Doubts, Marriage, and the Right Decision

This is a terrible idea, I thought, leaving my college advisor's office a few days before my wedding to get the work I would miss the next few days.

Small doubts crept into my mind on my drive home.  Doubts like how we were going to be able to afford anything.  How it wasn't the smartest idea to get married in college.  I thought about the car I was driving.  When it breaks down after I'm married (and it most certainly did-never buy American), my Mom won't help me pay to fix it anymore.  I'll be an adult.  A married adult.

Small doubts gave way to bigger ones, the closer I got to home.

What if this is a bad idea all together?  

What if this is a mistake?  

What if I'm not supposed to be married at all?

I think, too often, I judge God's leading on my life by how I'm feeling.  I know I'm not the only one.  That day, a few days before my wedding, I was a mess.  There was not a peaceful bone in my body.  In fact, the few months leading up to my wedding weren't so peaceful, either.  I lost a crazy amount of weight.  I developed an ulcer.  I began to take medication for anxiety, had to modify my diet to heal the ulcer and still, everything I ate made me nauseated.  Did that mean that marrying Rich was the wrong decision?  That God was trying to tell me to pull out before it was too late?

A day before our 8th anniversary, I can answer that with a resounding no.   When we're called to step out in faith, to make a decision that has no predictable outcome, it rarely ever feels peaceful.  Nerve-racking? Yes.  Exciting? Absolutely.  Puke-inducing? Well, in my case, most definitely.  The peace comes in the trusting that God has your back, no matter what your decision may be.  The peace is in the Man who loves you, and died for you- not from your circumstance or situation.

So whatever decision you were putting off making because it's freaking you out- the one you've been waiting on because you "don't know what God wants you to do", let me assure you.  God wants you to love Him, and love his folks.  That's it. Do that, and jump into whatever you've been holding back from with your stress-eating, your second guessing, your sign searching.  It could be the best decision you've ever made.

It was for me.