, and sin waited to spring.

Offense, comparison, and jealousy are struggles, like cracks in a door. If left unattended, a stealthy breeze blows the crack wider. Anger, pride, and lust push into the corners of our thoughts. Temptation becomes more difficult to fend off, stepping over the threshold into sin seems reasonable. Entertainment of thought grows to completion in action.

I feel it daily. I compare my abilities with others’. I wonder why I have been dealt certain trials and heartache. I am frustrated with family members. I complain.

“Be angry, and do not sin,” the apostle Paul warns. “Do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil” (Ephesians 4:26–27 NKJV).

Shut the door.

Like Charity’s head cold, which allowed her body to receive something more devastating, raw emotions left to brew rule spirits and destroy relationships. I open the door to cutting words and angry actions. Sometimes I let myself believe my sinful behavior can’t be helped; I feel justified for doing something I know I shouldn’t.

I forget that as a child of Christ, I have a new Master. His Spirit gives us strength to shut the door to sin. I do not have to walk through its beckoning portal. I have a choice.

Yet, that is the clincher. That is the Great Physician’s question. Do I want what Jesus wants more than what I want? Therein lies the portal.

In the last book of the Bible, we are once again presented with a door, this time with Jesus himself knocking. ^“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me” (Revelation 3:20 NKJV).

I have never known temptation as strong as during my daughter’s illness. Our trial offered lots of opportunities for bad things to happen in our hearts. Satan is no gentleman, and he strikes when we are weakest. Sorrow shone light on dark places in my heart I’d never realized existed. Weakness in my character begged to grow into full-blown sin. Doubt, bitterness, and anger pushed a toe into the tiniest cracks. Blame hovered.

However, I also found the immeasurable kindness of Jesus knocked on my heart’s door, patient and full of love. He was ready to close cracks and open doors to his presence, peace, and strength each moment. Sometimes I chose his sufficiency; sometimes I opened another door.

Today my daughter’s life looks different than anyone expected. Physically constrained to a power chair, she is grateful she can still be a wife and mother to her children. We have found a door always waits to be opened, and the knob is within reach, but the strength to choose the right door comes from Christ.

Sylvia Schroeder and her husband care for missionaries world-wide with Avant Ministries. Captivated by God’s Word she writes with the perspective of someone who lived and raised four children overseas. Twelve grandchildren in her heart often wiggle onto her pages. She blogs at When the House is Quiet.

Photograph © Ari Spada, used with permission