A joke I like is about a guy on KP in the army who is told to peel potatoes and put the big ones in one pot and the small ones in another. The mess sargent came back an hour later and found that he had done nothing, saying, "How do you expect me to make all these damn decisions?"
I guess I am still not all that good at smaller on the spur of the moment decisions, having just gone into a bakery I haven't been in for some time buying too much for too much. Even though I am retired, I tend to follow sort of a weekly routine that still keeps life fairly interesting as well as comfortble. I usually do similar things in familiar places so that I don't have to consider the rationality or morality of things, considering whether God would approve. I see this as turning my tendency to do things out of habit to my advantage, just trying to make them good habits. In the last six years, I have only missed the local meeting five times, and on each of those nights I was away, sitting in meetings in Sydney, Melbourne orWellington. When thinking about making changes in my life, I like to consult my heart, mind and conscience. If they agree, the change is worth making. I stayed at my last job teaching English at a two year college in Japan for 14 years before moving here to Devonport five years ago. That was about as long as I stayed at all the other full-time jobs I've had in my life. My contract and visa came up for renewal every three years and either my heart, mind or conscience told me to stay. When it became clear that I would lose much of my summer vacation each year if I stayed longer, which I used to go somewhere to get to a lot of meetings in English, they all agreed that it was time to get out of there. I still find the idea that I would get "knowledge of God's will" a bit confusing. For me it is more of a subtle feeling that Plan A will probably work out OK and I Plan B just doesn't feel right and I would probably come to regret doing that. I once thought when new that those who talked about "handing over" in Step 3 said a little prayer in the morning and then had God whispering in their ears all day. That didn't work for me so I just tried following my conscience or just doing what I thought a moral adult would do. Many years later, I could finally see that I did have a sort of still small voice inside and could see that God must, at least sometimes, be speaking through my conscience. |