[if you want to know where your heart is, look where your mind wanders]

I’ve felt like blogging for quite some time now.  I’ve even come up with twelve (yes, twelve!) different subjects about which I would like to blog, but I’ve had neither the time nor the thought-processes to be able to blog those things that I wanted.   

However, I’ve decided to attempt to go back to this blogging-on-Sundays thing.  I’m not too sure how it will pan out, but we’ll see.

There are lots of questions today.  If you have answers to any of them, I’d love to hear them. 

Today’s blog is all about decisions, I suppose.  Decisions are things that I can find easy (walk or bus to uni?) or difficult (how to do my hair today?).  They can have trivial consequences (which bed set do I put on my bed?) or less-trivial ones (what sort of jobs should I apply for?).  They can have a definite time (what should I have for tea today?) or a vaguer one (how am I going to show what’s important in my life?). 

On 1^st December, a good friend of mine got married.  While we were there, I met the 10-month old daughter of another good friend (who is, by the way, gorgeous).  Both friends seem so happy.  It makes me wonder if I’ve somehow unwittingly lost my way with my priorities in life.  Have I got this thing called life wrong?  Am I planning where I should be living?  Am I dreaming when I should be working? 

Can a dream be worked towards, even if you don’t know how your current work will lead to your dream?  If you don’t love what you do, why do it?  These are linked to decision-making for me at the moment because I am coming to the end of my Masters degree – in an area about which I am not exactly passionate.  The work is interesting, for the most part, certainly.  But I’m not sure quite how passionate you can get about a pump. Or a heat exchanger.  (Distillation columns, on the other hand...)

One thing that would be nice to know is how much the decisions that we make now will affect our lives from this point.  I remember watching a German film once about something along the lines of the Butterfly Effect – the theory that a butterfly flapping its wings (or not) on the other side of the world will have some effect here.  Perhaps this is better illustrated by the Doctor Who episode “Turn Left”, but it amounts to the same thing.  Does making the “right” decision depend on the time at which it is made?  Would a certain decision be wrong today, but right tomorrow?

How can decision-making be God-centred when he seems so silent about the whole thing?   A recent visit to a friend threw up all sorts of questions for me – some about things that I realised I should be making a conscious decision about.  If I want my life to be God-centred, how should I go about doing that?  What, or how, can I structure my life so that God’s love is palpable?  That’s the kind of life I want.  The kind I described a year or so ago here.  The kind where everyone knows they’re welcome.  Everyone knows they’re loved.  Everyone knows they’ll be listened to.  And everyone knows that if I can help do anything to help them, I will.  All without me telling them – they just know.  That’s what I want.  But how to go about it?

Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.  When I feel afraid, and I think I’ve lost my way, still you’re there right beside me.  And nothing will I fear, as long as you are near.  Please be near me to the end.- Amy Grant

What’s important in your life?  

How do you make God-centred decisions?