Deciding to decide

I can say with complete certainty that discernment is not my spiritual gift.

I have struggled with making decisions my entire life, and I feel the problem has only perpetuated as I’ve gotten older. I mean, I am the girl who went to four colleges in four years—two of them twice. I just couldn’t decide where I was supposed to be or what would be best for me at that point in my life.

Does anyone really like making decisions??

And it’s not like I don’t pray about these things, because I really do. The problem comes in discerning whether it’s God telling me to go a certain way or my own voice trying to convince myself that it’s part of His plan. It becomes this complicated mess that I just continually make worse.

My sister likes to play on my lack of decision-making skills by forcing me to make them. When we go to restaurants, she makes me choose where to eat; when I ask for her advice, she will offer words of wisdom but never flat-out tell me what to do. For a person like me, that can be a bit frustrating.

My most recent bout with trying to make a decision came in regards to the Boston Marathon. Ever since I became serious about running, it’s been something I’ve dreamed of doing—I mean, isn’t it every distance runner’s goal?

I qualified for Boston when I ran my first marathon in 2005, but I was in college at the time, taking 19 hours and working three jobs. I really didn’t have the time or money to make it out there then. So, when I ran my second marathon in 2009 and qualified again, I was excited about the fact that I would actually get to run Boston this time. Because the 2010 race was already full before I even ran my qualifying race, I knew 2011 would be the year.

Then came the pelvic disaster.

It’s always so awkward to say I had a pelvic fracture (Who gets those??!),, but it’s the truth. I couldn’t run the Chicago Half Marathon or the Chicago Marathon, two races I had already signed up to run and about which I was pretty pumped. Needless to say, it was pretty depressing not being able to run them—after all, I couldn’t walk for three weeks without my stupid crutches.

I even struggled with making the decision of whether or not I should still make the trip to Chicago to watch. I went back and forth, back and forth. Finally (with the help of advice from friends and family, of course), I concluded it would be best not to go, which I think was the wise thing to do.

Back to Boston: why is this even a decision? To be honest, I am not sure how much I really like marathons. Yes, I love running, and I love running long distances. However, I get worse pre-race anxiety than anyone I know. It’s beyond ridiculous. When you combine that with the distance of a marathon and then factor in the travel and unfamiliarity aspects to the race, you have a colossal Nat-tastic disaster in the works.

I actually made a pros/cons list for this decision, which is something I generally avoid. (Maybe that’s why I am so bad at this!) To be honest, the cons of running it outweighed the pros. Yet, for some weird reason, I’m still almost certain that I will be on that starting line on April 18.

I would like to say that I am completely comfortable with that choice, but that would be a lie. The truth of the matter is that I still don’t know if this is something I want to do. After all, I am not sure my pelvis can handle it. (Yes, that was an awkward sentence to write.) Plus, I really want to focus more on improving in the half, which is my favorite race, anyway. If I go run Boston and re-injure myself, I feel like all the training and work I’ve put into coming back will be tossed out the window.

I often wonder if I will ever be good at making decisions. Why is it so hard for me? I know I’m not the only one who struggles with this skill (or lack of it), but I feel like it’s more of an issue for me than most people. Or maybe they are just better at hiding it.

So, for right now, Boston is in my plans. I haven’t decided how I will feel about this tomorrow, though.