Decisions

Making decisions is hard.  And it always has been for me.  It takes me 20 minutes to pick out which shampoo I want to buy from CVS.  Seriously.  And don’t ever ask me where I want to go for lunch.  I’ll just keep listing places until you say, “Yeah, let’s go there.”  I am indecisive and altogether scared of making decisions.  Even dumb ones like buying shampoo.  And for a while, I got away with being indecisive…or at least, no one got hurt by it.  But I don’t believe that God wants it to be that way.

I think God made people to make decisions.  That’s why He gave us free will.  God made us talented, unique, and intellectual beings because He wanted to see what we’d do with it.  Some religions don’t even believe that mankind has free will (I know this from our High School Sunday School Comparative Religion Series); and that’s kind of crazy.  Imagine life where your decisions just needed to line up with rules.  You were created and placed on earth to see how far you could get with following rules.  And then Christianity comes and says: “you’re free to do whatever you want; but choose wisely.”  Sometimes, I wonder which would be the better life: the one dictated by rules? Or the one where I choose what to live by?  For an indecisive gal like me, that’s actually a tough question.

Then I heard this sermon on Sunday, and it got me thinking about making decisions.  Making wise decisions.  Like the sermon points out, it’s not about just making decisions.  Heck, I could do that.  I would just shout out whatever came to mind first.  “I’ll have strawberry ice cream!” “I want the purple backpack” “Let’s get burgers” “I’ll take the cheapest shampoo you got!”  And I think for things like food and backpacks (ok, maybe not backpacks…those are important) making quick decisions is ok.  But it’s the big stuff that really gets me.  The stuff that makes your stomach tie up in knots.  The stuff that keeps you up at night (not me, I’m the sleeping queen.  I just meant for you).  That’s the stuff that worries me.

After listening to that sermon, and really, after thinking about the last 25 years of my life (hey, I turned 25!), I decided to make decisions.  The sermon suggests doing 6 things before making a big decision: pray for guidance, get the facts, ask for advice, calculate the cost, prepare for problems, and face your fears.  By doing these 6 things, you should be able to unregretfully make big decisions.  So, ladies and gentlemen, I’m taking this method for a spin.  I’m in the process of attempting to make a big decision.  And you know what…I’m pretty scared.  It could turn out badly.  I could get crushed.  But I’m tired of not making decisions.  I thought I was living safely by being passive; but really, I was living faithlessly.  Taking steps are much different than reacting to circumstances.  I think I’ve just been too scared to try the former. 


Here goes nothing. Or actually, here goes everything.