Kim Gaskill shares a travel story from a family road trip to California. Locked out of a hotel breakfast, she reflects on how closed doors sometimes lead you somewhere better, and what it means to keep moving forward.
It is a beautiful day in Oceanside, California. I'm Kim Gaskill and this is the Daily Spark. I'm here in Oceanside, California vacationing with my sister and my nephew. You guys know I road trip all across the country and I'm always by myself, but this week I brought my sister and nephew with me to see some of the sights and we left Fayetteville, Arkansas, traveled across to California, hitting some sites, and then we're going back. So this morning I got up from the hotel, and I normally get up early and have a routine in the morning. And when you travel with other people, sometimes it's a little difficult to stay on your routine. So I got up early, left the room, went down to the breakfast area, got some eggs, some coffee. I thought I would sit out there and do my morning routine, try and take care of a little bit of business, let them sleep in. And so that's what I did. So I get my eggs and my coffee, and there's a nice little patio area right outside the door of the breakfast bar. And so I thought, well, I'm going to go sit on that patio area. It's beautiful this morning, about 60 degrees, 57, 60 degrees, and nobody was out there. So I thought that'd be great, be great. So I get my eggs and my silverware and I take it out, and I had set my coffee on one of the tables inside, and I walked out the door and set down my plate, and I was going to go back in to get the coffee. Well, the door shut behind me and it locked. I didn't have a card key with me and it didn't have a card key entry like the other side door entries, so I couldn't get in anyway. And at first I was a little bit frustrated, I gotta say. I'm like, oh shoot, now I gotta go all the way around the building and go back in and get my coffee. And then I was like, is there even another gate to get out of here? Because it's all fenced in. Well, there was another gate, so I got to that gate, exited the little cafe area, walked all the way around the hotel, came in through the front went back into the breakfast area, grabbed my coffee, went back out through the door, but this time I asked the girl if she could put the little lock key in it to keep it unlocked and open so I could come back in if I needed to. And I got to thinking when I sat down, you know, I could have gotten really frustrated over that, but I didn't. I thought about doors. Open doors, closed doors, those doors that we go through, those opportunities that we have. Are we going through a door that locks behind us? And how are we reacting when that happens? If I have an opportunity and I enter that door to take that opportunity and it immediately closes behind me, now I'm bare, out in the open in this new environment. And that's scary. Our first instinct is to withdraw back to that safe place, go back through that door. To what we know as comfortable. But sometimes we need to stay in that new strange place, that place on the other side of that locked door, to explore the possibilities that are there. Now once we're there and we see that that might not be the place for us and we need to retreat back through that door, fine. But don't be so quick to go back through and don't be upset if that door shuts on you for a moment or for a time. While you explore this other area. And there may be other doors that you can enter on the other side of that space that you're in. So sometimes we don't need to go back through those locked doors. Sometimes that's a blessing for us, for that door to slam shut behind us so we don't continue to go back to places that are not moving us forward. So think about that today. Are you going through open doors? Are you continuing to move forward? Or are you trying to get through those doors that have shut or locked behind you and stay in that safe place? Think about it and join me tomorrow for another Daily Spark.
