To use Emily P. Freeman’s phrase, I have decision fatigue.
In my regular, ordinary life where the routine is predictable, I intentionally keep decision-making to a minimal. Meaning I am the Steve Jobs of women; I wear some variation of black, denim, white, and the occasional pink every day. Sometimes I get wild and crazy and wear green. I wear my hair the same everyday except for the three days I had bangs. I drink the same coffee everyday except for the first weeks of fall when I drink hot cinnamon chai tea. In college, I lived on a rotation of pretzel thins, plain Lender’s bagels, baby carrots, baked Tostitos with salsa, and the weekly splurge of homemade chips with ranch dressing from Ham’s. I drank the cheap coffee from Tate Street coffeehouse with two sweet -n-lows and a splash of skim milk.
When I went shopping for a wedding gown, I knew I’d just pick one, likely from the first place I looked. And I did. Wedding gown try-on number three was the one. I knew how I’d wear my hair, how I’d do my makeup, the flowers I’d carry. And I did not deviate from my mental plan. The decisions had been made at some earlier date and I did not care to explore more options.
Even now, I prefer restaurants with a small menu. Give me a single sheet with twelve items and I am happy as the clam I will not eat. I won’t shop department stores with racks and racks crammed together. I grocery shop online via click and drop and pickup and roll. I love to paint my house but the thought of walking into Sherwin Williams with no pre-determined paint selection from the small range of earth tone colors I prefer makes me itchy. And thrift stores? Don’t even say it. I cannot.
But I am married to a man of Let’s Explore All the Options and Let’s Save Everything.
We are on month number seven of an overload of decision making and Thad is thriving. He’s in his sweet spot. He is a man on a mission to get stuff done and I am humming with low grade anxiety. I am slowing shutting down.
This season has included closing his parents’ estate, which included a four month cleaning out, donating, and a sharing and storing of all the precious things. Smack dab in the middle of that, every contractor that we’d been trying (for two years) to hire to complete projects at our home decided that now was the perfect time. Of course, we signed all the contracts for fear that if we said that now was not good a time, we’d never see them again. Add to the chaos of a house under construction a season of discernment in community, an insane, miraculous trip to Wichita, a major surgery for Ainsley, the shuffling of the family cars (we have 6) because one needs to be replaced, and the good, good search for a church home, and I am a person coming apart.
The literal world I live in is shifting with every movement of the excavator, the table saw, the rearrangement of the 1924 structure. And my interior world, although solid in Christ, is feeling unfamiliar to me. I do not feel at home in my skin; I feel in-between the place I have known and the place yet to be made known. Not lost, just suspended in a thin space, ungrounded.
Back in the spring when I agreed with God that upon graduation, I would clear the deck of my life for the remainder of the year, I did not know what was coming. I didn’t know Thad’s dad would take his own life or that we’d spend ten days in Dallas discerning, listening, and bearing hard things. I didn’t know Ainsley would need major surgery with a long recovery. I didn’t know we’d tear the house down only to rebuild it again. I didn’t know a neighbor would overdose on my front porch and that four hours later, Thad would be in the emergency room with a week-long medical crisis. I didn’t know I’d forget how to write, that I’d miss the familiarity of my Friends’ cohort, that I’d be be unable to read a book in its entirety. I didn’t know my city was planning a roundabout revival on every street I used to walk or that my neighborhood would be ground zero for demolition and reconstruction. I didn’t know our nearly out of the house kids would make major life changes that would impact our family rhythm. I didn’t know the sheer number of big decisions I’d have to make in such a short period of time.
I didn’t know that God was not inviting me to a season in a domestic monastery to prepare me to receive an answer to a worn out prayer. I didn’t know that God was not preparing me for a year-end move, for a new assignment, for a fresh hope in a new place. I didn’t know that God was not going to awaken the creative in me, fill me with publishable words, or answer my every question with a reasonable, acceptable answer.
I did not know my yes to God would not yield what I thought I most desired from God.
Over the entirety of my life, naval gazing in the presence of God has been a good, good thing. I have come to know myself and know God by paying attention to my embodied soul. But in the last few years, I’ve discovered that when life gets unfamiliar, loud, and hard, I retreat into my sanctuary, my interior world, and hide out. I fold inward to find God, to regain my footing, and to preserve whatever self I have left.
But in this desert year, my hopeful yes to God for an answer has instead, been an unending invitation to come out of my hiding place. It has been an invitation to step into the present, look at the landscape of my one beautiful life, and allow the Triune God to point out, to help me rightly see, things my naval gazing has prevented me from seeing. It has been an invitation to open up my history, in the presence of God, and give God the pen to rewrite the parts of the narrative I’ve written in the dark of shame and guilt. It has been an invitation to step out of myself, embody unfamiliar skin, in a swirl of chaos, in the midst of deafening noise and learn to stand firm in the here and now.
This season has been an invitation to remain grounded in the goodness of God, even when the questions for which I most desire answers go seemingly ignored.
For the month of November, I will be on a pilgrimage of sorts. I did not know it when I planned a month long retreat to Boone that I would need the framing of the language of pilgrimage to put form to my time away. Scott Erikson gave me that language yesterday in a short video he shared. I have a handful of questions I am still sitting with, some that I still desire God to answer. My hope is that in going away to a cabin with minimal distractions I can rightly hear from God, gain perspective, and remain grounded in the goodness of God no matter the answers I may or may not receive.
As I practice remaining grounded in God’s goodness, I will be writing daily- some long form writing here on Substack and some shorter form writing over on Instagram- using some prompts I’ve been collecting since the summer. I’m calling this series Goodness, Grounded because words have the ability to take things of the soul and ground them in a medium we can understand, imagine, and share with others… which means YOU ARE INVITED TO WRITE ALONG WITH ME!
I’ll share every prompt for the month of November early next week so you can begin praying about how to respond to the prompts through the lens of the goodness of God. No pressure to write all 30 days- that’s a lofty goal- just an invitation to pay attention and ground the awakening of your soul in words for the common good of our community.
I so hope you’ll write along with me.
A month in Boone...I need to know more! I'm so glad you'll be writing and I look forward to the prompts.
I can’t wait for your prompts, Lori. I’d love to write along. I absolutely love you and your writing, and it’s a joy to have glimpses at your inner world and your family life. Xo