The Open Door

My sister and I were in a local shopping mall when we got the message:   "Please come home quickly.    Dad has had another epileptic fit and I can't get him awake."

We ran to the parking lot where we had parked the car and took the journey home, not knowing what was waiting for us, t Our discussion centered around the past months and the tests that were done and how we need to check more diligently if dad was taking his medication as prescribed.

When we got home, we found the garage door already open.   My sister was the first one to open the side door leading to dad's garden flat.    I was close behind her.     I saw her take my dad's pulse and I stared at his pale face   I was.expecting to find dad slumped in his chair and breathing heavily like usual during one of the attacks that had plagued him a lot since January 2011.

I put my hand on his head and felt the coldness there of, and for  that moment a coldness lodged itself in my very soul.    She sat next to him and felt for a pulse on the other wrist.   "Here is no pulse!"  she said calmly.   I reached for his heart inside his warm jacket and imagined I heard a small breath and argued with Linda.    She put her hand in front of his nose, but the verdict remained the same.    There was no pulse!

In that moment the world froze for ever.   Nothing would ever be the same.    That which was precious, a constant in my life, would never be again.    The foundation I had been building on, counted on and shared so much with, had been ripped from me.    A  door had closed forever shutting my life shared with my beloved dad.    A new door was facing me and it was very scary.    For so many years he was my sounding board, my councelor and my comforter.    Now in that I was alone.   The door to me being the next generation, the next runner passing on the baton, was overwhelming.

One door had closed, leaving the steps that I followed in behind me.    In front of me a new door challenged me.  In that one moment of death I had to breathe life into the footprints and legacy I wanted to carve out for my children.

Although the thought terrified me, it also comforted me.   I had been given the blue print for my footsteps which I needed to design the road of my own legacy.

Jesus said:  "I am the door."   As long as I am walking through His door and following His footsteps that leads through that door, I would be OK.    I would not be alone.   I will be like the traveler on the road to Emmaus.    Marveling at the things dad had shared with me and waiting for Jesus to explain it to me.

I am praying that when Jesus comes to close the door on my life, that the footsteps I have left, would be the legacy for my own generation.