Vacuuming vigorously one morning, I was almost finished and only had to do the carpet inside the bedroom closet. I grabbed the closet door knob to open the folding door, but ended up holding the door up. One side of the door was still attached to the wall, but the other side had come off its track. I left it alone, and decided to ask my husband to fix it when he got home.
One thing led to another that night and I didn’t even think about it until we went upstairs to go to sleep. When he saw the door he mumbled, “no problem,” and pushed the door back a little bit. It wasn’t closed, but it wasn’t quite as bad as before.
I woke up the next morning, unhappy with the half-opened door. Grabbing the edge of the door with my fingertips, I tried to drag it shut, but it wouldn’t budge. So the only alternative was to find a handyman and see if we could get it fixed. I went downstairs to finish getting ready for work and shortly after that, the closet door was the last thing on my mind.
The next morning, I told myself that I would look for a handyman, and what happened? Life got in the way, again. Before long, I sort of was getting used to having the door half open and it wasn’t really bothering me as much as it had before.
The weeks went by and soon we were decorating for Christmas, getting the winter quilt out of the closet. Shortly after that, we were opening the house up for summer, and getting the summer quilt out of the closet. Then, we were decorating for another Christmas.
One day over the holidays, my best friend came over to pick up some books that were stored in the huge bookcase right outside our bedroom. As we walked past the room, she said: “Gina, your closet door is open.”
Laughingly, I replied, “Oh it’s been like that for ages, and we don’t even see it any more.”
“Well,” she said, “you know, if you want it fixed, my son Brandon can do it anytime for you. So we set it up for him to come by the next day and get the unhinged door back on track. As I looked at the finished product, I marveled at the difference it made.
Then I realized the significance of taking action on something that needs to be fixed, but could easily be overlooked. This time it was just a door, but how many other instances cross our paths every single day? I said a prayer of thanks to the Holy Spirit for this gentle reminder, and resolved to be alert for all those unhinged times where my actions might make a difference.
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This is part of the series called “The Human Being Fully Alive” found here.
