Blocked Doors

I came home the other day to a house of blocked doors. Not just shut doors, closed doors, or locked doors. Blocked doors. Blame them on Molly, our nine-year-old, ninety-pound golden retriever, who, on most fronts, is a great dog. When it comes to kids and company, Molly sets a tail-wagging standard. But when it comes to doors, Molly just doesn’t get it. Other dogs bark when they want out of the house; Molly scratches the door.

She is the canine version of Freddy Krueger. Thanks to her, each of our doors has Molly marks. We tried to teach her to bark, whine, or whistle; no luck. Molly thinks doors are meant to be clawed. So Denalyn came up with a solution: doggy doors. She installed Molly-sized openings on two of our doors, and to teach Molly to use them, Denalyn blocked every other exit. She stacked furniture five feet deep and twice as wide. Molly got the message. She wasn’t going out those doors. And her feelings were hurt. I came home to find her with drooping ears and limp tail. She looked at the blocked door, then at us. “How could you do this to me?” her eyes pleaded. She walked from stack to stack. She didn’t understand what was going on.

Maybe you don’t either. You try one door after another, yet no one responds to your résumé. No university accepts your application. No doctor has a solution for your illness. No buyers look at your house. Obstacles pack your path. Road, barricaded. Doorway, padlocked. You, like Molly, walk from one blocked door to another. Do you know the frustration of a blocked door? If so, you have a friend in the apostle Paul.