Life is a series of decisions, if we don’t trust ourselves to make a decision we don’t go forward in life.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Trust the process, your time is coming. Just do the work and the results will handle themselves. Tony Gaskins

On Saturday we had a lovely visit with an aunt and her sister. She met her great-great-nephew. How lovely it is to get together with family. Schedules clash and getting everyone together with everyone we’d like to attend often isn’t possible. My sister couldn’t be with us because she is on a trip out West to host a quilting retreat with my oldest sister.

We are planning a trip out to see Mom and do some sightseeing. With five adults and a baby to consider planning is challenging. There is so much to see and so little time but in the end, it will be a memorable trip and my daughter-in-law will get to see parts of Canada she’s never seen.

Life is all about choices and we have to narrow down our choices which means we can’t have and do everything. What sights and people would we like to see and what sights and people do we feel we must see? We make choices every day; do we go for a walk or write? Do we eat this or that, do we feel deprived, or satisfied with our choices?

Is living a well-lived life about making enough choices that build a good life, feed our souls and bodies, create good relationships and live our lives with passion and purpose? My daughter asked me to go for a walk yesterday but her son fell asleep when we were getting ready to go. I wanted to pick up a few things and one of them was a book so I spent more time in the bookstore when I got back she had gone for the walk. I missed the walk but I bought the book.

Earlier in the day we had a lesson on trust. My daughter was picking up something she saw in a local marketplace. When she contacted the seller he said he would be away on Sunday but she could pick up the item and leave the money in the mailbox. My daughter picked up her items and left the money in the mailbox.

We live in a world that works on trust. We are going to book a car rental and show up at an airport expecting a car and it will be there unless something goes wrong. We couldn’t make any travel arrangements if we couldn’t trust, and the car rental can be canceled almost until pick up. Life doesn’t operate on guarantees it operates on trust and those who don’t trust often miss out. We need to trust others to deliver on what they’ve agreed to, and we must trust ourselves that we can deal with what doesn’t work out, whether that is marriage, business, jobs, health, finances, or something else.

Changing our decision sets up a bad habit. It reinforces decision-making as an expression of bewilderment and ignorance, instead of wisdom and freedom. Sakyong Mipham

Life doesn’t come with guarantees, and if we must have a guarantee then we can’t do anything. Do we feel we live in uncertain times but haven’t we always? We probably have more certainty in our lives than we’ve ever had. We also have more choices, we might have more good choices, but we also might have more bad choices.

We have to be careful we aren’t so worried about not making the best choice that we don’t make any choice at all. How many people never found the perfect person to marry so they never got married, didn’t build a family, and life went on its merry way as it does and someday all our choices are behind us whether we made them or not.

There are writers out there waffling on whether to self-publish their books. They feel like a failure if they have to self-publish them and want validation from an agent and a publisher. I’m not sorry I went the self-publication route. Not because it has made me rich or famous, but because it moved the process along. I’m not still waiting, the decision was made, a process got put in place, and my books are out in the world and I’m working on new ones.

This time in 2020 none of it had been done except for writing, endless writing, and rewriting. At some point, we have to make a decision and I’m happy with mine because it made something happen. Instead of working on the same project for more years, new projects were started and finished.

We always have decisions to make and it might be tempting to put them off, we worry now isn’t a good time, but there comes a time when we do something or we don’t do it. We go forward or we become someone who wanted to do something instead of someone who actually did it.

Are there choices we need to make, and want to make, but are afraid to make? What are we afraid of?

There is no decision that we can make that doesn’t come with some sort of balance or sacrifice. Simon Sinek

Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong… To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage. Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you want something you have never had, you must be willing to do something you have never done. Thomas Jefferson

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.