Decisions
Life is full of decisions. What to wear, what to eat, where to travel, etc. I think we make about 50,000 decisions a day. A lot of the decisions do not require much thought. But then there are decisions that can be life-altering. These decisions can shake you to your core and at times make you feel physically ill. In today’s world of COVID-19 and all the politics of the elections, there are decisions I struggle with and never anticipated having to make.I remember the time my husband and I were trying to decide where to live. A rather large decision. However, I don’t remember thinking if we made a “wrong” choice and didn’t like where we ended up that life would end. Fast forward to life today and our world looks different. For some maybe a lotand others a little. I am finding now that I struggle more with making decisions. If I take it a step further, I would say I struggle most with making decisions that will impact others, like my kids rather than just impacting myself. Is that weird? Recently, many of us had to decide about schools. I struggled so much with the questions of do I home school, virtual school, private school or public school my kids. Will they keep their old friends, will my children struggle making new friends if we change schools? Will he/she be the weird “new” kid. All these thoughts go racing through my mind. I have this tendency when I’m making a decision to let my mind spiral down what I call “the black hole,” can you relate? If I don’t pause and stop these thoughts,my mind will go places that hold no truth and have no validity. These thoughts are mostly fueled by fear. We all have to make decisions—but some of the questions I ask myself are to get to can feel so daunting. Did you know there was a study done looking at emotional pain and the receptors in the brain? In this study people were given Tylenol prior to being told painful news. The study found that the Tylenol would actually diminish the emotional pain response. How do you bring yourself back to reality if your mind begins to go somewhere negative? How do you stay grounded in your decision making? I wish I could say that I always pray first, but I’m embarrassed to say that most of the time I fall short. I’m so worked up or caught off guard about “the decision” that I forget to pray and instead try to push ahead and “do it myself.” That usually doesn’t end well. Has anyone else been there? I frantically go as fast as I can do get things figured out so I can move on to the next thing. However, in the process I mess up ten other things and the one thing had I slowed down would’ve been decided. So, here is what I came up with to help my decision making. Whileit’s not perfect, but it usually works for me. First, I try to stop and pray a focused prayer with specific asks. If I can’t do this, then the next thing I try to do is walk through the worst possible outcome. While this may not be the best advice, it breaks off the chains and eliminates the power that this “decision” has over me. It frees me and gives me the ability to pause and breath. Once I can quiet the anxiety and inner negative voices, I am then able to focus my prayer and think logically. Next, I find wise, trustable counsel to bounce my thoughts off. Sometimes this is my husband and other times it’s a safe grounded friend. Lastly, and maybe most importantly, I look at what the Bible says about the “thing” I’m deciding about. I try to always be aware of how easy it is to lose sight of God’s promises. I think of the time when the Lord tells Moses to send each of the ancestral leaders of the Israelites out to look at the land God had promised them. (Numbers 13) If you know this story you know that they all came back with grand reports of the land. You would think they would be excited to take over their land. Well on the contrary. All the men, except a man named Caleb, did not believe the Israelites would be able to defeat this army. Because of fear and lack of action, the Israelites wandered the desert for 40 years! Ladies, when we have trials or decisions that are hard let’s remember to dig in, lean on each other, trust God’s promises and do “the thing.” I would love to hear how you work through your tough decisions. Leave a comment on our Facebook page or Instagram @goodnessandgraces. Let’s pray during these rapidly changing times that we don’t forget to lean into our God that never changes.
Heavenly Father, I pray that you remind us that you are constant, never changing and always near to those who call on your name. Help us to remember to call on you when we need help and that nothing asked is too small or too large for you. Lord, I ask for pause and time that we can see focus on you so that we may have joy to be a light in times of darkness. Father, thank you for being our constant. Amen