for my friend, The Door

I’m knocking at your door,

“Come out dear friend.”

You’ve lived in this small room so long

the walls have become your skin.

The windows your eyes, 

shades lowered allowing minimal light.

A rumpled rug at the entrance threatens to trip your coming out.

There are no mirrors in your space, 

could you not bear the truth you imagined?

A brittle bundle of twigs leans in a dusty jar on the coffee table

Once, the scent of sweet violet, deep rose and earthy fern drifted from them.

Vibrant and hopeful they offered cheer.

Now void of color and life they mock you and pose as the mirror you tried to avoid.

I hear chatter inside, 

but I know that sound.

I remember when I would turn the TV on, switching between potential

distractions and settling on anything -

just some noise to silence uninvited voices. 

Someone else’s drama.

Someone else’s room.

I see you try to leave your room sometimes.

Cautiously venturing into new spaces.

Does everyone else seem brighter to you?

Like they live with many mirrors so everything’s in place?

Neat and tidy?

Smooth and pressed?

And do you wonder if that’s real?  Or possible?

Have you noticed, that when you think you’ve left the room it’s still there?  

It never leaves you and you never seem to leave it.

Remember? - It’s become your skin?

The room is more inside of you, than you are inside of it.

The colors, it’s size, it’s dimness, memories and sounds 

all morphed into an identity that feels cramped and restricting 

yet strangely comforting and secure. 

Stubbornly wrapped around flesh and bones, heart and soul, 

holding everything in place.

Like a jacket you’ve outgrown but insist on wearing.

You know its smell, the soft worn edges,

and each smooth button that holds you in tight.

You wear it with every outfit,

for any occasion, 

in all weather.

It feels so natural that you’ve grown unaware that it’s out of place.

“I beckon you to come out.”

Friends join in, entreating you from the room that seems to go wherever you are.

To leave this room that has defined you with language spoken by an enemy.

Out of the narrowed space and the diminished resources of abdication.

Out from the murmurs of distant voices, the ones that replay after the actors and actresses are quieted.

The words and phrases and non-truths of your past play like a live-stream. 

I know it’s hard to turn them off. 

Fake news is so believable.

“Come out here!”, we call together.

To a space wide open and bright with warming love.

To a place where every beautiful thing is your true mirror.

Leave the tattered jacket for royal robes.

Pure and spotless.

Perfectly fitted for you. 

For dancing and twirling.

For running and resting.

Suitable for a crown.

They hang waiting in a wardrobe with your name inscribed in scarlet letters.

But not in your old room, so come through the door.

Walk through the open door.

Like Lucy moving through the wardrobe into Narnia - 

pass through a hidden door.

A New door into the kingdom of truth.

It’s not the same door you’ve tried a hundred thousand times already.

The one whose handle waits just beyond reach.

That door - which even after climbing up to its cold knob requires too much strength to push open - that’s the wrong door.

“Open the door!”

This door was not fashioned by human wisdom or new methods 

or by steely will and determination.

No!  

This door is a New door.

It is warm and alive.

It is flesh and blood.

Spirit and soul.

This Door has a name.

Jesus.

This Door is The Way out.

Out of the old room.

And this Door is The Way in.

Into the new expanse of your true, free life.

There are no keys required to unlock it.

No secret code for entrance.

The handle is not too high.

This wooden portal requires no human strength.

Pure, blameless blood already bought your permission to step through.

I know that acceptance and rejection tangle and try to catch your feet like a snare posing as a rug on the way out.

Still, I call out to you my friend,

“Come through The Door!”  

Accept the forgivingness.

Reject the shame.

Accept your identity.

Reject the lies.

Accept the royal robes.

Reject the old rag jacket.

Accept the new beautiful territory on the other side of This Door.

Reject and leave that old, stifling room.

“Come out my friend!  Come through the New Door!”

We will laugh and sing together.

We will eat and drink in freedom.

Pure white robes will swirl and streak across dark skies like shooting stars, drawing other friends to venture out of dim rooms.

They will watch and wonder if they might find such a Door of freedom.

And we will tell of the day we saw that there was another Door 

and bravely turned towards it and walked through.

*Written for my friend