Linking up with Five Minute Friday today.

The theme:

When He shuts a door for you, He doesn’t always open a window.

Sometimes He opens the door… but later.

Or the window is cracked open, but you have to push and shove and fuss with it.

Or there’s no door and no window and just you being still and sitting with it for days. Or months. Or more.

Or sometimes another door swings to wide open but you don’t like that door. It’s purple. And you don’t like purple. Why would God give you a purple door?

Or He asks you to go through the window, and it swings shut and wacks you on the arse as you squirm through.

A bit over three years ago, I was drowning. I had a horrible addiction to wine, you see, and any other sort of lovely numbing alcohol, and I couldn’t quit.

I just couldn’t quit.

There were doors all around me. Doors to hospitals, and rehabs, and AA meetings, and churches… And even a door to my father’s house – he is an alcoholic in recovery, over fifty years of recovery, and his door was wide open.

I was surrounded by doors, wide open, bedecked by flowers, well swept walks, outstretched hands…

Prayers.

But I wouldn’t walk through any of them. Too terrified. Too stuck. Curtains drawn.

God didn’t shut the door. He simply showed me all the others. And then He helped me to get up and walk out of my own.

Into meetings. Into churches. Into words. Into prayers.

And yes, into my father’s house, where I told him who I was.

And he hugged me and reminded me who he was.

And in it all, God kept telling me, “I am. I AM.”

“I am bigger than all of this. I am bigger than addiction. And fear. And pain. Keep walking.”

So, every morning, I choose to stay sober for another twenty-four hours. Every day, I pray, “Lord, please keep me sober for another day. Just today.”

And then I grip His hand tightly, and we walk through the door.

Together.