Indecisive

June 29, 2020

“Madison, we’re out of chicken, what should we do?”

I turn from the serving table where I’m in conversation with one of our board members and look at my dad who’s walking up to me, empty tray in hand. We’re out of chicken. My dad looks at me expectantly. The board member looks at me expectantly. I look at them and am about to ask why they’re asking me what to do and not asking the person in charge. Then I remember.

I am in charge.

I look at the door to the building, look at the tray, look back at them, and then freeze.

What do we do?

In reality, not much time has passed but it feels like every millisecond has just grown impossibly long.

Just make a decision, Madison, it’s not life or death.

I look at the remaining plates on the serving table, the number of people in line left to be fed, and ask how many plates are inside. My dad gives me a number and I determine we’ve got enough to get through those in line now, that no one gets seconds, and if any of our neighbors are particularly in need today we can provide them with an extra snack bag or make them a sandwich as time and resources allow. They both nod and go to execute the plan. I walk away to go prepare for the next part of the day’s meeting and mentally kick myself.

Madison, it’s not life or death.

I’ve been having decision paralysis lately. Or maybe it’s not lately and has been for a while, but I’ve been noticing it lately. I’m afraid to make the wrong decision so I don’t make a decision. Every day people are asking me to make decision after decision and I can’t keep freezing. Pausing and thinking, yes, but freezing, no.

Every time it happens I keep thinking to myself, “It’s not life or death, just make a decision.”

As I’m walking away from the crowd of board members, employees, volunteers, and clients, to hide for a few minutes, I keep mentally berating myself, “it’s not life or death Madison, just make decisions, it’s not life or death.”

The very next day I’m back at work, plucking along at my desk on some financial matters when my phone rings. I answer the phone and a coworker’s voice sounds anxious. I immediately go on alert and ask what’s going on. She lets me know the police are on the way to show a picture of a crime nearby and asks us if we can identify the suspect. She asks what we should do, what’s she supposed to do? I tell her I’m now walking up from my office to the building we serve at, I’ll be there soon.

On the hundred and fifty-yard walk up to the building we serve out of I keep telling myself to make a decision, it’s not life or death. I want to reach out to someone in charge to tell me what we’re supposed to do, and then I remember.

I am in charge.

Make a decision, Madison, it’s not life or death. But this one kind of is. The police, a white police officer, is coming to a predominately black neighborhood to ask if we can identify an individual who committed a robbery at the McDonalds a few blocks away. They have security camera footage, a still image, and learned that he’s been to our facility to get meals before. For the first time in my life, my first instinct isn’t to do all that I can to help the police.

I’m weighing the situation as I quickly walk up to the building, cop car in sight. On the one hand, a crime was committed in our neighborhood, we want to decrease crime and there is a victim in this, so we should do what we can to help catch that person. We don’t want more businesses leaving this area, that only hurts us all. On the other hand, we have clients watching and word spreads fast, we don’t want them to think we’re a pipeline for the police and that they can’t come here to receive help without the fear of us using that information to have them arrested. We are also located in a neighborhood where retaliation is alive and well and very violent. Make a decision, Madison, you’re in charge here. 

I walk up to the front porch where the officer is standing and my employee looks relieved to pass him off to me. He starts to tell me why he’s here and I ask if we can step inside to discuss it. I can see the clients standing twenty feet away straining to hear what’s being said, their eyes bouncing curiously between us all. He steps inside and shows us the picture and asks again. Everyone’s looking at me to make a decision. So I decide. We’ll help, but we’ll be smart about it.

My employee says she has seen him before but he isn’t a regular so his name isn’t coming to mind. This is coming from the employee who knows every person who’s ever walked through here and what they got and who they’re related to. One of my other employees walked out the back as soon as we walked in and the other is sitting quietly at a table putting together snack bags, but her eyes don’t leave us.

