MAKE GOOD DECISIONS
I remember when I graduated college, I had not a clue what I was going to do, where I was going to move, or when it was all going to start. So I ran. I stayed with some friends in a few different cities just getting away for a while, and it was good. But when I left I didn’t have a clue when I was coming back, or what I was going to do when I did, it was just one one-way ticket after another. One day, I was sitting on a curb in Venice Beach waiting for a friend when I got a text from a guy I had never met asking me to apply for a dream job in Atlanta. In that moment, I thought about all the time I spent deliberating where to go when I left home. Should I go to LA, New York, London, Honduras…. All the while, that text would’ve found me in any of those places. And that text, more than just about any other, changed my life. It’s not that it didn’t matter where I was or where I went, it’s just that those decisions weren’t going to knock God off course from inviting me into what he wanted to invite me into. It was my previous diligence and discipline in my work that he used to make a way for me already.
(This will sound like a combination of previous things I’ve written. Theme and variation. So forgive me if at times I repeat myself, but this is more for me to write than it is for you to read. I hope you still find it helpful. Thanks.)
Stop underestimating God’s hand on your life, or better said, his general disposition towards walking with you. Make good decisions, and trust that God will meet you there and supply the rest. It is impossible to make “the best” decision because we don’t know how anything we choose will work out. All we can do is make good decisions. That means, if there’s a clear winner, that's your decision. But it also means that if there are two good options, it still shouldn’t cost you anxiety; you can make a choice in peace. If there’s only one option that leads you closer to God’s love and a life that reflects his heart, that’s your path. But if there are multiple of those options, as it so often feels there are in life, the choice isn’t as destiny-altering. One choice may take you somewhere else, but we need to remember God’s hand and disposition towards our life. As the Hebrew Proverb says: “Man plans his way, but God directs his steps.”
This is part of what it means to “let go.” It means to make good (not perfect) decisions, and let go of what comes because of it. Give your “yes” to what you chose, and move forward with it until something changes. Don’t look back on “the other decision” you could’ve made. Unless you come to find out that this was in fact a bad idea, don’t wonder whether that option was “better” than this one. If what you chose turns out to be good, even if “unsensational,” don’t waste your time wondering about what it could’ve been elsewhere.
The truth is, so many of the decisions we find ourselves in that feel “big and important” really have nothing to do with the way God is going to blow our mind later down the road. It’s just as likely that the little decisions you make every day, the less-than-sensational ones, and the little diligence and discipline, will be just as course-directing, as will the unpredictable and uncontrollable blessings or crises. Choose to visit Amsterdam, choose Bali, you can still get the text that changes your life. God has a way of finding us when he needs to get a hold of us.
I hope this inspires some conversations in your life. This little essay isn’t the point, what happens in and around your community is. And I hope it brings you a level of comfort that you can, as Rilke wrote, “go to the limits of your longing,” and trust that God’s provision has a way of keeping up with you, no matter which good decisions you make.