Praying at a Closed Door

As a chaplain and minister, I've heard many prayer requests over the years and most of them from people content to ask for so much less than they deserved or desired. Unlike televangelists or the Pat Robertsons of the world, most folks were humble and contrite in their requests wanting nothing more than a change in their attitude, relationships, physical illness, or job situations. What they were really asking for was healing

When Jesus says "Knock and the door shall be opened," and "Ask, you shall receive," I take him at his word, but so often I have knelt or cradled my wounds at some door -- closed, shut and impenetrable. This is when I'm in real trouble. The easy answer -- find the open door, but when I do, I realize I'm on the Titanic. I don't need a door but a life raft.

Lately, I've been making my knuckles raw pounding on that door: pondering if the best of life is over because of a looming empty nest; knowing I am changing physically and spiritually AGAIN and I can't control the outcome; worrying about my potentially life threatening and certainly quality-of-life threatening illness; responding to the command to finally move out of Texas and into the mountains -- mine and my husband's lifelong dream; but, wanting answers of where, how and when, NOW.

I am asking the right questions, at the right time but from the wrong perspective. God's time is not my time and God's concerns are for my spirit and not so much about my body or earthly constraints. God cares for me, YES, but God cares for that part of me that is infinite -- the spirit living a human existence. Changes the answers doesn't it.

Mother Teresa ministered to the lepers and the Dalia Lama has lived in exile- both over fifty years. Nelson Mandela prayed for the healing of a nation from a jail cell on Robber's Island for twenty-seven years. Jesus spent forty days and nights in a desert, without food and water, seeking his answers. The spiritual life is never easy.

The optimal time for a woman to give birth is when the cervix has thinned one hundred percent and opened to ten centimeters. There is preparing, nesting, laboring and yes, even pain, before the head crowns.

So I will sit at my door to wait for it to open. And knowing me, I will bang on it from time to time, but I will keep this forward in my mind -- pause, breathe, listen and discern. The possibilities are endless and God is choosing the right one for me.