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I just couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed the scissors and started getting ready to cut my bangs. I watched a video tutorial on how to twist them and cut them straight across. It looked good on the video and the girls didn’t look like morons so I decided to try it. Beyond annoyed with my hair and my life, I guess I needed a change so I thought cutting my bangs off would be a nice way to bring some balance to my life. BIG MISTAKE!!! I ended up looking like a 1985 school girl and I couldn’t fix it. I dragged myself into to see my hair stylist and she gave me the “I can’t believe you did that” look as she attempted to correct my impulsive stupid decision. I paid for that decision for almost a year as I waited for my bangs to grow back out.
It’s amazing how one moment of weakness created a long, miserable season for me. I resorted to pinning my hair back because it was the only way that I looked human as opposed to a cute cocker spaniel with all of those bangs. Good Lord…what was I thinking???!!!
Have you ever done something so stupid, so impulsive and you don’t even know WHY you did it? There appeared to be no rhyme or reason for doing it but you just couldn’t stop yourself? I have displayed my dumb decision making skills many times beyond just the bang cutting incident. I once went through a long, disappointing season that never seemed to end. I worked at a job I hated, gave up a music ministry I loved and I felt forced to live someone else’s life. The days seemed to turn into years and God didn’t rescue me from the pit I found myself in. I finally had my fill of it so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I didn’t pray about it; I just decided to do whatever I wanted with my life and I didn’t really care about consequences.
If God didn’t want to let me do what I loved to do then I would find an alternative.  So I set out on charting a new course for my life, since God refused to cooperate. I found Psychology and Social Work fit nicely with my personality profile so I enrolled in a degree program. The little situation rolled along smoothly until God began to deal with me about my dumb decision to ignore His voice and do whatever I wanted. I fought the nagging feeling for a while but eventually I lose the grace to continue the direction I headed. I knew the endeavor could produce no true fruit if God had not blessed it. I found myself stuck in the consequences of my dumb decision and I needed to get out. So I quit, quite abruptly too. No sense in prolonging my rebellion and incurring more consequences. Now here I sit, still paying back student loans that I never should have obtained.
The question begs to be answered: Why do we make dumb decisions like the ones I just described? I believe we make those decisions for several reasons:
1) We grow tired of waiting on God. Yep it really gets old when God requires you to wait on Him to move on your behalf. Months and years pass by and we can’t understand why we are still at the job we hate or stuck at home not able to get a job, or waiting on some promise He made us. We basically decide to do something about it rather than continue waiting on God to handle it. The problem with this approach is in our mishandling of decision making we leave Him out of the equation and end up in a worse situation than we originally found ourselves in.
2) We get desperate. Waiting on something for extended periods of time often leads to desperate measures. Like Abraham and Sarah, we end up creating an Ishmael situation instead of waiting on God to bring our Isaac. The scary thing about desperation is it isn’t logical and we can’t see the lunacy of our plans until the damage already exists. We become fixated with getting out of the discomfort and don’t really care HOW we do it. All that matters is relieving our pain.
3) God seems unfair. When we believe that God is being unfair to us we tend to go into self preservation mode. We put up walls and we decide to take care of ourselves. That’s exactly how I felt during my college stint. It isn’t the idea that college is a bad thing, it just wasn’t God’s will for me at that season of my life. He wanted me at that horrible job and seeking Him daily because He was working on some character issues in me. Things that only a bad situation brings to the surface. By doing whatever I wanted I circumvented His process of character development. Sometimes He creates unfair situations so we will surrender to Him and let patience have it’s perfect work in us. It isn’t pleasant but it is necessary if we want to reach our full potential.
4) We get bored. I get bored super easy. I can’t stand doing the same thing day after day, year after year. That feeling even permeates into my workout routines. If I don’t constantly change them up I’ll end up quitting from motivational depletion. Sometimes our life feels that way too. We find ourselves super bored with the stagnation of doing the same thing every day. Our life feels like a hamster wheel of mundane chores and activities. If we aren’t careful we will devise little selfish adventures just to escape our boring life that might end up being a trap for us.
What’s the remedy for recovering from a dumb decision?? Obviously realizing we made a dumb decision is the starting point. Fortunately, God is gracious and helps us recover, although we may need to deal with some consequences. But even in that situation He gives grace for that as well. He even uses our dumb decisions to teach us things or help others not make the same mistake. He is a loving Father, not a drill sergeant. We can never exhaust his reservoir of grace, not that we should try by any means.
In addition to a spirit led course correction, I believe we can discover new things about God that we never knew. When we get tired of waiting, desperate or bored we can press into Him instead of push Him away. I believe He is always willing to teach us more if we choose Him instead of our own fleshly desires.
When you feel tempted to cave into a dumb decision, practice the pause principle. I used to coach a girls volleyball team and sometimes the games became intense, the temperature in the room soared, and the girls became afraid leading them to make dumb decisions. It always worked well to call a time out and pause the game long enough for the girls to get their head back on straight. It usually worked. It’s no different in our lives. When things seem to spiral out of control and we lose our heads we just need to find some quiet place to pause and be alone with God before we do something stupid. Slow things down a bit and let Him speak peace and direction to us. That’s a practice He honors because we show Him he holds first place by choosing to let Him speak before we act. He likes that and it helps us from making a dumb decision.