What do you do when you don’t know what to do?

This question might be a bit of an odd question to some people.  To others you might be dying for an answer to that question.  Unfortunately I do not have the exact answer to this question.  There have been countless times in my life when I have been at an utter loss of what to do.  I felt stuck.  I felt hopeless.  I felt confused.  I felt depressed.  The list can go on and on.  I would constantly ask the question, “What should I do about_______.”  Sometimes we have the privilege of getting our questions answered faster than other times.  But sometimes we are left waiting for a very long time to get the answers to our questions.  

Some may be wondering, who is answering these questions?  For me, God is the one who answers my questions, or doesn’t answer my questions.  Some of you may not believe in God or have a difficult time believing that God can answer our questions.  Maybe you once believed that God answered you but now he doesn’t.  Wherever you are in life or your belief in God, I’m sure you have struggled with lack of answers to life’s questions.  

So, getting back to the question, what do you do when you don’t know what to do?  What do we do when God does not answer us, what do we do when we don’t get the answer we want?  The short, simple and frustrating answer is, wait.  Yep.  I know what you are thinking, “I have to KEEP waiting???”  I know, waiting is hard.  Waiting is probably one of the most difficult things we can do.  This leads us to another question, “What do we do while we wait?”  The easy answer is cry, scream, get angry, do anything you want that will make you feel better during this waiting period.  We all can do those things.  If I could, I would get my favorite Fro Yo (frozen yogurt), cake batter and chocolate with a little bit of sprinkles and Reese’s on top.  I would eat that and only that every day.  I would also watch non-stop episodes of Friends on Netflix.  If I did that, would that be healthy for me to do?  Unfortunately, no.  It would be fun though.  But soon enough I would get tried of that and pretty depressed.  So that brings me to the more difficult answer…

Seek help.  I’m not telling you that you have to go to a mental health counselor, even though that wouldn’t hurt; what I am trying to tell you is, don’t alienate yourself.  Talk to people about your frustrations.  Tell them the questions you have.  I’m sure you will get some unsolicited advice from people who think they know it all but you never know who might be able to help you in ways you never thought they could.  Something strangely awesome happens when we decided to be vulnerable and ask for help.  You never know how your questions are going to get answered.  While we are waiting, that does not mean we don’t have to do anything.  Waiting can mean a number of things.  

What does waiting mean for you? If you don’t know, come to counseling.  Here at New Hope we want to help you while you wait.  We can help you figure out what you are meant to do during this time of waiting.  Maybe the answer is counseling, or maybe the answer is something else.  Lets figure it out together.