How many times have you felt directionless, purposeless, or just plain lost in life? Alluring as “figuring it out” may sound, not many people really achieve it. Questions about vocation and calling come up regularly. What should I do? What can I do? What has God called me to? What has he repared me for? Honestly, who knows!? Let us stop the pressured notion that there is one right path that you can’t miss or else(!) and you need the right prayer-faith-wisdom-balance to discern it. You are an acting person, an agent in your life. Choosing is part of your image-bearing and it’s a privilege in God’s world. But choosing is often an anxious affair. Even before we get to the Christian pressure on choosing, our culture of performance, achievements, and tower-building makes it even harder. Have you evaluated your school and vocational choices, asking if they provide enough, are interesting enough, have curb appeal, or will sustain you long enough? Add on inflation, housing booms, 25 streaming services, smart-phone upgrades, the allure of bougie new restaurants, and an annual budget—that’s real pressure! Not to mention many of us feel the added pressure of our parents’ expectations of us—even if they are Christian expectations! How could we possibly balance the pressures and pick right? We end up with choice anxiety.

Seek First the Kingdom of God

Forget how to choose for a minute. Have you ever noticed that one thing leads to the next? Consider these examples. When you took your first class in Algebra you realized you loved or loathed Algebra and your course sequence was informed. Perhaps you took the risk to say hello to someone you didn’t know and moved to the next fork in the road of building a lifelong friendship. When I admitted that I experienced my sales job as mind-numbingly painful I stopped to investigate my values and found a surprising store of compassion. This insight has altered everything for me. You can’t really know what will happen next until you start. One thing leads to the next. It evolves. “But that’s not carefully considered choice!” you cry. Exactly.

When Kevin DeYoung wrote (Moody, 2009), he helped thousands of people realize they can’t always know for certain what they should do. He wrote a book that normalized ambivalence and confusion. There was space for feeling torn and exploring anyway. The key that DeYoung provides to unlocking choice anxiety and the threat of missing God’s plan is a new orientation in the world. Notice that the solution isn’t shifting your perspective, getting choice coaching, and listening more effectively to God. Rather, DeYoung reminds us of what Jesus said: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matt. 6:33). This doesn’t directly tell you where to go or what to do; rather, this pursuit reorients the interests of our heart. The pursuit of the perfect Christian ministry, or the cultural pressure for self-promotion, and even our lust for the goods of the earth start to wither when we are oriented to the kingdom; to justice and shalom (Ps. 97:2, Isa. 35:10). We change our path when we care deeply for the right order of things, dignity for all, and peaceful rest in our maker and sustainer.

I want to borrow the words of my colleague Kristen. While working on a book with me, she wrote, “Place yourself back in Genesis 1–2. . . . Envision yourself as a kid in the sandbox. You’ve been told to play, and freedom is all you have ever known. Imagine that you don’t feel limited by the confines of the sandbox because you trust your parent who told you to govern just that one area. Your secure God-attachment allows you to be both fully curious and fully creative.” The child trusts the giver and together they explore.

But perhaps you can’t trust others, must take care of yourself, and figure it all out. Or perhaps you don’t know the Father’s delight in you, so you try to earn it from others by proving yourself. When we return to the Father who delights in us and receive his promises of protection and provision, we begin to desire to make this beautiful world known. His sandbox is quite fantastic! When this happens in our lives, we can just do a kingdom something—something that orders, that creates, that supports, that corrects, that feeds, that loves, that produces, that cleans. The choice of the something is wide; the heart orientation is narrow. Justice and shalom. This requires that we trust the bringer of justice and shalom.

Maintaining Peace in the Midst of Stress

Choosing becomes less anxious when the goal is less momentary and more eternal. However, let’s be honest, choosing is still tough because our culture is the already-and-not-yet hustle to feed our families and pay our medical bills. We don’t move from choice anxiety to bliss, but to peace amid stressful choice. For my family, moving to the USA so I could pursue a counseling degree was stressful, but peace rippled in the middle.

We must consider the feelings below the first level of anxiety. The first level of anxiety reminds us that we are never omniscient and can always get into trouble. The world of vocation isn’t a sure thing. It is a challenging thing with its toils, limitations, and disappointments. Mistakes are inevitable—if by mistake we mean experiencing something we don’t overly enjoy or flat-out hurts. As much as we might lament it, faithful pursuit of the kingdom doesn’t stop the impact of the fall in our lives. However, this heart orientation and action can mitigate some of the avoidable pain and sorrow, and it will certainly lead to rejoicing (Ps. 84:10).

We must remember that earthly struggle will continue no matter the path we pursue. One might ask, “In what general direction does this path head, and what is the disposition of my heart as I walk?” Is the path one on which you can see shalom and peace? Is your heart oriented to the goodness of the King?

