Closing Wounds and Opening Windows

The following is an excerpt from Walking Tall: A Memoir About the Upside of Small and Other Stuff

I always thought the phrase “When God closes a door, He opens a window” was inaccurate. I understood the concept of good things coming out of bad circumstances, but the closed-door open-window adage irritated me because it implied either one thing or the other was happening: God was withdrawing opportunities or presenting opportunities.

The maxim also didn’t take into account active waiting with faith. I’ve been of the mind that God was constantly trying to give us answers to dilemmas we face, but we need to be still and shut out the noise to hear His voice. There have been instances when I would have made a complete mess of an opportunity had it been presented to me at a time that I wasn’t prepared to deal with it, and then I would have been in worse condition than before. With that thought in mind, I’d like to amend that adage: when God closes a door, He will open a window, but in His own time. I had no idea that soon after my trip to France I would have the opportunity to test those very convictions.

It had been a full year since the Dot Com crash in 2000. Things with my job at the Beverly Hills film production company were tentative at best. The staffs in New York and L.A. were slowly shrinking due to layoffs. The death knell went out as the consultants and rainmakers had been brought in to save the day.

Almost three months to the day after my vacation in Paris, on a Friday afternoon in August a window was slammed shut and boarded up. I was unceremoniously laid off. You’d think that losing that job at that particular time would have completely devastated me, but it didn’t. I won’t lie and tell you that it didn’t matter, because it did. Getting laid off was like getting hit in the face with a brick. I quietly packed up my things and drove away from the sunset to the San Fernando Valley.

As I drove from Beverly Hills through West Hollywood that Friday after-noon, I had plenty of time to think over my situation on the way home. It dawned on me that I had fallen for one of L.A.’s oldest ruses: I allowed my self-worth to be tied up in my job. Deep down under the disappointment and the anger that went with being dismissed, I had a feeling that everything would be fine.

While winding through the curves of Laurel Canyon, I called my agent and informed him that I was available for auditions again. Without missing a beat, Bruce told me he had, not an audition, but a booking for me three
days later.

The shoot was for an episode of The Nick Cannon Show in which Nick was going to take a tongue-in-cheek, yet educational, peek behind the microphone at the music industry. I was to play one of three diminuitive janitors who were discovered and groomed by Nick to become a sensational boy-band.

Over the course of the shoot, the other two mock boy-band members, Mark and Shorty, brought up the subject of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. I was still emotionally a little raw from having been laid off and mentioned that I had been offered a role in the show two years ago . . . twice. When asked why didn’t I take it, I told them that I turned down the gig for the job I’d just been laid off from. Mark gave me a name and a number at the Radio City production offices to call.

The next morning, I called and spoke to a woman. I gave my name, told her of my previous audition in 1999 and their two previous offers of employment. I tried my best not to sound desperate, but I’m sure I gave myself away when I told her I was more than available for any position they might have open in any of their tours. In typical New York fashion, I was given a chilly “We’ll be in touch,” which set me in a mood to open a vein for the rest of the day.

Yet another door slammed shut, I thought.

First thing the next morning, I got a call from the Christmas Spectacular production offices. A pleasant woman on the other end of the line told me that the director-choreographer remembered my audition and that they would like to offer me a role in the brand new touring show, Christmas Dreams. Rehearsals were to begin in New York City in mid-October, the company would then move on to West Point for technical rehearsals, and then open the first week of November at the Fox Theater in Atlanta. Finally, the show would conclude in Cleveland for a month’s worth of performances.

I couldn’t believe it. In the space of five days I had been booted from one dream job and plopped down in the middle of another one. If I had not been open about what happened at the production company job, kept up my Everything’s-Right-In-My-World game face, and not said a word about the audition two years prior, I would have completely missed the opportunity to do the Christmas Spectacular. Some might call it luck. I call it Providence flinging a window wide open.

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The rest is history. God blessed me with twelve years with Christmas Spectacular. Those years were more than another item to cross off a Bucket List. The people I met, the places I went, and the things I did changed my life forever.

To those of you who may find yourself in the position of having a door slammed shut or the proverbial rug snatched out from under you, rest in the knowledge that the same God who opened the door for you in the first place, has another door that He will open for you in due time.

For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, Plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
—Jeremiah 29:11