Red Like Tango

Tag: decision-making

  • The Pursuit of Happyness: Or, Why I’ve Been Getting It All Wrong (And You Probably Have, Too)

    I’ve been thinking for some time now – about fifteen years, maybe longer – about What To Do With My Life. Here is a partial list of the ideas I’ve entertained and actually spent some time pursuing: concert pianist, novelist, doctor (’cause my dad is my hero), lawyer, truck driver, sailor/captain of a sailboat (Bring Me That Horizon!), rock and roller, preacher, missionary (check), President of the United States (when I’m feeling down, I settle for foreign diplomat), Hollywood actor, Navy SEAL, English teacher, professional triathlete.

    Now, I am convinced I could do any of the above to the glory of God and know people in almost each of these professions who does or has. The problem isn’t, therefore, that any one of these professions is holier than another. But this doesn’t help me toward making my decision.

    I’m also convinced that God has a plan for my life. One of the things I do in trying to make this decision, then, is look back over my story – the story he’s been telling to me and through me – and try and look for clues as to what he’s doing. This kinda helps me to narrow down the list and kinda doesn’t. I’m just interested in too many things.

    Well so in response to all this, I’ve done two things: 1) read, and 2) bore anyone who will listen (lookin’ at you, Ma) for hours on end and then ask for advice. The books and articles all say one or more of the following: 1) figure out what you wanna do and do it, 2) poor us (my generation talking to my generation), we have too many options, and 3) poor us (my generation again), we were told all our lives that we were special and unique flowers, that the sky was the limit, and we found out that’s not true, boohoo, &c.

    Number one is great advice, and that’s what I try to do. (Numbers two and three are just complaints.) But there’s still something bugging me, and so we finally get to it:

    I’ve been doing it all wrong.

    The issue here isn’t the making of the decision. The issue is why I can’t. (Or more accurately, haven’t been able to.)

    Why I Haven’t Been Able To Make The Decision

    This is frustrating, because I’ve known this answer for ages.

    Delight yourself in the Lord,
    and he will give you the desires of your heart.
    Psalm 37:4

    I haven’t been able to make the decision because I’ve been hoping to be satisfied by whatever I end up doing instead of being satisfied in Jesus, not as an act but as a state of being. And I will never be satisfied by anything I’m doing if I am not first satisfied in Jesus. Because he’s the only one who can satisfy. He’s got the Good Stuff. And if I will be delighted in the Lord, if I can get my soul to really want him above everything else, all the rest falls into place.

    [Post Text: Still doesn’t answer the question about What To Do With My Life, but the answering of it becomes a whole lot more fun without all that excess weight.]

  • Moving

    I finally made a decision, you’ll be happy to know. Well, maybe you didn’t know I was facing one, but I was.
    I really wanted to move into the city, to be closer to my friends and family there, to live in community with them. Before this last few months, I was unable to give anything to them, only to take from. And I wanted desperately – still do – to give back, now that I’m able. On the face of things, great reason to move into the city, right? But something interesting kept happening: every time I talked to someone about it, they would ask immediately, “Oh so you’ll be leaving the Oasis (church)?” To which I’d respond, “Noooo. I can make it out there on the weekends!” I’d then lay out my plans, how I was going to move the students I teach out here in the suburbs from Thursdays to Saturdays so I could come out here Saturday, teach, spend the night, and then be here for Sunday morning.

    A conversation with Alex was perhaps the most helpful. He said, “You know, Ian, the city is a lot different from the suburbs.”

    “You don’t say,” said I.

    He went on to explain, after that sarcastic remark I didn’t really make but added because I like to think I’m witty, that in the city, one can find a church service at any time of any day, that it would be a monster inconvenience for anyone to travel out to the suburbs every weekend. Of course, there are people who do – Hannah, for instance – but on the whole it’s just not practical.

    This was the last of several conversations I had about moving, and, as I said, every last one of these people took it for granted that I’d not be continuing at the Oasis. Even after I laid out my plans for them, they would stare off into the middle-distance, trying but unable to make my plans make sense.

    So what do you do when everyone around you (including yourself, though you don’t readily admit it) is apprehensive about a particular choice you’re considering? You don’t make that choice! At least, this seems the sane response. Mark you, it wouldn’t have stopped me before – several times it hasn’t – but God is changing my heart. (This is happening by such infinitesimal gradations that, to me, it has gone almost unnoticed, would have but for my dad, who directed my attention thereto.)

    So, I’ll be moving to Batavia, which is a mere fifteen minutes from Aurora. The house is in a great location – walking distance from downtown Batavia, which is quaint, and right up the hill from the bike path, which I can follow along the Fox River straight into downtown Aurora. Also, I’ll have, as my mom so delicately and hilariously put it, quiet neighbors, as the house abuts a cemetery.

    That reminds me: I’m going to commit right here and now to use this new location next to the cemetery as a reminder to think much, in the words of Jonathan Edwards, on all occasions, of my dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.

    Next year in Jerusalem!