I have a theory about choices. Choices can give us the illusion of offering happiness but actually make us miserable. Rather than being content with what we’ve got, choices can make us weigh up other options, doubt ourselves, suspect the grass may be greener.
I’ve been content in my handy little job for nine years now (although not so little this last year – see https://sarahhadfi.wixsite.com/website/post/on-being-in-the-room-where-it-happens ) Then, out of the blue, in the space of about a fortnight I was contacted twice about two different possible job opportunities, both of which were very appealing in their own way. It turns out neither worked out, and I don’t know if it makes me lacking in imagination that I’m actually relieved that the decisions have been taken out of my hands and no further soul-searching and weighing up of options is needed.
Similarly, I might have mentioned a few million times that I love our new house (see https://sarahhadfi.wixsite.com/website/post/on-location-location-location ), but I found house hunting pretty miserable. All the viewings and weighing up of pros and cons – yergh.
Call it abdicating responsibility, but I’m mostly happy to let other people make the big decisions, so long as the outcome works out ok for me. I’ll never make PM. My one proper experience of being on a committee was with Cambridge Dancers’ Club and I found the meetings just the most unbelievably dull things in the world and made me wish the club could be run as a benevolent dictatorship and we could be presented with a fait accompli about whether or not, for instance, the weekly social dance should move half an hour later, by someone who understood it all, rather than fairly pointless endless debating and voting (I wonder if that makes me sound strangely like a Communist?).
When it comes to decision-making, I am highly influenced by Philip Jensen’s “Guidance and the voice of God.” I can summarise the theory very succinctly. There are some decisions for which there is clear guidance in the Bible. For example, is it ok if I steal this thing? Evidently not – the ten commandments prohibit stealing. There are some decisions which are small and unimportant and we can probably figure out on our own without need for spiritual or other input. For instance, should I have orange juice or apple juice? It probably doesn’t matter. And then there’s this big fat tricky area in the middle, of decisions which are issues of wisdom, where it is permissible in scripture but we need to exercise judgment, and then we need to do the praying and seeking advice from wiser people and trying doors and stuff, and then press on with what we think is the best course of action given the information we have. It’s the grey area which is hard work, of course.
Taking on new jobs and buying houses are big examples of this tricky middle area. Is it wise to move out of Cambridge, away from our schools and church and friends? There’s certainly nothing unbiblical about moving, but then there’s all sorts of issues to consider – financial, practical, emotional. But the tricky decision that always stands out in my mind, bigger than things like, do I marry my husband and do we have children (these seemed straightforward, in that I really wanted them, and they felt right) was choosing which university to go to.
GCSE results are just out so I’m currently fielding emails from parents and students about results and remarks and sixth form options – moving on in education is a tricky rite of passage for plenty of people, but I think my situation was a bit more complicated than average (or maybe I just make a meal of things?). Age 17, I’d done the round of university visits like everyone else, and chosen my top six options, got rejected from Oxford (it’s fine – I really don’t interview well) and so picked Warwick. Why Warwick? Well, obviously it’s a good university and a good course and a sensible distance from my then-home, but so was York, and that came with a possible year in France with Erasmus. Warwick won because they offered me a £2000 scholarship, and coming from a background where saving money was generally seen as a good thing, that was a very attractive bonus which was not to be turned down.
Anyway, my results day came and it went very well, and so my place at Warwick was secure, and a few of us went out to celebrate and then I stayed over at a friend’s. And over breakfast the next morning, her mum (who was head of sixth form at a local school) was looking through a newspaper and talking about results and commented how unusual that there were spaces in clearing at Cambridge University.
So I went home and thought about it and thought about it, and then thought it wouldn’t do any harm just to phone up and tell say I got top in the country for English A-level and see what happened.
To cut a long story short and with a lot of help from the world’s most patient call handler who talked through all my options and eventually managed to get the right university bigwig to phone me, I got invited for interview and the whole thing was just mad with trying to get across the country in time with lots of problems on the trains and missed connections, and then when I got there they didn’t even have any spaces in clearing for English so I had to do this weird nudge and wink interview for History because that did have spaces which was really awkward (did I mention I don’t interview well?) as well as speak to the English people, and the outcome was they said that if I voluntarily rejected Warwick and put myself into clearing they would offer me a place to study History and then if I wrote a letter saying could I switch course to English they would allow me to do that.
