A friend of mine recently left for a Peace Corps assignment. Two years in Thailand. Not the tourist sector or the flashy areas you see in magazines but very rural areas that you may have never heard of or that ever get much attention. Her journey to finding the Peace Corps and ultimately the decision to go wasn’t easy. She went back and forth and more than once was tempted to say “No, it sounds good but not for me”. Ultimately after one delay and many long stretches of talking with her family and friends she made the decision to go. Listening to her talk about it made me stop to think of the decisions in life that we make. How we come to crossroads, opportunities or big decisions and have to decide left or right, to go or to stay.

There are plenty of times in our lives that we sit down with our trusty pen and paper, or notebook app what have you, to make the list of Pros and Cons that we ultimately hope will clearly spell out what we should do. But what happens when you’re in a dead heat? When the reasons to go equal the number of reasons to stay? When it means leaving familiar surroundings or being uncomfortable? When you aren’t really sure and the idea of just deciding is pretty daunting. If you’re my friend you take the leap of faith and hope that it works out. But many people (myself included at times) find this, making the decision, hard to do. This month we talked about goal setting and resolution keeping, about ways we can branch out and make changes. But change is difficult. It can be messy and complicated and downright scary. The decision to leave a job you’ve been at for a while or to take on a new challenge. To talk with our doctor about a possible prognosis or make changes to our lifestyle. All the changes, they start with a decision.

The decisions we make and the paths we go down may be complicated and the path I chose may not look anything like yours. But deciding to go, to change, to work through the problem, to have that tough talk with your spouse or go to see the physician is worth the skipped beat your heart makes when you do it. To get over that first step…the decision… then to move into the next phase and see where it takes you.