Safety

I have a problem with wanting to know I am doing The Right Thing. The type of person who walks around a clothing store with items folded over her arm, I debate and think and question myself and end up walking out of the store with nothing.  Big decisions or small, I want some kind of guarantee that my choice works out before I commit.  This was highlighted when my nephew had cancer.  My sister and her husband approached the issue in a way that baffled and frustrated me.  I called my friend Sandy The Cancer Researcher for information sources, referrals, ideas on how to handle the doctors.  They prayed.  I weighed the pros and cons of having a positive, collegial relationship between the doctors in Chicago and the doctors in Boston versus the doctors in Texas having more experience treating this kind of cancer.  They discussed the weather that time of year in Boston vs. Texas because, "If we are going to have to stay there for a couple of months, we might as well make a vacation out of it."  I wanted to know every possible side effect and future challenge Jack might face.  They didn't want to know or worry about things until they had to deal with it.  Possible deafness?  Cognitive delays?  "Why worry about something that might not even happen?"  

From that experience I received a piece of advice that struck me to my heart.  Red, my girlfriend at the time, explained to me that we can make a decision for the best reasons and still have the worst possible outcome.  We can also make a decision based on what some might think are frivolous reasons, and have the best possible outcome.  I never really saw it that way.  I thought, if I use good reasons to make decisions that means I get a good outcome.  Elementary, my dear Watson!  It was a revelation that even well thought out, reasoned, reasonable decisions could still result in heartbreak, pain, and desolation.  And to be honest, in Jack's case it very well could happen either way.  Or now that it has been two years, I know that no matter what happened, we have grief.  He is alive, and struggles to walk.  He has hearing aids, special glasses, undetermined cognitive delays.  But he can talk and has a great sense of humor and never, ever gives up no matter what.  Seriously.  He plays us into the ground.

This is what has kept me in my marriage, in my relationships with women that are less than what I deserve, less than satisfying.  I have no guarantee of a positive outcome, so I walk around the store with stuff draped over my arm and I end up walking out with nothing.  As my once-favorite band Rush has pointed out, "if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice."  There is no safety, only choices.