The God on the Other Side of the Doorway

Three Generations Hiking Lake 22 Trail

Retirement has a way of making you look back over your life.

Not just the big moments, but the small turns. The conversations you almost forgot. The doors that opened briefly and quietly before closing again.

Lately I’ve found myself thinking about a few of those doorways.

One takes me back to high school when a drummer from our school band asked me to sing lead vocals in his heavy metal band.

Even now, that sentence makes me laugh a little.

I said no, of course.

Truthfully, I’m not even sure why. Maybe I was cautious about the crowd he ran with. Maybe I worried where all that might lead. Or maybe I simply didn’t trust myself enough to step into something that uncertain.

Then another memory surfaced.

Years later, while studying French horn at Chautauqua with a member of the New York Philharmonic, she pulled me aside one afternoon and told me she thought I had real potential. She invited me to come study with her in Georgia where she taught.

And again, I said no.

Over the years I’ve tried to explain that decision to myself. Money probably played a role. Geography too. But looking back now, I think the deeper fear was simpler than that:

What if I wasn’t actually good enough?

Because sometimes the hardest thing to accept is not criticism.

It’s possibility.

It’s someone seeing something in you that you are not yet able to see in yourself.

And maybe that’s why these memories have been resurfacing now.

Because retirement, I’m discovering, feels a little like standing in another doorway.

My dad died at sixty.

For much of my adult life, I’m not sure I ever truly imagined retirement emotionally. Somewhere deep inside me was the assumption that life would simply keep asking things of me until one day it stopped.

So standing here now, preparing to retire while I still could continue serving, I’ll admit:

it feels strange.

There are moments I wonder if I’m making a mistake.

Moments I wonder if I should go longer.

Moments old questions creep back in:

Do I deserve this?

Am I stepping away too soon?

What if I walk through this doorway and discover I was wrong?

But then I think about another doorway in my life.

The Pacific Northwest.

For years my daughter Cassie nudged us toward it. Other family members did too. But I resisted. Moving across the country felt enormous. Leaving familiarity behind always does.

And yet eventually we said yes.

A few days ago we were hiking the Lake 22 trail together — me, Cyndy, Cassie, Devon, and Emerson.

At one point we stopped on a small bridge while cold mountain water rushed beneath us. Emerson stood there smiling beside us, surrounded by moss-covered trees and the sound of the river moving through the forest.

And standing there, I had one of those strange moments where life suddenly feels visible to itself.

I realized the other side of that doorway was not success.

It was this.

This life.

These people.

This landscape.

This softer, fuller version of myself I could not yet imagine back when we were trying to decide whether to move west.

Sometimes the “bigger life” God is calling us toward has nothing to do with becoming more important.

Sometimes it is simply becoming more alive.

And maybe that is what doorways do.

Maybe they are not tests at all.

Maybe they are invitations.

Moments when life asks whether we are willing to loosen our grip on the smaller version of ourselves we have grown comfortable protecting.

Because every doorway carries risk.

There is no guarantee on the other side.

No certainty.

No proof ahead of time that we are enough.

Only the quiet possibility that something larger may be waiting for us there.

A new relationship.

A move.

A child.

A calling.

Forgiveness.

Retirement.

All of them ask the same question in different ways:

Will you trust life enough to keep becoming?

And maybe that’s why these thresholds matter so much.

Because a lot of times we stand before them asking the wrong questions:

What if I fail?

What if I’m not enough?

What if I make the wrong choice?

But looking back over my life now, I’m beginning to wonder if the deeper question has always been:

Am I willing to keep becoming?

Because a lot of times God is on the other side of those thresholds, waiting to embrace a bigger us if we’re willing to walk through them.

Not a more successful us.

Not a more impressive us.

A more spacious us.

A more alive us.

A more fully human us.

And now I’m wondering if retirement is really an ending at all.

Maybe it is more of a doorway.

A doorway inviting me to write more.

To spend more time in gardens and on hiking trails.

To linger longer with grandchildren.

To pay attention to parts of life that ministry sometimes pushed to the edges.

Not because those things are selfish.

But because they are also part of being fully alive.

For so many years my life has been shaped by responsibility, urgency, sermon deadlines, meetings, hospital rooms, and the deep privilege of walking with people through joy and grief.

And I will always be grateful for that calling.

But maybe this next season is inviting me not to become a better version of myself so much as a fuller one.

A more attentive one.

A more grounded one.

A more present one.

Maybe that is what God has been doing through many of these doorways all along.

Not making me more impressive.

Simply more human.

Looking back now, I can see how many of the most meaningful chapters of my life began with uncertainty. A move across the country. A new call. Relationships I could not yet imagine. Grandchildren. Deep friendships. New ways of understanding God.

None of them arrived with guarantees.

Only doorways.

And maybe faith itself is simply learning to trust that there is a God on the other side of them.

Your pastor and friend, thankful for the god on the other side, Brook