The Door We Keep Closed

October 25, 2026

Most of us have a room somewhere inside that we keep the door shut on. It isn't a big dramatic room. It's more like a spare bedroom where we've stacked the things we don't want to look at: the phone call we didn't return, the visit we kept putting off, the apology that got stuck in our throat and never came out.

We walk past that door every day. We get very good at not noticing it.

I've been thinking about that room a lot while writing Bluebonnets and Magnolias. Mags, my main character, has one. For years she was busy, the kind of busy that feels important, and she told herself there'd be time to go home and see her grandmother Blue. Next month. After this deadline. At Christmas, surely. And then Blue began to slip away into dementia, and the time Mags thought she'd been saving up turned out not to be hers to spend.

That's the guilt Mags carries back into Calloway, Texas. I won't tell you what she finds there. But I will tell you I didn't have to invent that feeling from scratch. I suspect you didn't either.

Oh bother, guilt is a heavy thing. It tells us two lies at once. The first is that if we just don't look at it, it'll fade. The second is that if we do look at it, it'll swallow us whole. Neither one is true.

What I've found, in my own life and on the page, is that healing usually starts the moment we stop pretending the door isn't there. Opening it hurts. Old wounds sting when the air hits them. But a wound that's covered up and ignored doesn't heal right. It just festers quietly while we smile and say we're fine.

That's where prayer comes in for me. Not the tidy kind, but the honest kind. The kind where I sit down and say, "Lord, here's what I did, and here's what I didn't do, and I can't fix it on my own." There's such relief in that. Scripture promises that if we confess, He is faithful and just to forgive (1 John 1:9). I've come to believe that forgiveness isn't God pretending the room is empty. It's Him walking into it with us, turning on the light, and helping us carry things out one box at a time.

Facing guilt doesn't mean drowning in it. It means naming it, grieving what was lost, making amends where we still can, and then accepting grace where we can't. Sometimes the person we wronged is still here, and we get to pick up the phone. Sometimes they're not, and the best we can do is honor them by loving the people still in front of us better than we did before.

Mags has to learn that. I'm still learning it myself.

So here's my gentle nudge for you this week. If there's a door you've been walking past, maybe just put your hand on the knob. Say a prayer before you turn it. You don't have to clean out the whole room today. You just have to stop pretending it isn't there.

And if there's someone you've been meaning to visit, go. Bring a pie if you're nervous. Pies make everything easier.

Here's a little prayer I've been praying lately. You're welcome to borrow it:

Lord, You see the rooms I keep closed. Give me courage to open them, and grace to face what's inside. Forgive me where I've failed, heal what still hurts, and help me love the people You've given me while I still have them. Amen.

Pull up a chair on the porch anytime. I'm glad you're here.

With love, Susie Blue

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