Decisions

The wind is howling outside, buffeting the trees and the window panes as it blows. My wooden chimes are being flung maniacally to and fro, battered but still hanging on by their thread. It all feels a bit like a metaphor for what I am feeling internally. I too am feeling blown this way and that, buffeted and battered and just wanting a little peace and quiet and the chance to get the dirt out of my eyes. And the cause of this internal disorder? I have to make a decision about something, one of my least favorite things to do in life. I would rather clean my bathroom, wash dishes, or even go to a doctor’s appointment than have to make a decision. It sits on me like a heavy stone gargoyle, hunched and grinning.

As I’ve often said to friends, it’s easy to decide between good things and bad things, or even good things and just okay things. But deciding between two options with a seemingly equal amount of good and bad elements is pure agony for me, because then it becomes a situation of having to figure out which good and bad things should carry more weight and which should be squelched or ignored. Which are going to cause more pain and regret in the future, and which are going to offer more benefits. Though I have always regarded them with a certain amount of skepticism, I have also always been a bit envious of people who say things like, “God told me to…” or “The Lord put it on my heart to…” I have never gotten those types of communications. Apparently, they have a phone line that I never got connected to. It’s like when I first wanted to sign up for DSL and was informed by my phone company that the cable didn’t reach my area of the city. I am outside the loop.

I look for signs and search my heart for leanings, but there is only vagary and confusion. One moment I will be certain I feel an inclination in one direction only to feel an inclination in the opposite direction minutes or hours later. I am often deeply suspicious of my feelings anyway. What’s really driving them? They come upon me disguised so much of the time, and I can get caught in an endless progression of unmaskings. I pull off one façade and recognize that a feeling of desire for something is really a feeling of duty, or I discover that something I think that I want for myself is really a fear of disappointing someone else. But just when I think I’ve caught a glimpse of the true face of something, it morphs into something else and another layer must be peeled away. Pretty soon I just get tired and want to pack a duffel bag and run away like I did when I was six.

Part of my problem, as evidenced by the previous paragraphs, is that I just think too damn much. All those analytical skills I developed in college and graduate school are great when it comes to deconstructing a work of literature, but when they turn inwards, they can process and chew things over until all that’s left is a pile of mush. Paralysis by analysis, as the saying goes. But I think another part of the problem is the way I view decisions. I have a tendency to see them as tests, God’s benchmarks for my spiritual and life progress, so to speak. In my mind, there really is always a right choice and a wrong choice even though they’re both cleverly designed to look like equally reasonable and morally ambiguous options. Even when others that I consult support or see a justification for one or both options, I feel like I’ve fooled them somehow—suppressed some aspect or presented the options in a manipulative way that is simply steering them to say what I want them to say. But God isn’t fooled, I think to myself. He knows my true motivations and intentions (even when I don’t) and is going to either be nodding approvingly or shaking his head. And most often my assumption is that he’ll be shaking his head. I am doomed to failure. I am too selfish, too foolish, too blinded by XYZ to choose the correct option.

But this makes God a big meanie—one of those horrible, bitter, desiccated teachers of old who delight in tormenting their students. And this is where part of my exhaustion, my internal battering, comes from—having to beat down that image of the mean old man and remember that God is a good teacher. He has already taken all the tests for me, and he has already passed them all. My only task is to learn. Easier said than done. I keep creating new tests for myself, imagining trick questions where there are none, weighing myself down with anxiety and the anticipation of failure and regret. The stereotypical sins that first jump to people’s minds when they hear the word “sin” are things like drinking or sex or violence. But it’s the more insidious ones like perfectionism, fear, and the delusion that I have the power to move myself up or down in God’s favor, that I can cause him to speak to me or to sit in silence based on the things I do or don’t do, that get me every time. I disconnect the phone line myself in a kind of reversed arrogance.

I am nearing the end of this essay and I still have to make a decision. It’s still going to be hard. There will still be consequences I will have to live with no matter what I choose. But what I must remember, what I must cling to in the rush of winds upon me, is that my decision—good or bad, right or wrong—will not change God’s love for me. It will not make him think any better or worse of me. It will not stop him from completing the good work he has begun in me and in my life. He will not be shaking his head or throwing up his hands at me. Maybe when I can finally know that and truly believe it in my heart is when I’ll be able to hear that still, small voice—the one that comes after the buffeting winds.