Decision anxiety – leaving it to faith

I’ve been itching to write a post this last week, being I felt well overdue, and yet until last night I had no inspiration to use my spare time on this endeavor.

Finally I wanted to write, but no real topic came to mind….I found the start of this in my lengthy drafts vault….

 

As previously mentioned, I quit my job (2018) and it’s a little bit scary. I’m scared about having made the right decision, a Godly decision. Thankfully even amidst my fear I have peace that it is the right decision at this time, I just don’t know what the future holds, of course we never do. For the past 7+ years though I knew I had work as an occupational therapist. I don’t know if I’ll ever work as an OT again. I don’t know if I’ll ever work in a paid position again!

The last two days I’ve had ample free time and it’s felt weird, quiet, empty – scary!

Yesterday I asked God to let me know if I had made the wrong decision, I’m running out of time to change my mind. He answered my prayer.

Today I read a blog from The Godly Chic Diaries which shared ‘Life requires a total surrender, a flying leap of faith. Sometimes the tighter we hold onto life, the louder the message from the universe is. FAITH! It will all turn out as it should be, even if it doesn’t seem that way at all in the moment. Every experience is an opportunity to practice letting go and of grasping onto life as we believe it should be, and free-falling with acceptance into the life we have.’

Also ‘We’re human, we’re not meant to be perfect. It’s your journey. Own it. Bloom where God planted you. Be your most authentic self, all in. Honor yourself and make choices not because someone or society expected it of you, because they are right for you and consistent with your beliefs.’ ….

Wow. I can use these same encouragements now! I’m still not in a paid working position and I’m very much considering letting my occupational therapy registration lapse but there are many new adventures in my life.

I finished a Masters in counseling and am supported by a local church to offer services locally.

I’m volunteering in the mental health space in my area, my biggest passion, including being available to help kick start a new exciting collaborative co-design process. I confess it’s keeping me busier than expected, that on top of trying to deal with a mouse plague in the house! Oh and scary primary school attitudes….I swear my parenting role is based entirely around managing snacks and screen-time – I have serious work to do to adjust this pattern in my home.

On top of this I’ve been trying to prayerfully considering a position of more responsibility at my children’s school. It’s been hard to read the signs, to trust my intuition but as above FAITH will be my best guide. I’m finding this easiest when I start my day with prayer and Bible reading. Again not an activity I always find myself inspired to spend my time on even though the rewards are obvious.

 

So here I guess is an update on my life. Daily decisions to be made and daily trying my best to let it go and trust God. Now off for church and footy. I wonder what decisions you are making today?

 

 

So Much More than Just a Sport

I’ve wanted to write for quite a while about a topic very close to my heart. despite the fact I can easily imagine others looking at it as a complete non-issue. I’d like to start therefore by proclaiming that I am a strong believer in the concept that it takes a village to raise a child. Indeed I am very fortunate to be among wonderful supportive ‘villages’ that both make my parenting life easier and also enrich the lives of my children. A predominant one of these villages is my sporting community. My husband is an avid aussie rules and cricket player, so year long our saturdays are taken up by sport, our sundays by recuperation and the week for preparation. I also play and love netball but this year made the BIG decision not to play for the same club as my husband but another local club which plays in a different league.

It was an incredibly hard decision to make, especially when at the start of the season I was basing the decision most pressingly on a memory I had that I wanted to change clubs next year. At the start of the season I couldn’t precisely remember why I’d been feeling that way but I decided to trust that memory and try out for another club.

Things that made the decision difficult:

• I love the club I was leaving behind – the people and the sense of community
• They were struggling for netball numbers – actually I thought they would only have one team instead of the usual two which meant I’d be ok
• Friends not understanding why I was making the decision

One thing that would have changed my mind:

• My husband was very against the idea. He’d said so and yet (and yet) he didn’t (wouldn’t) discuss it with me. He wouldn’t give me his reasons and he didn’t (wouldn’t) ask for mine.

My husband won his grand final yesterday, I am so happy for him and proud BUT I am also now sitting here in bed reflecting (crying involved) on why I want to make the same decision again next year. I’ve decided to put finger to keyboard and communicate some of these reflections.

Reasons I made the decision:

• The lifestyle/culture – the only way to celebrate a grand final is to drink all night and all day, or at least that’s how it feels to me. I’m not good at this. I get tired and grumpy and unsociable. I’m more a stay home, read a book, cuddle up kinda girl.
  • I don’t think my husband minds this about me but I feel like I miss out. I want to be apart of his victory, I want to celebrate with him but it just doesn’t work that way.
  • There are other wives/girlfriends who seem to be able to do this and I’m jealous.
• As I’ve said I LOVE so many people part of this sporting club. My children have so much fun with friends there. I decided though that there’s a difference between loving people and wanting to spend majority of your time with them. They are my family but they are not the people I would sit down and chat with for 4+ hours on a weekly basis. We are different and that’s ok.*
• I started to hate particularly after training nights walking in and waiting to find someone to sit with. It was a weekly decision/agony and why should I put myself through that?
• Training nights were the same for both me and my husband making child care difficult. Also due to tea and socializing they were late.
• Relationship/family stuff – I would always feel like as soon as we arrived at the footy oval my husband would clock off. Now was his time to prepare for the game while I was responsible for the childcare even though involved in my own sporting game. He would often be last out of the change rooms and sometimes I would feel that even after he did arrive out he would not look to acknowledge or come see me. This was his domain.

It was the right decision to make, for me. Not so much our family, we missed out on travelling together for games and the kids missed out on seeing as much of their friends. I would still often head out to club rooms after my games, which would be nice but not great. I enjoyed playing netball with a different group of girls. I enjoyed that the focus was solely on netball and not working on maintaining a whole community. I also appreciated the flexibility of training on a different night.

But now we are at the end of the season (actually I still get to play in a grand final next weekend!) and I still feel the same way about many of these issues. I believe it’s important to my husband for me to be there as a sign of support but I want to be wanted for my company.

There is no conclusion to this story, it’s a work in progress. In good news for me though my husband and I are starting to see a counselor so maybe just maybe by the start of next season we will be making a decision together.

*I’d like to note that some of these people I would happily spend endless hours with and that some of my feelings are likely overly swayed by my moods. I also want to say how supportive many of these people have been – a number will be there to watch me at my grand final next week and an even larger number asked me yesterday how my team went.

My Vote

It’s election day in Australia tomorrow. I’m one of those weirdos who love elections and gets excited about numbering all the boxes under the line on the senate paper, but sadly not so much this year.

My big decision this week was dropping a subject, and although I knew that it  was the decision I was going to make I still spent all week overthinking it, especially when I got grades back which were much better than expected. It’s the right decision – I want to be available to support my Mum, to prioritise my family and I’ve committed to school council. Plus I’ve been enjoying my job a lot more recently so the drive to do something different is not so great even if I don’t like the idea of extending study for another year.

Back to politics – each of our two major parties are much of a muchness as far as I’m concerned. Normally I would spend a fair bit of time researching but I just havn’t had the energy this year. My electorate is a pretty safe liberal seat, the only exciting thing is that the paper reported Nick Xenophon’s party may actually come close. I’ve become disillusioned with the Family First party by their lack of response regarding refugees and the Greens candidate is just an outsider. Labor had me a bit excited with a local candidate for once and their commitment to unfreeze medicare rebates which directly affects my job. I also support their position on education and implementing Gonski so was very tempted.

In the end both my upper and lower seat votes have been mostly influenced by their position on gay marriage.

Happy Election Eve Australia. We are lucky to live in such a great democratic country.