We're not talking about Jim Morrison here. I want to talk about "doors" real solid doors. Or maybe more accurately the metaphoric doors that we close in our lives. As we transition through life we seem to be always closing doors on some portion of life and opening up a new one.

As I was thinking about this it occurred to me that the metaphor of the door worked pretty well, actually. Consider how you close doors. Sometimes you just push it to...a gentle push that doesn't quite close the door but rather leaves it maybe just a little ajar or touching the frame but not latched so that a gentle breeze or wayward cat can just push it open again. I've closed a few of those doors. We moved from California to Texas and closed a door just so. It never really closed. We had family and friends still in the Golden State and we were traveling back frequently. For a while we kept the door open by continuing to own property there. It just did not close quite all the way but for all intents and purposes we had shut that door and opened a new one for our family.

There are other doors that we close a bit more securely. You know those doors that even when you close them you have to turn the knob or give them a bit of a push to get the latch to click. These are perhaps the most difficult of doors because they require intentionality. You have to actually push them, turn the knob, click the latch. Once you do that they are closed and it will take an effort to reopen them if we want to go back. Sometimes we do grab hold of the handle and give it a turn so that we can revisit the past, but, for the most part we closed that door for a reason and it stays that way. There have been more than a few of these doors in my life and I suspect most of you know at least a few of them as well.

But, when we actually slam a door shut we know that it is closed. We have made a bold statement about how important it is to us to close that door and we don't care who knows that we closed it. We close with gusto and turn like the apostles in Matthew 10 who shake the dust off their sandals as they leave as a sign that they will have nothing to do with that again. It is a statement that not only are we moving on but we are actually finished with that part of our live and have no interest in ever going back. I don't think I have really ever slammed a door closed when I left, though there are a few that not only did I latch the door but I also turned the deadbolt and hooked the chain.

So why the discussion on doors. Well I was struck by something someone said today in another post about locking the door on a home they had had for a long time and saying a bittersweet good by to that part of their life. It made me think about those moments in my own life. It also made me think about the doors that opened. My grandmother was quite fond of using the expression "When God closes a door He opens another one." I know some folks say He opens a window but grandma probably knew that would be all the incentive I needed to try and climb out a window just to see what it was like (but, I digress).

If we hadn't closed the door on my early career with Disney I would never have had the chance to become the CEO of several companies. We would not have met so many of our friends, people with whom we share our lives. I might have missed my children growing up and all things considered their lives, too, would have been very different. There is a plan for us and doors close and open to move us along. Sometimes more than one door opens and we make choices and sometimes we really wish we could close a door but there is no other door to go through if we do.

At the end of the day, though, I have to say that as hard as it was to close some of those doors I would not have wanted to stay where we were. The doors that opened led to wonderful surprised and great experiences. We found new friends we tried new things and we continued to grow and mature in ways we could never have anticipated. So to my great friend who closed her door today...Godspeed, there is a whole new world waiting as you go through that new door.