Day 181 - Valley of Decision

📖Daily Reading

Joel 1-3 

🎥 Video  

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📝 Reflection 

 Joel 3:14

  Thousands upon thousands are waiting in the valley of decision. There the day of the Lord will arrive soon.

 

The valley of decision is a familiar place for me. Sometimes I spend so much time there, going back and forth. A non-decision is a decision. So we are always making them even when we convince ourselves that we aren’t. A decision delayed is still a decision. I used to be constantly in a state of decision making. 

My personal mental trick was to dive into research mode. Research can be a very important and valuable part of making a decision. But I could fool myself into thinking that I gathering information was a good reason to take lots of time making the ‘right’ decision. One thing that I am learning is that making decisions doesn’t have to be permanent. If you make a ‘wrong’ decision, that is a form of research too. Then you can take that new information and make a new and different decision.

This new approach to decision making for me is easier said than done just because of how my particular brain is wired. But I am learning that it is also a skill that can be developed with consistent practice and application. If you are recovering perfectionist like me it helps to let go of making a ‘right’ decision. Using words like making the ‘best’ decision for right now with the information I have. I like making good solid informed decisions and if I get new information that changes things, then I have room for that. 

I am human and therefor will always have limitations, perfection is not really ever an option anyway. The other things I have learned in the last few years, is that I need to look into what a decision is realistically going to ‘cost’ or require of me and how it might also affect those around me vs. the return on that investment (ROI). That is what the people of Israel were constantly in the thick of and caught in the valley. God on one side or other people, idols, power etc.. on the other side.  Both probably seemed very ‘good’ in their eyes and coming with a lot of benefits. 

In a modern day example, many people might make a decision to get fit and have ‘six pack’ abs with single digit body fat percentage. Sounds like a great decision on the surface with a great outcome. But if you dig a little deeper and do a ROI analysis it might not be a good decision for many. What one might not realize is that people that have physiques with a lot of muscle definition, low body fat and six pack abs have to make a lot of sacrifices to look like that.

For many of them it is their full time occupation. They have to give up a lot of social time, have to eat a special diet and bring food with them everywhere or ask for special accommodations.  What if you could eat 80% ‘healthy’, exercise a reasonable amount and have 20% body fat and still look great in your outfits etc.. there is big difference there in your lifestyle and sacrifices you might have to make to achieve that. So you also need to get really clear on what your outcomes are and why and what is the quality of life you also want at the same time.

Now this might seem like a superficial example in comparison to the book of Joel, but the decision making process that most people go through is probably very similar. They were staying on the surface, and with what immediately felt good or made sense in their own human understanding. They were probably not digging deeper and looking at the long term ‘cost’ of their decisions. That decision came back to wipe them out with a plague of locusts. 

The other interesting verse in Joel is the reference to 4 types of locusts; the cutting locusts, the the swarming locusts, the hopping locusts, the stripping locusts. I wonder if this can also be applied to the valley of decision. Maybe one decision or non decision seems not too bad, but then as you continue down that path gets worse and worse leading to final destruction. At each stage though there might have been a moment of awareness where you ask yourself if you should make a different decision and then procrastinate… I know I have certainly done that!

✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt 

 What valley of decision are you in right now or what comes to mind when you think of this? Have you done your research, do you have the proper expectations? What is the ROI?

📖Tomorrows Reading

Amos 1-9 

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