When God Uses Your Voice at Someone Else’s Threshold
What I learned about obedience in the doorway. A true story about timing, trust and one unexpected sentence.
Happy Easter! I know my post today “should” be about the Resurrection. But this is what came through. So whenever you find this post, I pray it blesses you whether it’s on Easter Sunday or “for such a time as this”.
When God Uses Your Voice at Someone Else’s Threshold
Picture yourself standing right within the door to… and from… somewhere. That somewhere is the threshold that allows you pause between familiarity and comfort (or discomfort) on the one side, and that hopeful place lesser known (or completely unknown) on the other.
Whatever you decide within this Way of The Door determines – something. How will you pause there?
I have coached, consoled, encouraged, and taught many in a doorway. Hmmm. Now isn’t that a sentence to sit with? (The Holy Spirit is already at work. Buckle up!)
What do you think of when you think of a doorway as a symbol?
I am already reminded of The Dreamer blog because dream interpretation is so interwoven with prayer and connection with your spirit.
Threshold Moments
A long-ago memory now, I sat at a desk five feet from such a doorway for several years listening to many “threshold moments”. The moments could last from twenty seconds to hours. This threshold moment was short but felt long in the best way.
You see, there was a problem. A complaint. A worry. A doubt. Familiar threshold complications. But this was personal. I had unintentionally overstepped. I had taken from someone a moment that was greatly desired. Innocent on my part; I felt in partnership. But painful on her part.
She, the woman in the doorway, felt unseen.
It is a terrible thing to feel unseen. It is a lie. But it is a terrible thing. It is a marvelous thing to know that we have a God who sees us, personally, and cares deeply. But it is a tragedy not to understand that this is real and true.
On this very mundanely human day, the lie of being unseen gained a foothold in that threshold five feet from my desk.
There are times in my life when I am more and more grateful for life experience. For age. For wisdom imparted to me totally undeservedly but for which – at these moments – I am humbled in gratitude when the moment of wisdom arrives. (For I have no part in it. I know Who allows for it. I am the vessel. Let’s just say I am grateful in the moments when I step aside and allow the intercession of the Spirit of Wisdom to use me for good purpose. I know I’m merely a crumb with a mouth. If loud.)
In this moment, Wisdom arrived in the form of a gigantic ear on my heart. Wisdom listened. Wisdom did not interrupt. Wisdom took the bullets. There were many bullets. (This is also how I know it wasn’t me. And how experience and suffering, if you are prayerful, alert, and vigilant, play a huge role in these doorway moments of life.)
It should be noted that I was in a position of authority. So the conversation and complaint took courage and trust on the part of the thresholder.
After hearing – hearing – what she thought; how she felt, the most outrageous response flew out of my mouth calmly, assuredly and honestly.
I am here to love you.
It was so … right. It was so… on point. Is this me speaking? It disarmed everything. Because it was honest. I can think now on plenty of individuals who could have been standing in that doorway where my ability to vessel (as a verb) would not have triumphed.
But God knows who he’s working with. And on this day – and I do believe this – it had little to do with me directly – though it rocked me forever – and everything to do with what she needed to know.
She needed to know this particular truth about God.
I am here to love you.
You know what’s funny about this memory? That’s pretty much all I remember. That one point.
I am here to love you.
I guess the Holy Spirit doesn’t much need me to remember the specific issues that brought her to the doorway. But He sure wants me to remember what brought her through. And what will bring me through.
And what will bring you through.
I realize there is a time and place, trust and tone, for such a comment. Not everyone can give it in a way that will be honored and not everyone can receive it in a way that will be trusted.
But what if more people invited this truth into their conversation? If not of outer voice but of heart and mind?
What would happen in doorways all over the world then?
Here’s to the threshold. Here’s to the things we hear in the unassuming holy pauses of life.
And here’s to knowing you’re loved as you decide how…or when…or if… you will walk through that door. Until then, stand firm. Feet planted. Knowing…
He is here to love you.
And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.1
1 John 4:16