Making Big Decisions
“What do you want to eat for dinner?” I asked.
My husband was tying his shoe laces just before walking out the door to work.
“What are my choices?” He stood, adjusting his belt Just So as his shoes clip-clopped on the wood floor.
“Chicken or fish. I can make ginger chicken in the crockpot or broil salmon with cauliflower.”
“I dunno,” he smiled. “You decide.”
I somehow knew this would be his answer, and decide I did: we wound up eating crispy tofu with roasted butternut and Brussels sprouts.
That’s how a lot of decisions in my life get made: I weigh the options I am presented with … and half the time I wind up going sideways.
Decisions, like what to eat for dinner — or which t-shirt to wear, or which shampoo to use, or which way I should turn at the end of my street whilst on my evening walk — those choices are easy.
But present me with a Big Decision — like buying a new car or whether or not I should marry my high school boyfriend or breakup with him six weeks before our wedding (spoiler alert: I broke up with him …. but then married him anyway 10 months later and yada, yada, yada, we just ate crispy tofu for dinner) — those Big Decisions almost-nearly-always-for-sure paralyze me.
It’s not because the Big Decisions are expensive decisions, or life-altering decisions, or energy-expending decisions. It’s because of all those reasons … but there’s also more to it.
Conflict.
What If?
Fear.
Doubt.
No one feels conflicted over whether or not they eat the salmon or the chicken. There is no “what if I mess up and wear the wrong t-shirt when I drive my daughter to school today?”. Fear isn’t part of the equation in choosing the moisturizing cleanser over the clarifying one.
But with the Big Decisions ... conflict weaves itself through the What Ifs that snake-coil around a white-hot lump of fear which pulses deep and pungent in that tight place just between your heart and your brain.
I made the decision to abandon my pursuit as a fine art photographer so I could begin the journey toward Ministry — and that decision seemed so satisfyingly obvious, so clean, so natural — and now I must make the decisions regarding which Graduate School, what major, what final outcome I hope to achieve on this path toward Ministry …
And here I am, at the threshold of all those decisions and choices, the reality peeling its unexpected layers before me like some sick-sweet anxiety-laced horror.
Am I being melodramatic?
Always.
But that’s truly how this feels to me. Right now. Today.
I prayed to God about not feeling capable for this task. And God reminded me Moses, former royal-turned-sheep-herder in his tottering old age, didn’t feel qualified either.
I prayed to God about not feeling worthy for this calling. And God reminded me Paul-the-Christian-serial-murderer didn’t feel worthy either.
I prayed to God about not feeling qualified for this job. And God reminded me Peter, the brash fisherman who knee-jerk defended Jesus in Gethsemane mere hours before thrice hysterically denying he ever knew the guy, certainly didn’t feel qualified either.
Conflicted, I stoped arguing with God and got to work narrowing down the school I wanted to attend, attempting to concretely decide on a major, crunching tuition numbers, evaluating my time management ability, and reconciling my current level of coping skills with what will be required to wrestle the sheer enormity of the task before me into a submission leading to Graduation. And then —
What if I read God all wrong? What if I came to all the wrong conclusions? What if I was embarking on utter foolishness?
And then I realized this thing I’d so blithely signed up for was going to cost me at least four (if not eight) years of my life — and then I did the math and realized I’d be graduating when I was something like 52 years old … and while that’s not Moses geezer-level, it’s dauntingly so far flung into the future of The Great Unknown that my heart is pounding just sitting here writing the words in stark white on black.
I am almost literally paralyzed at the thought of making these Big Decisions.
So. Much. Conflict-WhatIf-Fear-Doubt.
I know all the trite things to say and think when I’m staring, deerlike, into these swiftly approaching, blindingly white lights —
“God’s got this.”
“Trust the process.”
“Faith over fear, love.”
But I’ll be totally honest with you right now: those words aren’t helping calm me down. The staggering nature of the very next steps that need taking, to cross that chasm of Point A to Point B, to quench that white-hot lump pulsating just between my heart and racing brain … the only words I have to express that level of doubt rising in me is —
crying in the shower.
Crying is the same as words, right? Both words and tears are equally capable (and the latter perhaps more so) of expressing what is truly happening in a conflicted soul.
I don’t know what to do right now. Where I now stand, I have so many decisions to make. Big Decisions … or a bunch of mini decisions that retroactively lead to the one Big Decision I’ve already made by choosing to finally listen to (not merely hear and ignore) this Calling …
And now that I’ve worked myself up into an even greater frenzy, it’s time to make tonight’s dinner.
We’re having chicken.