Do Not Ask Me To Choose Anything

The outing dies on one sentence and it is always the same sentence.

Where shall we go.

Somebody asks it, meaning to be helpful, offering you the choice as though it were a gift, and something in you goes flat, and about four minutes later the whole thing is off and nobody could say quite why.

And people think you did not want to go. You did want to go. What you did not have was one more decision.

Because by four in the afternoon you have made something like two hundred of them, none of them large, and there is a thing that runs out and it is not energy and it is not willingness. It is the capacity to select between options, and yours has been empty since about two o'clock every day for a year.

I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way

There is a promise in Psalm 32 that is unusually practical about direction.

I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye. (Psalm 32:8, King James Version)

I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go.

Notice what is being offered. Not options. Not a set of good possibilities with the choosing left to the person. The way which thou shalt go, singular, given rather than selected from.

You are being handed a way rather than a menu, and it was never a set of choices that God offered anybody in that verse. Psalm 32:8 gives the way rather than the options, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as relief rather than as a restriction on anybody's freedom.

And then: I will guide thee with mine eye. Which is the smallest possible form of instruction. A look. Nothing to weigh, nothing to compare, nothing that has to be evaluated before it can be acted on.

You have guidance that costs nothing to receive, and it was never something you had to think your way through. The written word makes the guiding a glance rather than a deliberation, and the Spirit of God is what makes direction restful instead of one more thing to process.

Deciding is work

Now let me name what almost nobody names, because it will take a weight off.

Deciding is work. It is not the frame around the work.

Every choice you make costs something small, and they do not reset, and by mid afternoon a person who has made two hundred of them is not tired in her body, she is out of a specific capacity, and offering her a choice at that point is not kindness, it is another task in a friendly voice.

Deciding is work, and a household that removes one decision has not lowered anything, and staying in is not a smaller answer than going out.

You are not unwilling, and it was never enthusiasm that ran out at two o'clock. Psalm 32 offers the way itself rather than a set of options, which is exactly why the Spirit of God removes a choice rather than encouraging somebody to make one.

And here is what makes this so hard to explain to the people who love you. Where shall we go sounds generous. It is meant generously. Nobody offering it has any idea they are handing over a job.

Fix it the night before

So the practical part, and the whole of it happens the night before, when there is still capacity in the day.

Decide the route once, while nothing is happening, and then never decide it again.

You are able to spend a decision when you have one to spend, and it has never once been rigidity to settle a thing in advance. The passage gives the way which thou shalt go rather than a comparison, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman settling one thing on a Sunday evening.

The same route, every time. To the corner and back, or round the block, or the four streets. It does not matter which one, and that is the point: what matters is that it is fixed and nobody has to select it at four in the afternoon.

And tell them. Say it plainly: we go the same way, so nobody has to decide. Children accept that instantly, because a fixed thing is easier for them too.

Then when somebody asks where shall we go, the answer is already there and it costs nothing to say.

You are able to hand back a settled answer, and it has never once been the same thing as having no imagination. Psalm 32:8 guides with an eye rather than a deliberation, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present with a woman walking a route she settled last week.

And on the days there is nothing at all, do not go, and let that stand with nothing added to it.