Faith: Our life is full of choices, even when it seems God isn't listening

“The word that allows yes, the word that makes no possible.

The word that puts the free in freedom and the word that takes the obligation out of love.

The word that throws a window open after the final door is closed.

The word upon which all adventure, all exhilaration, all meaning, all honor depends.

The word that fires evolution’s motor of mud.

The word that the cocoon whispers to the caterpillar.

The word that molecules recite before bonding.

The word that separates that which is dead from that which is living.

The word that no mirror can turn around.

In the beginning was the word and the word was CHOICE.”

—Tom Robbins' "Still Life With Woodpecker"

How many times have you been faced with a difficult situation that seemed to be devoid of any opportunities but one?  How many times have you felt trapped in a situation with no way out?  How many times have you felt like karma or fate or the Devil himself is working against you? How many times have you felt lost?

I have felt these things too many times in my life, and they were not simple issues either.  To get out of a bad marriage, to change careers, to move to a different state, to let go of a life-long friend after you discover, to your surprise, that friend was not who you had experienced for years.

These are serious situations and somewhere in the process, perhaps the thought has crossed your mind, that God has it in for you. And it hurts and it is scary and lonely. Where is the exit door, how can I escape?

Along the way, when faced with another of these bad situations, at first, until I turned 30, I took the bait and allowed myself to become the victim of circumstances.

Finally, despite the odds against me. I was led to stop, take a deep breath and search for hidden opportunities.  Then something happened. I asked God “Why am I trapped here?” and God chose to never answer that question.

Instead, and finally, each time, I was able to disconnect from my fear and sense of victimhood and look beyond the boulder on my life’s path and imagine that perhaps I needed to see things differently. Not always and never quickly, I would begin to see other paths, other possibilities. I think we are geared to see these possibilities only after we give up.

It is also true that a sense of loneliness can impair one’s vision. Discovering that even one other person you know is or has recently gone through the same situation is like finding a candle in the dark when you were sure there was no possibility of any light anywhere near your problem.

What do we know about choices? There is always a choice.

Even at life’s end, spending eternity in a grave at somebody’s cemetery, is only one choice. The other choices are bright in comparison. I suspect that until and unless you get to that point, those choices are almost fantasies; but when we get there, suddenly, the possibility of death being the end can instead become the opening of a door to an adventure that can only begin when the life leaves your body.

Then the life you cherish is free to make other choices in other dimensions, other universes, even in other of God’s domains, which can only be glimpsed when this life is finally and completely over. Yes, that right. Even after death there must be more choices we can make, even including the decision to come back to this life in a new body with your soul all geared up to learn more of life’s choices … a second chance.

I suspect that coming to the point of believing you have no choices left is the gateway to a major life change. I believe that we are created with the very power of the universe inside each of us; and we are free to make any choice we wish. That freedom can change our lives right now in surprising and wonderful ways.

If course, the choice is ours.

Chuck Robison is a Presbyterian minister, a former Protestant chaplain at the United Nations, the author of two books so far, and a spiritual adventurer.  His Theo-techno autobiography is to be titled: "God Works Funny!"

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Faith: Life if full of choices