I ask the officer if we can take a picture of what he has, go through the logs or throughout the day, and if he has a number we can call if we do recognize him or he comes back through. He walks out to his car to call his superiors and I pull my employees together to discuss my thought process, the pros and cons of helping, and why I ultimately decided we should help in a way that’s wise and safe. Why I invited him in instead of us talking on the front porch, why I said we’d look through things and give him a call, and why I’m going to ask he leave our name out of any official or unofficial documentation. We talk through it a little more and they seem settled on the decision I’ve made.

Twenty minutes later while walking back to my office, I don’t know if it was the right decision. I don’t know if it was the right decision, but I stand by it. I’m thinking to myself, “Madison, you’ve got to make decisions, it’s not life or death,” when I realize my problem. 

For a significant period of my life, all of my decisions were life or death. For so much of my medical issues, I didn’t have an option, it was do this procedure/test/treatment or die. When the neurosurgeon first told me I’d be having brain surgery my first question was, “can I say no?” He looked at me blankly, paused as if trying to tell if I was joking, and then flatly replied, “If you don’t have this surgery quickly, then you’ll be dead or quadriplegic by Christmas.” It was September. And I took that as a no.

On the rare times I could make decisions, it was literally life or death. Choose to have the rib removed and the VTOS would be resolved but with the risks of surgery, or choose not to have the surgery and I could avoid the pain and risks but lose the use of my right arm or cause a blood clot and die. So I chose to have the surgery. I ended up having complications and stayed in the hospital a few more days.

When your choice is literally life or death, you don’t have a choice. It’s not a decision. It’s a calculation. Which one has the least chance of death and, if you’re lucky, that one is also the choice with the least amount of pain, but usually that’s not the case.

You’d think with so many high-pressure, high-stakes decisions I’d be good at them now. But not really! I just got good at playing out the ends of each option. But without life or death being the outcomes, I get stuck! It’s easy to pick between life or death, between the binary of good or bad outcome. It’s not easy to pick between options when the options are different shades of gray and you have to figure out some arbitrary measurement system to establish which you value more, helping bring someone to justice for an after-hours theft of petty cash or the credibility you have in a community that doesn’t have a collaborative relationship with the police. What’s right and what’s wrong when the answers aren’t easily distinguishable like life or death? Who am I to decide? The decisions I’m asked to make on a daily basis have very tangible outcomes, and they mostly impact other people and not me. It was easy to decide when I was the main and often only one impacted by the choice. Now, I make decisions that, for the most part, don’t impact me.  How am I supposed to decide? Judgment is such an arbitrary concept but having good judgment is invaluable in a position like mine. It means the success or failure of an organization, people’s abilities to rely on paychecks, a board’s trust in us doing what’s legal and compliant. The list goes on.

My decisions might not be life or death anymore, but I can strive to make decisions I can live with. I can make decisions my integrity can stand behind. I can do the best I can with the information I have, do the best I can to acquire more information when I have the opportunity, and trust God for the rest.

The last part feels like an empty Christian-ese. If I’m honest, I’m not trusting God for the answers. I don’t know why not, he got me this far alive. I think because God speaks, most often, through the Holy Spirit within us and I don’t believe any instinct I have. I rationalize until I’ve got a different answer.

I don’t give credence to the still small voice within me, I debate it, argue it, avoid it. I don’t rely on God’s more than sufficient wisdom, judgment, or discernment during the moments I’m asked for a decision. So I think that still small voice is me and I don’t listen to me. I don’t trust he’ll answer me quick enough, I don’t believe he’ll give me the answer.

I don’t think he cares.

I don’t think he cares unless it’s something he can use for his plan or has designed or caused. I don’t think he’ll care if it’s just me asking for his help because I want him to walk it with me. I ask a million times a day and I don’t think he wants to hear from me that often.

All I want is for God to walk with me, talk with me, be with me as I go moment by moment through the day. I want him to hold my right hand and celebrate with me, cry with me, sit with me, write with me, work with me, and make decisions with me.

