Last time we talked about the challenges that we face when a door, or an opportunity, closes but something else or another door doesn’t immediately open to us. We find ourselves, as it were, stuck in the “hallway.” It is not unusual to stand there tapping our foot, waiting for another door to open. But I wonder, are there better ways to make use of our time in the “hallway,” and I would contend that there are.
For example, one of the hardest places to wait is in a “relationship hallway.” We may have been dumped by someone we deeply cared about or we may have exited an unhealthy relationship. We find ourselves alone in the hallway, hurting, feeling lonely and abandoned and wanting desperately not to feel this way. We have two choices: we can pause, stay in the hallway, and take steps necessary to get healthy before exploring another relationship or we can force the next door open and quickly jump into another relationship to medicate our pain.
I have known individuals who have been married 7 or 8 times because they hurriedly went from one relationship to the next, avoiding long-term pain but never getting healthy first. Therefore, they just drug their same baggage from one relationship to the next.
This same idea can apply to everything from job changes to financial struggles. But time in the “hallway” can be precious and valuable time if we will use it to listen for God to guide us on His time table – not ours. We can hear Him in the “hallway,” if we will, in ways we never could while all seemed to be going well. As C.S. Lewis said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.”