Throw away decisions

I’ve never been very good at making decisions.  Big decisions, small decisions.  Often with small decisions I simply don’t have an opinion.  “Where do you want to go out to dinner tonight?”  I’ve never been good at answering that question. 

But I’m not good with big decisions either, life decisions.  I’ve been reading some of my old prayer journals and I was struck by one that I wrote during year 12.  I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.  I didn’t know what to choose to study at uni.  I just wanted God to tell me what to do.  I wanted someone to be able to look into the future, tell me what I was doing, just so I didn’t have to make the choice.  I remembered that desire.  I still have it sometimes.

I think this was and is because I don’t trust myself.  I didn’t trust myself to make the ‘right decision’.  I didn’t feel that I knew myself well enough to choose something that would be good for me, or would be what God wanted me to do. 

It also shows that I thought there was a right and a wrong decision for my life’s direction.  I thought that God had a plan for my life, and what if I got it WRONG?  Somewhere along the line I was taught, or picked up the idea, that God had a plan for my life.  If he knows the future, and he  knows my every decision then he must have a plan for my life, right? 

Of course these things are true, but not in the way that I thought they were.  God does know what will happen and he does have a plan for my life.  His plan is for me to live a life that loves and obeys him, the rest is just details that he has given me the freedom to choose.* 

God does not have a SPECIFIC plan for my life that I have to discover. 

I’ve had to fight with this idea a lot.  It has paralysed my decision making.  It has stunted my trust in myself.  I’m still fighting this idea.

Sometimes I still wish that God would make decisions for me.  But I’ve realised that making my own decisions is part of growing up, maturing into a well-functioning adult and a well-functioning Christian.  I pray that God would give me wisdom to help me in making decisions and I’m learning not to throw away my decisions.

 

* Discussion about free will obviously fits in here but it’s too much for me to address properly here.  Perhaps in another post. 

The husband and wife team at a uni conference

This week J and I got back from National Training Event (NTE) in Canberra, which is a conference for uni students from all over Australia (and some from overseas too).  It is the major conference of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES) and all its affiliated uni clubs around Australia.  J and I were both part of one of these clubs while at uni, and while J did his ministry apprenticeship in 2011 and 2012.

I've been to NTE once before as a student and it was very different this year going as a Bible College student leading a Strand Group.   For one thing we had so much more free time because we weren't preparing to go on mission after the conference.  We used most of this free time to catch up with friends from Adelaide whom we hadn't seen in a long time, as well as spending some time with college friends (also attending as Strand Group leaders) whom we hadn't seen in a few weeks.  We were also glad for the chance to spend some time with J's sister who is currently living in Canberra. 

I really enjoyed leading the group with J, though at times I felt nervous about what I was saying knowing that he could pick me up on it!  He's also had more experience with our subject matter (Biblical Theology) because he ran a seminar on Biblical Theology when he was a ministry apprentice.  But I enjoyed being able to explain this to the students in our group, and see them grasp for the first time some things about how the story of the Bible fits together. 

We also heard some great talks, three of which were given by one of our New Testament Lecturer's from this year, who has now moved to the United States to work in a Theological College there.  But one of the big things that I learnt (or realised) while at NTE was something about myself.  I realised that what I want to do with my life is this: I want to pastorally care for people.  I'm not sure how else to put it.  I want to be able to walk with people as they go through life, help them in their struggles, listen to them and love them.  This is the desire that underlies my ideas about becoming a psychologist or a counsellor. 

I don't know where that leaves me or what kind of 'job' that might lead to.  A psychologist?  A women's worker in a church?  A school counsellor?  A chaplain?  A mother?  In any case, it's nice to have figured this out. 

Where's your career plan?

Sometimes I feel like I've mucked up my life.*  Well to be honest that's a bit dramatic.  If I think about it for more than a second I realise that what I really mean is that I feel like I've mucked up my career path.  I love everything else about my life.  I do not regret at all getting married to J at the time we did, or coming to college with him to study the Bible for a year.  

I feel like I haven't planned for my career or future study very well at all.  I've found myself thinking that I should have done something more productive with my year after honours and I berate myself that I didn't.  Then I remember that I did try to.  I tried to find work that was related to psychology and would give me some exposure or experience to help me on my way to studying masters.  But I was never hired for those jobs that I applied for.  Instead I got a job somewhere else.  Perhaps God used that job to teach me something, or develop my character or godliness.  But even if he didn't do any of this and my job last year was of no benefit to me whatsoever (which I don't think is true), it's not about me anyway!

I've realised that ultimately my career or job doesn't really matter at all.  What's more important, what God is concerned about, is that I glorify him.  There is no instruction in the Bible about what career I should have.  God knows what I will do, but he hasn't got one specific door for me to walk through and if I don't I fail at life.  I don't believe that there is one thing that God wants me to do and I have to ask him to reveal it to me. 

Maybe I haven't organised my life well enough to get into a psychology master program next year and follow the plans I had made for my life.  But what if this has given me the opportunity to reassess those plans?  What do you do when your dream changes?

I planned to continue study to become a psychologist some time during my second year of uni when I decided that I enjoyed learning about these theories of human behaviour and I didn't want to become a scientist (the other subjects I was studying at uni).  I was attracted to psychology because I found the subject fascinating and I want to be able to help people by talking through problems and listening to them.  

I feel like I can't change my dream of becoming a psychologist, like I'm betraying myself and the plans that I've tried to make.  Changing things now makes me feel like I'm drowning in the unknown next year.  But I shouldn't let the fact that I've been heading in this direction stop me from changing my mind or taking a detour.  Maybe I'll discover that the detour was the better way to go after all. 

I don't know if I'll get into a psychology course or not.  I don't know if I'm suited to the job anyway.  Maybe I'll try counselling first, or instead.  I just want to know how to listen well and have the skills to be able to help people with emotional problems.  But above all of this, I want to be glorifying God and serving him wherever I am.  That's what I want to focus my life on. 

*Note: I'm taking a leaf out of a college friend's book: because this post is a bit depressive it was not written on the day that I was feeling like this.