So I went home and had this big decision to make. I’m sure I would have been perfectly happy with going to Warwick; I had been so glad just the days before, with my results and my scholarship. And now I had found a weird back door into Cambridge. Was that immoral? Was my pride and ego pushing me to do something I shouldn’t, when I had already been given a really lovely opportunity with the money at Warwick? And I walked round and round the nature reserve with the dogs (which was how I did my best praying as a teenager) trying to wrestle with what was the best thing to do.
Christians talk about this thing called “putting out a fleece” like Gideon did in the Bible in the book called Judges, where you ask God, if I should do X, please can you do Y? But I wasn’t sure about all that, but I was asking God that he could just make it clear to me, because I was really tangled up and struggling to decide. But I went home from this epic walk feeling none the wiser, just weighed down with a nagging sense of guilt that perhaps it would be ungrateful, maybe foolish, to reject Warwick.
There was some post for me on the doormat (this was back in the day when people, you know, wrote to each other, apparently especially when two of us nine cousins had both just got good A-level results, and all the aunts and uncles sent cards). But one envelope wasn’t a congratulations card; it was a letter from some people who I didn’t actually know that well, who said that they had been praying about what to do with some money they’d come into, and then felt called to offer me £2000 to help towards my university costs, so long as they could stay anonymous.
£2000 – the same amount that I was offered at Warwick! I suddenly felt incredibly peaceful about it all, released from the sense of obligation that I should accept the scholarship, because God could provide for me. I’d asked him to make things clear to me, and to me this letter felt like confirmation that it was ok to choose Cambridge if I wanted. I wrote the world’s most emotional letter back to them (I think there were actual tear blots smudging the ink, like in the cheesy films) accepting and thanking them and saying that with this money I should go to Cambridge, and if anyone ever gave me any credit for getting there, I should point them instead to God and his wonderful people who supported me so I could go. And I’m not sure if I’ve stuck to that, but I have often thought, I am really blessed to have had the opportunities that I have, and met the people that I have, and it really is all thanks to God and those generous people, and the timing of that letter, as I honestly think I shouldn’t have gone otherwise, and then never have met my husband or had these children, or ended up in the lovely churches and jobs that I have. Although I dare say if I had gone to Warwick, there would have been lots of wonderful experiences that came from that too; this wasn’t a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’ decision.
I have friends who are missionaries whose lives are full of such stories of provision and timing. For example, recently when one friend’s father was sick, she was praying and seeking advice about whether she should fly out to see him (they don’t have a lot of money, and long distance flights aren’t cheap). Over the next couple of days, she was given three envelopes of money from different sources, which turned out to add up to the exact cost of her flights, so she did go out, and had a really significant time with him and he passed away shortly after. We’ve been blessed financially at other points too, like friends (who also asked to be anonymous) who loaned us the deposit for our house, or when some compensation money for a car accident came through just at the exact time when we really needed it. But anyway, the university decision is always the one that sticks out in my mind, even though it is almost exactly 20 years ago to the day (how is that possible?), probably because it was my most earnest ever praying over a choice, and a real ‘Y’ shaped piece of train track in determining the shape of my next years.
Finally, I reckon that experience, that sense of “God’s got this covered” has freed me up a bit when it comes to decision-making. As in, when I’m trying to figure out if it’s wise to do X or Y, so long as is it’s in the ‘wisdom’ or ‘doesn’t really matter’ categories, I think I’m more like, “Meh, well, God can use us if we live here or there, go to this church or that one, get this job or that one.” I imagine it’s slightly frustrating for my poor husband who tends much more towards figuring out all possible outcomes, and feels the burden of responsibility.
In the TV show I’m watching, and in the breastfeeding forums that I am weirdly addicted to and really need to quit, people tell each other a lot “You’ve got this!”. I get the sentiment. But I know I don’t have this; I don’t know what I’m doing half the time, whether it’s a good idea to pursue something or not. But he’s got this, so that takes the pressure off a bit.
I’m still not a big fan of decisions though.
P.S. This man is really inspiring when it comes to relying on God - the boys were just learning about him via the medium of 'Vegetales.'
Comments