When we engage the sandbox with a heart oriented to the kingdom, we have many opportunities. We pursue what we enjoy, what delights, what energizes us, and this is good. We must also remember that God is aware that our economies and cultures have attached values and rewards to our labor. So yes, in our fallen moment we find disparity and futility in the sandbox. This brings us back to choosing things that provide, sustain, and move toward flourishing. Our full-embodied selves are implicated in the choosing process. This means we must account for our thinking, emotional responses, and relational nature. Let me highlight three ways these embodied processes of humility, discernment, and interdependence impact our choosing.

Embodied Processes and Choice

Humility is the ability to see ourselves and others rightly within the context of the kingdom. Our self-awareness and other awareness require complex systems of cultural knowledge, emotional attunement, attention, and synthesis. This critical virtue supports us to accurately assess our gifts, limitations, and needs. It also allows us to recognize what is happening, and what is needed, in the world around us so that humble acts lead to good outcomes.

Discernment is a similarly complex reality, but is more skill-based than awareness-based. We take information and make hypothetical predictions, while weighing the different variables. We do this all the time in our lives without realizing it, but we can also make this process overt and tangible.

Finally, a life lived with interdependence recognizes our personal limitations, dependence on others, and ability to provide for others. We can not make it on our own and must also consider others. Living interdependently requires a degree of trust in trustworthy others, while we also demonstrate trustworthiness for others. We live symbiotically. We need support physically, emotionally, relationally, communally, and more.

I want to show you these processes in motion—not because I am a perfect example, but simply to show the complexity of doing a kingdom something and how it draws on our embodied human experiences.

Humility emerged as I began to see myself as a limited, small, but valuable child of God. I also started to see the limitations, strengths, and diversity of others. I began to see myself more accurately and honestly, recognizing that I like to think and feel deeply in the presence of others who are seeking for more. I could also see my limitations, for example, my moodiness, perfectionism, and cynicism. This complex self-knowledge could be applied to multiple sandbox endeavors in ways that orient to justice and shalom, and counseling was on my radar. The dignity and depravity of my life, functioning, and interests made a career within the ministry of counseling viable. This also appeared to be a need within the church and something with which I might engage.

Next came the challenge of discernment. I faced the dual realities that counseling had developed further in the United States, and I had a young family with the beginnings of rich community in my home country, England. To play in the sandbox in the manner I hoped for, I was confronted with logistical and emotional challenges: the realities just named, finances, visas, loss, extended family, fear, resilience. Alone, it was hard to make sense of the capacities I had, the challenges I faced, and the likely cost of any direction. It became clear that discernment required emotional support and comfort so that fears and paranoia wouldn’t overtake the choosing process. It was also true that ordering my thoughts against practical data was a way that I could honor and provide for my young family.

Finally, add into the pot the mixed desires and stories of a family. Weighing these complex factors takes time, and allowing others with wisdom to guide us was vital. It was not unwise to consider and organize our finances, relational needs, and our capacity for resilience in the face of an international move and a new career direction. The difference is that we considered these with existential safety to surround our momentary discomfort.

Interwoven relationships have paved the way for me and my family. When we moved to the United States, we were lost with how to make the transition. We needed to live with my wife’s parents for a short time, and friends connected us to housing and community in St. Louis. We leaned into help from those we had briefly known and were welcomed into their homes. Our then 2-year-old daughter was welcomed and played with, we were fed, our questions were answered. Over time, my family supported us from abroad, and we also developed rich friendships through school, work, and church. Our parenting changed, our worship deepened, and our understanding of grace solidified. Wonderfully, God has brought many people into our lives, and reciprocal love and provision have been experienced. School and work are hard, church was new, culture was interesting, and we walked alongside others through it all. Sustenance for ministry, counseling, a PhD, and now work at Covenant Seminary has all come through interdependence on community and Christ. No solo explorers here!

Choice as Invitation

Choosing was an invitation into these three embodied processes in our lives. We didn’t know where we would end up, and we didn’t realize how much the process would shape us. I have learned that we don’t fully develop and then choose. Rather, we choose and grow through the embodied process that it requires. Choice often feels difficult and stirs up our anxiety. However, humility develops in the process, our capacity for discernment is challenged to grow, and our interdependence can deepen and provide joyful sustenance.

Do we question our choices? Sure. Do we doubt? I know we are all in on that one! Yet doing something with the stirring desire to enact ourselves has blessed us and invited our growth as children of God.

How are you doing in the sandbox? Will you engage, play, explore, and rest? I invite you to consider that you can do so knowing that you have a good Father watching over you.