Oftentimes we don’t find ourselves at the precipice of choices. We don’t find ourselves in a movie named ‘Labyrinth’ with numerous paths or doors to open. Most likely we find our mental paths opened to us at the most inopportune times, when we least expect or desire them.

This painting is a deliberate attempt to illustrate the doors within our minds, within my mind, that I choose or don’t choose to open.

I was wandering the streets of Antigua, Guatemala, when I came upon this doorway (seen below). The streets are littered with them. Each one more intriguing than the last. Coupled with their ancient architecture, lighting and all-around romanticism, it’s no wonder that I took a photo.

The painting I later created from it (first image above) was meant to display the choices I had. Open it? Open Pandora’s box? Pass it by? What was in Pandora’s box? Memories? Reminisces? Hauntings?

We all have such doorways in our psyches leading to unwanted memories, repressed memories, forgotten memories. Oftentimes we hold the keys without awareness and outside influences can turn them in the tumbler faster than our denials, opening doorways to sights and sounds unforetold.

This is why I painted a doorway, with my hand before it, holding THE key. The decision had not been made to open it NOR had it been made to leave it shut. I feel that many of us are in this holding pattern for an indeterminable amount of time.

This is not healthy. We must break free. Either we open and confront or we keep shut and wash it away.

We cannot live in a moment of indecision or unpreparedness. That is not a life. It is not living.

Which is why I determined at that moment I painted to grasp every key given me and open every portal before me in order to embrace every memory/confront every enemy presented.

For those of you unaware, Christians are given certain keys in the Bible, to loose or bind things. It’s much more technical and involved than I’m describing, however, for my personal story, it is sufficient. In my heart and soul, I knew without a doubt that this was one of my keys. I could not do NOTHING. For so many years I was weak and scared, angry and aggressive. And it was all from fear. Fear of disbelief. Fear of reprisal. Fear of forgiveness. (Who fears that?) Fear of forgetting. Fear of remembering. So many fears, I cannot name them all. Fear of weakness. Fear of prayer. Fear of peace.

When one lives in anger for so long, any change other than rage can cause huge ripples in the muddy puddle of water we see as vengeance.

But I know that vengeance belongs to the Lord, as He claims. Although I sought to claim it for so long myself.

There is no peace in that.