Sometimes God closes doors you still love

Sometimes God closes doors you still love.

Not doors you hated, not doors that harmed you, but doors you poured your heart into. Doors you painted with your prayers and framed with your dreams. Doors you thought would always stay open. And when He shuts them, it feels like He shuts off the light inside you too.

Sometimes He edits the chapters you thought were the best ones. He takes the pages you clung to, the ones you thought defined your story, and with one stroke of His sovereign pen, He rewrites what you thought could never change. And there you stand—staring at that closed door, staring at those altered lines—wondering who you even are without what you lost.

It is not only the door you grieve. It is the you that existed before the door closed. The you who belonged there. The you who felt whole there. Now, stripped of that identity, you feel like a stranger in your own skin, fumbling through the ruins of who you were, aching for the familiar version of yourself that feels gone.

And yet… sometimes you smile anyway. You quote the verses. You tell others He’s enough, because you know it’s true, even when part of you secretly wishes He would give you back what He took away. You whisper “Your will be done,” but somewhere inside, you are still hoping for “my will too.”

This is the refining no one signs up for.

This is the surrender no one volunteers for.

This is the kind of breaking that feels like death, yet carries the promise of resurrection.

Because sometimes the only way to truly grip His promises is to let go of everything else. To hold loosely what once held you tightly. To unclench your fists around what you thought was your forever so you can cling with both hands to the only Forever that remains.

And in the end, maybe this is where identity is truly found—not in the doors that closed, not in the chapters that ended, but in the One who holds the keys, the Author who writes it all, the Keeper of every beginning and ending.

And perhaps one day, I will look back at the ashes of what I lost and realize: the door that closed was not rejection. It was redirection. The chapter that ended was not a loss. It was preparation. The God who takes is the same God who gives, and somehow, even here, I am not less—I am being remade.