Ya’ll know I am all about a great tv series. I started watching this show called Succession on HBO, a must see. Just a quick background, it is a story about a family who is in business together. The father is aging and about to be succeeded by his son however, when it was time for that to happen the father backpedaled and continued to run the business. The son was furious and decided to have a vote to remove his father and put himself in power. The son thought he had all the votes to win. He’d met with individuals secretly to make sure they all chose him and not his father. But when the time came for the vote, the son lost. His father immediately had him removed from the building and terminated.
After some time passed after the termination, the son says this line that awakened me. He says, “I spent all this time trying to get a vote I thought I wanted but losing actually put me in the direction I needed.” Wow. The likelihood of people getting this revelation after rejection is so unlikely, especially when no success has happened since the failure. We spend so much time dwelling on our defeat that we never think maybe this is the closed door that will catapult our life. Maybe this no is what we need to make us start that business or travel to that destination or meet that special someone or get our actual dream job.
And this is nothing new, this is something we hear about often. Closed doors are just God’s way of pushing us towards his best. The closed door leads you down the hallway to your opened door opportunity. That closed door causes you to notice the open window for you to be successful. Yes all cliche but always hard to grasp in the moment of the breakdown.
When I left my career in Boston I was guilty of not getting this revelation immediately. I was extremely hard on myself, disappointed and upset with people for my exit. It was hard for me to forgive myself and others for the way it happened. But when I think about it, had I not come back to Jersey I would have never found this makeup career I love. I would have never improved friendships, spent this time with my parents and taken care of myself had I still been in Boston. Had I not left what I thought I wanted, I would’ve never found what I needed and deserved.
I pray I can always look at situations like this no matter how hard it is. I pray I am reminded that there is always something better even if the better has not arrived yet. And just because that better opportunity arrives, that still does not save me from further hurt & failures. I’ve actually never received more rejection in my life than in my makeup career. But I can not and will not allow that to crush me like before. This life will always be full of ups and downs, but I’ve promised myself to throw my hands in the air like on a rollercoaster and enjoy the ride.
#dearLife God is still God in the sunshine & the rain.