I know that it says in Job that God gives instinct to the mind and intuition to the heart, but I feel like the exception to that with how often I’m freezing with every decision, how often I’m missing his direction, and the regularity I’m doing the wrong thing in a situation.

I know Proverbs says that all we have to do is ask for wisdom and God gives that along with discernment, good judgment, understanding, knowledge, and insight. It says that God grants a treasure of common sense to the honest and is a shield of those who walk with integrity. That he guards the paths of the just and protects those who are faithful to him. With that comes an understanding of what is right, just, and fair, as well as that wise choices will watch over them and understanding will keep them safe.

God, is there a part of my heart that keeps me from you? You know my heart, is there something that keeps me from honesty or integrity or from being just or faithful to you? Remove it from my heart if there is, God. Don’t let anything stand between you and me, or allow anything to keep me from seeking and growing in your wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. Yes, I want to be able to make decisions without paralysis, but more importantly, I want to rely on you, God.

Beyond the medical issues, there were three times when other people made decisions that I suffered for and you weren’t there. You didn’t stop them from making decisions, didn’t keep me from those wounds. You let me get hurt. I understand the concept of free will, I get that you were with me, I know that it hurt you too, I know they’ll ask for forgiveness or you’ll bring me justice on this side of heaven or the next, and I also know that you let me get hurt. I don’t think I’ve been sad for that yet, God.

Someone else made a decision. And so did you. And you let me get hurt. And I didn’t get to decide in those moments and I’m the only one that was hurt.

You let me get hurt. You will let me get hurt again. Maybe not in this exact way, but in some form or another. You’ll let me get hurt.

And so I’m sad, God.

I was in survival mode for so many years and as I’m walking out of that I’ve got years’ worth of feelings to feel for no other purpose than to release them from my heart and to cleanse me of the trauma I’ve been carrying. Like water flowing through pipes that have been rusted, the water will come out orange-tinged until the rust has been washed or cleaned away and the water comes out clear. And as I finally feel, for the first time in years, I can’t help but wonder why we feel at all. Why we have feelings.  

Sitting here, in sadness, with tears silently falling and obstructing my vision, I can’t help but think that maybe we feel because you do. That you’re near to the brokenhearted because your heart breaks too. As hard as it is to be in these feelings, to allow them to be felt, to be heard, to be released, I don’t feel alone in them. Though I don’t talk about this with anyone, though no one reads this, though I’m physically alone at this moment, I’m not lonely. Maybe we feel so that we can know you. In feeling pain, righteous anger, grief, sadness, joy, love, we learn your character, we feel what matters to you.

God I know you’re sad about what that boy and those men did to me, I know you’re righteously angry they used the strength you gave them for protection to instead use for harm. I know it’s okay I’m sad, and it’s okay I’m angry. Because it reassures me that I’m not alone. I can decide not to live in the sorrow and anger, but I can decide to give space and voice to the feelings until the water runs clear again.

I think part of the healing from my medical stuff and from the other traumas I’ve experienced, is accepting that I do have the option, the power, to make decisions. That I’m not just ambling through life at the mercy of everyone else’s decisions and trying to play clean up when their decisions go wrong or trying to halt the fallout of those decisions, or trying to prevent them from making certain decisions. I have the power to make decisions, to make choices. I can grow in my decision-making ability as I grow in wisdom, knowledge, and understanding with God. I don’t have to look around for someone older or wiser to make decisions for me. I can seek counsel, listen to advice, sure. But I don’t have to abdicate my decision-making responsibility because I’m scared of choosing wrong, or because it’s been ripped from me for so long, or because I know the hurt that others can feel as a result of my decisions.

I’m not going to mishandle the power, gifts, or ability God’s given me the same way it’s been used against me. To hurt, tear down, or break others. I’ve asked God to protect me from that and trust he will. Not every decision I make will be perfectly right. We’ll run out of chicken again. I’ll be hurt by the decisions of others again. I’ll hurt someone with my decisions as well. I can only hope and pray and work to rely on God and let the rest fall away.

And I can decide to be sad a little longer.

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