CHOICES

I ran over a sparrow this morning.  

In my seventy years upon this earth I think I've killed less than a handful of sparrows, and almost all of them here in the Ozarks. I was driving from my house to the community center to do my morning walk. The sun wasn't out yet, and the air was heavy with a very light fog. Now, before I go any further, let me tell you that I'm always amazed at the agility of squirrels, and sparrows as they share their world with us humans. I don't know what makes birds stay in the street until you're right up on them, but usually they escape the front end of my car.  Not today.  I fully expected the little sparrow to flutter away as I got near, but was greeted with the tiny tell-tale bump beneath my floorboard that told me he'd got trapped under my car.  As I looked in my rear-view mirror I could see the hapless sparrow fluttering in a circle for a second or two then nothing. I hate it when that happens.  For whatever reason he made a bad choice.  

Like that little sparrow, some choices are life and death.  Most of us can see life and death choices before we make them. Experience, and close calls teach us that certain things are to be avoided in order to escape a life-or death scenario. One thing I've seen in my lifetime is that some people are thrill seekers and actually enjoy walking up to certain death and poking their finger in death's eye. When I was a teenager, I often did 'stupid' things that I would never do now.  Most of those things were done on a motorcycle, or vehicle of some kind of another.  I walked around with a false sense of invulnerability, fed by a great deal of divine protection.  I don't know if that poor sparrow I hit this morning was a daredevil sparrow or not, but, well, he didn't live long enough to regret his decision.  

Some people won't make decisions at all, they walk around in a perpetual state of fear that they will make a bad decision.  Everything they do is anguished over, and measured against the opinions of at least a hundred people, and then mulled over some more.  Even when they do make a choice, they live in fear and trepidation that their choice wasn't the right choice. Before they know it, the decision they couldn't make is made for them by the circumstances of life.  In other words, life happens to them, and of course they can blame it all on everyone else, or God. I guess in their minds it's better to blame others and God instead of making a choice and living with the consequences of that choice.  One thing I've noticed about these people is that they usually have a defeatist attitude about life.  "Well I guess God didn't want me to have that...'whatever."  or "I wish I knew what God wanted."  or  "I just didn't have enough information to decide." or "I would have done something else, but brother or sister 'So in So' advised me not to do anything."  These people are usually obsessed with the 'will of God' or being in His purposes. If they aren't doing something spiritually 'big' then they must have missed God somewhere.  It's as if God isn't able to overcome their abilities. Buyers remorse is their constant bedfellow, and if you allow them, they will fill your day up with sad tales of a life that could have been.  

Our choices don't limit God. I'm sure that His plans have your mistakes, and even your successes are accounted for. I don't want to make it sound like I have it together in this area of life. I used to be one of the worst about putting out fleeces before God. I have a very logical, scientific mind that measures, and evaluates everything. I'm one of those people who have to know how or why something happens. When my wife Glenda was diagnosed with Glioblastoma, (primary brain cancer) I spent the first two months looking for what causes it. You can imagine my consternation when I couldn't find a cause for it. Something clicked, and the cancer went crazy. They still don't know what triggers it. This process consumed my every waking thought. I needed to know how she got this thing that was killing her. When she got done with the initial treatments, I spent the remaining six months of her life just trying to keep her alive a little bit longer. Again, I researched everything, read everything, watched everything I could just to find something to help her live longer, instead of just being with her. To put it bluntly, other than loving her with all of my heart, I didn't make the end of her days good. I was convinced that the latest novel treatment she was on would extend her life. It didn't. Instead, she spent the last four months of her life uncomfortable, irritable, and growing increasingly weaker by the moment.  Actually, I thank God for my Sister-in-law who told me a truth I needed to hear. She told me that I was so obsessed with trying to keep her alive, that I wasn't helping her live. Boy, was she right!  In the end it wasn't the brain tumor that killed her, but a massive heart attack.  At first, I spent about six months punishing myself for the decision to put her on the experimental treatment. Then, one day as I was beating myself up for the choices I'd made, I found out that someone who'd been in our life earlier was diagnosed with the same cancer.  As I was talking to one of her relatives, they asked me about the treatment Glenda had undergone. I told them that would have to be her choice, but no matter what, go, and do whatever she wanted to do. Do a bucket list and get as much of it done as her finances, and health would allow.  That isn't a choice to die, it is a choice to live, to really live.  Most of our choices aren't always life, and death like the little sparrow. Who we marry, where we live, our jobs, our cars, our homes, whether to have kids, whether to turn left, or turn right are choices we, and millions of others make everyday. A decision to turn left or turn right nearly got me killed in 2009. At the moment it didn't seem like a big decision, but two miles later a car pulled out in front of my motorcycle and hit me.  It was just a decision to go left or right. That decision changed the trajectory, and course of my life more than any 'big' decision I ever made or will probably ever make again. Let me share another personal example from my teenage years. It was at a time when my Dad was being the biggest jerk he could be to my Mom. During her darkest hours, she would often wonder out loud to me whether she should have married him in the first place.  She told me that when she was a teenager, a very religious boy at her church was interested in her while she was dating my Dad. Now, many years later here she was doubting her decision to marry my dad, and even regretting it. The remorse, and regret in her admission threw me for a curve. Of course, there I was, the product of her and dad looking her in the eye. Without my Dad, I wouldn't be here writing this right now. That's when I realized that our twenty-twenty view of our decisions is what can make us miserable or happy.  In the process we forget that God knows our beginning from the end, and knows the decisions we've made and the ones we're going to make. Sometimes, like the little sparrow I hit this morning, we don't have a great deal of time to make an informed choice.  If we do have time, then seek God first. Ask God to speak to your heart, and trust that you are hearing His voice. Do what Holy Spirit places on your heart to do, and then rest in that decision.  For everything else, just live, be thankful you are alive to make choices, and that our God is able to make our choices, whether good or bad, into a beautiful tapestry.

Finally, if you want to reduce your anxiety about your choices, just remember that our choices on this earth rarely affect more than fifty to a hundred people at the moment. It is the height of arrogance, and even to some degree narcissism, to elevate our choice as to what restaurant to go to, to the same level as to who we should marry, or what house to buy.  Even those decisions don't have a major impact on the course of life outside of your sphere of influence.  In the end, you'll be put back in the dirt, and all those choices will be meaningless.  At least that is what King Solomon said in Ecclesiastes.  Sometimes, I think we think more highly of ourselves than we ought to. Our choices are just that, OUR choices.