Choices

I have been thinking about choices over the last few days. How in every situation we have choice. Sometimes it seems as if we don’t have a choice but in fact we always do. In my unique and rather dramatic way, I thought about the most extreme example I could, a prisoner of war camp. Would you have a choice then? I mean, to disobey your captors would mean that you would not survive. But even then you have a choice- obey or not obey. The consequences of not obeying are pretty awful but you do have a choice.
Bringing it back to this struggle, sometimes it seems like we don’t have a choice at all. I remember getting news of yet another pregnancy and after hanging up the phone, laying my head down in my arms on the table and weeping. I couldn’t hold it in; it burst out of me like a flood. So what choice did I have then? The pain was so real and the grief overwhelming. But I think the choice came later, I had to make a choice to stop crying and pick myself up and turn back to God.
It sounds so easy but I know it’s not. The emotions in this are so extreme that sometimes all you can do is hold on as you get swept along by them. But eventually you will come to a place where you are able to make a choice. Sometimes I haven’t made the right choice at the right time and have chosen anger towards God and despair. It made it harder for me though in the long term as eventually I did turn back to God. However I had to wade back across the mud to him as I had been swept along too far and for too long. I made it too hard for myself. God didn’t move away, I did.
So as I focus on this new season of trusting and waiting, the question God is asking me is “what will my choice be”? Will I choose to trust and love and wait? To allow Him to complete His work in me and in us? Yes, with all my heart!