OPTION C

If multiple choice options were coordinates, where are you now based on the decisions you were presented with at your last crossroads?

Here’s an example.
What is my next career move?

A) Find a full-time job, your purpose isn’t sustainable
B) If you don’t do the project now, you’ll never have the time and resources to do it again
C) Some other, vague, undeveloped, and improbable plan
D) Dealer’s choice

Me, I’m currently living option C, but before, when I was facing the decision, I didn’t see option C. What I learned on the journey is that option C is always there and sometimes the right answer starts with exploring options A and B but option C is always the better option.

I’ve been living with the understanding that you always have more choices than you’re given. It started long before I even knew what that looked like, back when it made itself real to me in a singular moment and the hope in me decided it had to apply to everything in life. Option C incorporates the “right” answer but gives us space to create something specific to us around the options that are the most obvious in their benefits.

Life is meant to be curated but the way we’ve been presented with “certain” paths has conditioned us to take the plan that’s already mapped out. Take all the courses that are listed with the major that seems closest to the thing you want even though the thing in your heart isn’t exactly the thing that’s listed in the course catalog. Conform to the list rather than taking the list, seeing what works, figuring out how to refine it, and making it a little more specific to the undeveloped picture of a life that I’m working on bringing to bear.

The world around us has shunned flexibility because it requires a level of presence that snaps them out of the lull they’ve created to cope with the jobs they’re suffering through because that job isn’t specific to the dream that’s still in their hearts. We see it clearly in how the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the futility of some of the life structures we relied on to make sense. Even with the crumbling of the lifestyles we aspired to, it’s possible to shift and create a vision for a quality of life that remains unlinked to the fallible concepts society has built. The most fulfilled people in life have found a balance between what they have to do and what they want to do— they’ve found their option C.

Granted, whatever is listed next to option C will differ as you go through the stages of your life. It will often require that you pick the thing that works only to realize that life is more like a train station than a Scantron sheet. Your options become a combination of the departure and arrival locations, times, and connecting trains (or flights if you prefer the sky). One option leads you to the another but you have the option to get off at any stop you want and take another train in a direction that the first train didn’t offer to take you.

How much of our stress comes by way of decisions we don’t know how to move on and the fear that we’ll choose wrong?

I’m still learning what it means to always have more options than I’m given. Even in knowing it, I’m still tempted to just take what’s on the table. The part of me that yearns for simplicity always wants to take what’s on the table and make the best of it. The part of me that always wins out is the part of me that knows that these options aren’t created with me in mind. I’m too specific in my creation to do anything but create my own possibilities. I hope you realize that you are too!

PRAYER

God, I know that my choices or lack of choosing have led me here. I know that my present is some equation that added, multiplied, and divided my efforts of the past. I can’t reconcile what I could have done differently because that requires that I spend too much time back there and if I do that, I’ll miss my turns here in the present. Help me to forgive myself for the chances I didn’t take when I could have. Help me to forgive myself for all that I’ve allowed my fears to take from me. Show me, in each moment, just how fear is working against the present decisions that can change my life for the better. Help me to be discerning of the opportunities that come my way, I know that they aren’t all from you no matter how good they may seem. Help me to maneuver with grace, peace, and integrity. Calm the rush in my heart that would cause me to force doors open that you didn’t authorize. Help me to know that your timing allows for the growth that I need, that your timing allows me to mess up in private and learn from it without the pressure of too many people watching. There’s a lot I want now and need now but I’m asking that you help me to find the balance between doing and waiting that enables me to continue on this path without burning out. Give me strength. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

JOURNAL CHALLENGE

Where are you now? What options are you being presented with? What are the clearer decisions you can make? Write down your options with their pros and cons. Sit with the list long enough to see where you could create option C. It might require that you ask questions that can be met with a ‘no’ but don’t let that possibility deter you. Speak what you want.