Devotional Decisions

In this episode of Return to Devotion, we explore what lives beneath indecision: the search for certainty, the discomfort of closing a door, and the difference between discernment and delaying what we may already know.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Return to Devotion.

If something in today’s conversation resonated with you, I invite you to spend a few moments in reflection. Notice what is asking for your attention, your presence, or your next choice.

Until next time, may you return to yourself, return to what matters, and return to devotion.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:41

Welcome back. Last week I shared something I had recently realized about decisiveness. And this week, decisiveness came up a lot during sessions with clients, so I realized there was something much larger underneath that conversation. And it's one thing to say be decisive, but it's another thing to just entirely understand why we struggle so much with making decisions. We can know something and we'll still go in circles around it. Why can we feel the answer in our body and then we spend three more days or three more weeks, sometimes three more years, trying to figure it out? And why do we ask more people what they think when if we're really being honest, we already know what we think? And so I started wondering: what if some of what we call confusion isn't actually confusion? What if we actually know? What if we actually know the answer and we just haven't decided? There's a difference between confusion and just not having decided. It's called indecision. There's a difference between decisiveness and indecision and confusion. And I want to make an important distinction here because I deeply believe that discernment is available to all of us. I believe in sitting with things, I even believe in listening. I believe in prayer. I believe in paying attention to what happens in our body when something is presented to us. And I don't think every decision should be made quickly. Sometimes we should wait. And sometimes we genuinely don't have enough information. But sometimes God reveals to us the next step, and we just haven't taken that next step. That's discernment. But there's another experience that can look a lot like discernment. It's when we already have enough information, but we keep going back over it over and over and over again. We're reconsidering, we're asking another person, we're imagining every possible outcome. We make the decision and then we make it again, and then eventually we say we're confused. But maybe we're not confused, maybe we're just afraid of what happens after we choose. Because there is something about a decision that we don't talk about enough, and maybe sometimes we don't even realize this is happening. But when we make a decision, we also are closing a door. Right? And there can actually be grief in decision making. Even when the decision is right, especially when the decision is right, because you can decide to leave something, and you can still grieve for what you hoped it would have become. You can decide to stay and grieve the life that you might have had if you left. You can actually choose one opportunity, and then wonder what would have happened if you had chosen the other. That's the power of decision making. So you can decide to set a boundary, and then you can still miss the person. You can say no to something and still feel the pull of yes. You can even say yes and still feel fear, and these feelings don't necessarily make the decision wrong, but that's what makes us not want to choose and make a decision. I think this is where we sometimes get ourselves tangled because we make a decision and then we feel the discomfort, and we interpret the discomfort as new information. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Maybe, but maybe you're simply feeling the consequence of choosing because a clean decision doesn't guarantee that you're gonna have a comfortable nervous system. Sometimes your body needs time to catch up with what you already know, and there's a strange safety inside of indecision. A lot of times we feel safe because we haven't made a decision yet. Cause as long as I haven't chosen, every possibility still exists. I haven't disappointed anyone yet, I haven't risked being wrong, I haven't lost the other option. I haven't had to fully take responsibility for what happens next. So I can stay hovering in the hallway, or I can have one hand on one door and another hand on another door, and look back and forth. And we call that freedom. But eventually your arms get tired, your arms get exhausted because the body is tired of preparing for multiple outcomes. If I say this, then what if that? If I leave, then what about this? If I say yes, if I say no, if they respond this way, if they respond that way, the mind runs in circles with possible outcomes, and then there's this tremendous amount of energy required to remain undecided. Sometimes more energy than the actual decision itself. So I think many of us are waiting for certainty before we decide. We want to feel completely calm. We want to feel completely clear, we want to feel completely sure. We want the decision to arrive without there being any fear attached to it. But I don't know that life works that way. There are moments of absolute clarity, absolutely, but more than not, there are a lot of moments when you have to choose with the information that you have, and that requires something different than uncertainty. It requires something called self-trust. And this isn't the kind of self-trust that says I always make the right decision. Because we don't. Nobody does. Self-trust says, even if this decision doesn't unfold the way I hope, I trust myself to meet what comes next. And that's it. Because now I don't need the decision to protect me from life. I don't need to predict every possible outcome. I don't need God to hand me everything on a silver platter. I can just take one step and listen. I can take one step and pray. I can take one step and discern. And then I can move. And this is something that I've noticed in my own life is that sometimes my knowing arrives before my reasoning does. And this is called intuition. There is simply a yes or a no. And then my mind comes running in afterwards with all the documentation. Why? How do we know? What evidence do we have? What if you're wrong? What will everyone think? The mind will sometimes, like intuition, it tries to arrive with a PowerPoint presentation. But it doesn't work that way. Most times the knowing is quiet. And I want to be careful here because a lot of us can confuse anxiety and urgency and convincing, and fear can masquerade as intuition, just so you know. Fear can masquerade as intuition. So this isn't about blindly obeying every sensation. This is why discernment matters. But over time we can begin to recognize what our knowing looks and feels like. One is trying to convince me, and the other doesn't seem to particularly be interested in arguing. It just sits there. Intuition just sits and whispers quietly. And it waits. And so this is where decision making becomes devotional for me. Because devotion asks me to be present with what is true right now. Not what might be true in six months, not what somebody else wants to be true, not what would create the least amount of discomfort. What is true now? And then the question becomes: am I willing to stand inside that truth? And this is the difficult question. Because it asks us, how can I guarantee that this is the right decision? We can't guarantee. We're human beings moving through time, and we make decisions with partial information. We discover things, we change, new information arrives. You can make a clear decision today and remain for a new outcome tomorrow. That isn't wavering, that's just being responsive. But if we constantly abandon today's knowing because tomorrow might reveal something different, that's what creates wavering and instability. And at some point, we have to let the information we have right now be enough. So I want to leave you with something today. Think about an area of your life where you have been saying, I just don't know what to do. Don't force an answer. Don't analyze it. Just notice what happens in your body when I ask you this. If you didn't have to explain your decision to anyone, what would you choose? If you didn't have to explain your decision to anyone, what would you choose? And then ask yourself this. If no one could be disappointed by your decision, what would you choose? If no one could be disappointed by your decision, what would you choose? And then there's one more question. If you knew that you could handle whatever happens after you make this decision, what would you choose? If you knew you could handle whatever happens after this decision, what would you choose? Now notice whether it becomes clear. Were you waiting for permission? Were you waiting for permission to not disappoint someone? Were you waiting for permission to change your mind? Were you waiting for permission to choose something without knowing exactly where it leads? Were you waiting for permission to trust what you already know? So maybe decisiveness isn't about becoming someone who never questions themselves. Maybe it's not about certainty at all. Maybe it's just the willingness. Maybe it's just the willingness to say, this is what I know today. This is what I choose today, and I trust myself enough to meet whatever comes. That's devotion. Because eventually life asks us to stop standing in indecisiveness. So I'll leave you with one final question. What decision are you still trying to figure out that somewhere beneath all of that thinking, you may already have made the decision? I'll see you in the next episode.