Today someone posted this on FB:
"Be decisive.
Right or wrong, make a decision.
The road of life is paved with flat squirrels who couldn't make a decision."
I chuckled. And that made me think of this event in my life:
In 2011 I moved to the US from Ecuador, leaving a job and a community that I loved to come back to NO job. Eventually I found a job six hours from home that turned out to be an employment nightmare that went on for two long years.
But at the time of the event, I didn't know about the forthcoming 2 years.
[evidence of God's grace]
I had just moved to the new town, and was living in a cheap motel for a week while I looked for an apartment (and while I did my first week of work at the new job). During day one of that job, I was informed that, though I had been led to believe I would be working full time, they could only offer me 20 paid hours a week. But don't worry- that can change every month! Hopefully next month it'll be full time! [it wasn't full time for three months, but again- it's probably best I didn't know that then.]
Somewhere in the midst of that horrific, honestly hardest week of my life...
In a totally new place where I knew no one
Living in a motel
Trying to negotiate the system of a new teaching job
Far from my family
Doubting my decision to leave Quito
Doubting my decision to take this job
Doubting everything
...my exceedingly wise friend Brooke spoke this simple truth into my chaos:
There is no decision that you can't come back from.
I think she said more words after that, but they are all lost to me. My soul was thirstily lapping up that hope she had offered, before it evaporated and was lost.
There is no decision that you can't come back from.
The GRACE in those words overwhelms my heart, even today.
See, I'm not naturally a gracious person. I have this theory that we all naturally lean either toward grace or justice, most of us to a fault without the leading of the Holy Spirit. My natural bent is most definitely justice. If you've ever met me, you already knew that.
Justice isn't all bad, of course, but being a person who naturally errs on the side of justice causes me to sit in awe, absolute, slack-jawed awe, at the appearance of hard-core grace.
And that is what I did that night.
I sat in awe. And I wept.
Well, I was probably already weeping. (did I mention "hardest week of my life"? that wasn't an exaggeration) But now I was weeping not out of despair, but out of hope. Well, maybe half-and-half, in that moment. But definitely moving toward hope.
These well-known but forgotten in the moment truths became visible again to my soul:
It will be ok.
Even in the dark, God is still in control.
Even when I make a wrong choice, He will redeem it if I let Him.
Stop trying to white-knuckle it right.
There is no decision that you can't come back from.
And now I'm saying that to YOU.
There is no decision that YOU can't come back from, either.
If you want to join me in the corner, and weep with me over the grace, I have an extra tissue for you. Come on over. We will sit in awe of the Grace and weep together.
