How do I overcome decision paralysis and anxiety?

One of the hardest things about making decisions, particularly significant, potentially life altering ones, is the reality of bearing the weight of uncertainty. Decisions would be easy if the answers were black and white, if there was a clear right and a clear wrong answer. But often we're asked to choose in what is much more gray and much more uncertain. I despise my lack of omniscience the most when I'm asked to make decisions. If I knew what each path would lead to, if I knew which decision would definitely lead to the best outcome, if I had more information, if I could account for all the possible variables and see into the future, this would be easier. But instead as limited and sinful human beings with limited knowledge, the Lord asks us to make decisions, and it can be a paralyzing, anxious ordeal.

There are a few things that may be helpful. One is I think the anxiety we can feel surrounding decisions is somewhat justified. We are essentially acknowledging the reality that we do bear the weight of uncertainty, that with any decision we make, there is risk. We may try to live our lives minimizing risk as much as possible, but in a fallen world, risk is inevitable. The risk of getting it wrong, of choosing less than God's best, the risk of making a decision that has negative consequences, we or others might have to suffer through the risk of missing out on the blessings and the gifts that could have awaited us over there in that other decision, had we chosen differently. The risk of wrongly discerning, of things going wrong, a failure of being forever relegated to a Plan B life. I don't know what particular anxieties you face in decisions, but it is this awareness that there is a degree of risk in every decision.

Yet God seems to invite us to make decisions in the midst of that anyway. He seems to allow us and invite us to make decisions knowing that we are limited, finite, and uncertain. He asks us to bear the weight of uncertainty in our decision-making with some certainty that there are things that are not at risk if we are children of God. The hope for him to redeem, the hope of his presence and help, the hope of his grace, the hope of his love. There are a lot of reasons why I love the end of Romans 8, and one of those reasons is because in the midst of risk, uncertainty, and overwhelming decisions, the apostle Paul speaks to the deepest certainty that I need—the fact that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Romans 8:38–39 says, “For I'm sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

It's the comprehensiveness that is precious. It doesn't guarantee no suffering and the “best outcomes I could have possibly secured.” It just tells me that even in suffering, even in consequences, and even in the possibility of less than ideal outcomes, that there is an anchor in it all. I have fallen flat on my face with decisions that I've made in the past that I sought to make in prayer, receiving wise counsel from others, searching Scripture for clarity, seeking to sift through my motives, wanting to honor him, but never separated from his love, never cut off from his grace, never beyond the hope of his redeeming and making beauty out of ashes. My life story of decisions, if I look back, is not going to be marked by my perfect track record, but it will be marked by his grace and mercy to me, and perhaps the first step of navigating decision paralysis and anxiety is acknowledging what is at risk in every decision we make, but also what isn't at risk in every decision we make because of Christ. And what isn't at risk—his love, his presence, his grace, his redeeming, his faithfulness—gives me courage, gives us courage for whatever risks we may be facing.

Maybe I'll close with this, and this is an email that someone sent to me after I had made a pretty difficult life-altering decision, one that I made fully aware of the potential losses at play, one that I made with lack of certainty and confidence that I was choosing the right and better thing. I knew it was a decision that would lead to permanent closed doors, and it weighed heavily on me, but I prayed. I asked for prayer. I asked others for words of counsel. I weighed the pros and cons. I sought God's guidance and peace, and eventually I had to make a decision and I did. And when I had shared the decision in an email, this was the response that I received.

Hi Esther. Thanks for letting me know. No doubt the decision was painful because you could imagine the good things that could come from going either way. I think that's a good thing. You're looking for both what you want and what God wants for you. I trust that you'll lean into these next months with a clear sense not that you made the one right decision, but that having made your decision faithfully, you will now do right by the responsibility God has given you. I've thought of this email a lot in all the other decisions I've made in my life since then. It anchors me because it reminds me that whatever I choose as I seek to do it faithfully before God and humbly in community, the calling once I choose is not to endlessly obsess if I made the right decision or not, is not to endlessly pine for what would've happened if I made the other decision. It's to walk forward now, seeking to do right by the responsibility God has given me in this decision.

There have been days with this particular one where I have questioned what I chose. There have been hard days that left me discouraged, wondering if I messed it up and chose wrongly. Yet, those wrestlings are also accompanied by a conviction to walk forth, seeking him for his grace today to do what is good and pleasing in his sight in this decision that I've made.

I don't know what exactly that means for the decisions that you are faced with today. I still have my own decisions before me that leave me in anxiety and fear. I guess it's just learning to cultivate an imagination in the midst of it, that whatever we choose, he'll be there. And whatever we choose will be opportunity to do right by him, to do our best for him. That whatever we choose, if nothing else, we will not be separated from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And in the anxiety of it all, may we find that there is hope, not in ourselves, but in him.