Decisions

Decisions
Decisions, everyone has to make them and they must be made in every area of our life. Some are easy and some are quite difficult. Some people run from having to make them while others take delight in the challenge. Seeing that they are tackled in all sorts of ways, and that there are all sorts of them, how are we supposed to face them? Or is there even a right way?

We all know that there are different types of decision makers we even have labels for some of them. First there are the indecisive people. Those who sit and stare at the never ending shelves of birthday cards while juggling quite a few in there hands, they may finally come out of the store having successfully picked out what they think is the perfect card, or they may be there for hours and eventually decide it isn’t worth the money and they can just make one themselves, “yes that’s the right choice, yes.” They often times have to convince themselves that they have indeed made the right decision. On the opposite side of this decision making spectrum, there are those people we all admire, the people who can make a decision faster than most of us know there is even a decision that we need to make. The quick decider walks into the card store flips through the first few cards he sees and then within a few minuets has already purchased it and moved on to making his next decision of where to stop for lunch and whether or not he should fill up his car with gas first. Wow two decisions at once, these people really are skilled in decision making! These next two types of decision makers are rather similar, but they do have there differences. First there are the people who cannot make a decision on there own. They are the people who ask whoever is standing next to them in the isle of the card shop whether they should purchase the sentimental “good-bye” graduation card or the humorous “you actually made it” card. The complication then arises when the person they chose to ask for assistance happens to be an indecisive person! Then secondly there is the person who wants to make the right decision no matter what it takes. So before they even go to the card store they get out cards from the person they are shopping for to see what kind of cards they give, then they make both a list of cards that they know would be good and a list of cards that would be bad. Then once they are at the store they end up purchasing a few and then asking their family members who know the person best which card they think would mean the most. It is quite a long and stressful process.

Like the different types of decision makers there are different types of decisions. There are the easy decisions that we all have to make every day, like what shirt goes best with these pants, or should I have a soda with dinner tonight or should I be healthy and stick with water. Then there are obviously the really big and hard decisions that we do not have to make as often, but we will all face in our lifetime, these are decisions like, who should be our marriage partner, what college should we attend, or should I go to college, who are we going to confide in and allow ourselves to trust. Then in between the two previously mentioned there are the medium difficulty questions, they are often times more fun to make than the big questions of life, because they will not affect our lives in such a big way nor for such a long time, these are questions like, where should we go for summer vacations, who will we invite to our party, do we go to the party or just spend the evening with our family.

When you take into consideration the many different types of decisions and decision makers, this variety alone makes life rather interesting. Among the variety of ways to make decisions there must be a right and wrong way to make them. I would argue though, that how you decide on something would depend on what type of decision it is. For example, when deciding what outfit to wear in the morning, depending on how it affects the rest of your family waiting for you, how long you take to decide is not really all that important. Or when making a decision on where to go for your families annual summer vacation it would be important to make an informed decision and to seek the opinion of others who have already been to the destinations you are considering. Similarly when making what we are calling the “big” decisions of life it is extremely important to seek wise counsel from those who have made such decisions in the past and to make a wise decision, these are the types of decisions for which it would be appropriate to make pros and cons lists and to prayerfully consider and compare all of your options.

No matter what decision we are making or what kind of decision maker we are, it is important to think before we act, whether it is a lot or a little. It is also important to remember that we are not supposed to make a decision completely in and of ourselves, but rather we are to seek a God’s counsel and that of those older and wiser than us.