Closing Doors and Clear Windows

I have a thing for windows.

Not stained glass windows, though I do find them beautiful. I love plain windows. Big windows with clear glass that I can see through and that let in the sunshine. 

 During my college years, my bed was usually in front of the one window. I would spend countless hours sitting there and looking out onto the campus observing, thinking, and daydreaming. Especially my freshman year, I was always by our window.

 My roommates found it odd, I think. Their quiet and timid third roommate who was often too complying and reserved became a forceful and commanding hurricane only once- when they threatened to block her window with a mini fridge as a temporary logistical fix. 

 I couldn't explain it then. I just needed my window. Maybe it was the sunlight my body craved during the long winter. Maybe it was my curiosity as I people watched. Maybe it was the beautiful tree whose branches grazed the glass. Maybe looking out the window felt safer than walking out the door. 

Maybe it was all of those things. But now, I find window watching to be a visible action that portrays my longing. 

 I long for spring again, with sunshine and flowers. I long for hiking trails with my dad again. I long to have an endless amount of time to work on my novel and have the words flow freely. I long to see new places and explore new countries. I long for marriage and children.

But there comes a time when I have to stop looking out the window and focus on the doors that lead to places.

So I've been knocking.

There is a door called marriage that feels permanently locked. With a dead bolt. For the longest time I have been sitting at the window waiting to hear the chains being lifted off the door. But lately with God's help, I have been shifting away from the window and toward new doors. Doors that would combine my love for writing and my desire to travel. Doors that are completely opposite of marriage, but more toward where God seems to be directing me. 

Lately, those same doors have been closing.

I find myself at the window again.

I recently read These Strange Ashes by Elisabeth Elliot where she shares her story of her first year as a missionary in the jungles of Ecuador. Elisabeth's goal was working toward creating a written language for the people so they could read the Bible. She worked hard that year, going through many trials, but she made progress- only for all of her notes and pages of language study and creation to be lost at the end of the year.

 Can you imagine? This is what God had called her to do. And it was clearly His will for the gospel to go forth. So why would He allow all of her good work to be destroyed?

 Elisabeth says, "I felt like a son who had asked for a fish and had been given a scorpion. I had honestly (surely it was honestly?) desired God. I wanted to do His will... It was a long time before I came to the realization that it is in our acceptance of what is given that God gives Himself. Even the Son of God had to learn obedience by the things He suffered... Each separate experience of individual stripping we may learn to accept as a fragment of the suffering Christ bore when He took it all" (These Strange Ashes).

My new doors made sense, at least to my small and limited mind. If marriage wasn't in my future, surely this opportunity where only my singleness would allow me to go would be in His plan?

 But it doesn't have to make sense to me. Often, it doesn't make sense to me and maybe never will. 

So I sit at my window again, looking out and wondering what I will do, what I will be. Yes, there is longing. There always will be until every longing is fulfilled in heaven. And there are closed doors I wish would open. 

 But for now they are closed. And it is a stripping, as Elisabeth says. "Each separate experience of individual stripping we may learn to accept as a fragment of the suffering Christ bore when He took it all" (These Strange Ashes). 

 This is life sometimes. Maybe often. We go to Ecuador and lose a year's worth of language work. We don't go overseas even though we long to travel and write stories and serve. We don't get married or have families. Our writing doesn't get published.

 But it is for our good, our sanctification, and His glory. 

"Of one thing I am perfectly sure: God's 

story never ends with ashes" 

(These Strange Ashes).