My Fail-Proof Decision-Making Method

Amulets, incantations, crystals or sage. 

Psychics, weapons, insurance policies or financial investments.

Scientific evidence, hyper-rationalized thinking, over-planning, 

clutching to promises of guarantees. 

Where do you find protection? 

For the past few months, I’ve been focusing primarily on wintering and moving inward. Part of that, I believe, was caused by a natural alignment with the winter season, which lends itself to smaller, cozier lifestyles. The other part, I am coming to see, is that I’ve been in discernment about several areas of my life. 

Discernment, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, is commonly-used within Christian communities and has historically been associated with those considering ordained ministry. The latin root of the word discernment is discernere, meaning separate, and that’s exactly what the discernment process does. It separates or culls the wheat from the chaff—the wheat being the truth or our authentic way and the chaff being all that makes it hazy for us to see that path. 

To be clear, these weren’t big, life-altering decisions I was facing. I’ve done that before and these decisions were of a different kind. They dealt with areas of my life that were settled but with slight tension, like bits of sand that needed to be shaken out after a walk on the beach. 

Whenever I find myself in these predicaments, my first impulse is to clutch any method that offers a quick answer: asking for advice from others, an angel card reading, a conversation with a psychic highly recommended by another or googling my way into a solution. 

Illuminating as some of these have been, nothing brings me more clarity and peace and something even more important than either of these—the confidence of knowing that I’m living in alignment with my most authentic self—than moving in instead of out through an extended prayer period. 

It’s called a 30 day discernment prayer. In the same spirit of Lent, we trust that God guides us when we set aside a block of time and pay extra careful attention to something longing for our attention. That longing expresses itself in the form of unease, restlessness, or more severely, anger or grief.

The prayer is simple and straight-forward. For 30 consecutive days, we set aside about fifteen minutes daily to explore a question of any size or scope, through reflection and prayer.

Outside of that allotted time each day, we try not to worry about the subject of our angst. We release the burden of knowing onto God and rest in the mystery of the unknown. The only requirement for this prayer, besides the daily asking, is full openness to God’s leading, showing up in the form of signs, inner stirrings, unexpected resources falling on our laps. 

Simultaneously, the 30 days is a journey, a wild, wild journey with dramatically swinging emotions. But as the period comes to a close, the tornado winds down, the emotions swinging less from one extreme to another and settling into a gentle rocking until it stops. It becomes still. And in the stillness, the direction is clear. 

Our emotions contain important clues that we mustn’t ignore but the nature of emotions is that they’re constantly in flux. For this reason, they’re not dependable guides. This is why I find the 30 day discernment period to be so magical. It’s the apparatus that parses the wheat from the chaff. It just requires time, patience and trust, which I believe is always worth it over the sometimes destructive consequences resulting from emotion-driven actions.

Earlier this month, we experienced the rare solar eclipse where the moon covered the sun and the day became night. Several days before that, Christians celebrated Easter. Both occasions pay homage to something we assumed was dead, coming back to life.

Centuries ago, before people had the scientific knowledge to understand the orbiting nature of our solar system, people believed during solar eclipses, that they were on the verge of complete annihilation in the same way that Jesus’s followers were convinced that Jesus, his teachings, and his entire movement died on the day of his cruxifixction. 

This wilderness discernment prayer works similarly. During points of your life, you hold questions about how to move forward, maybe even believing that a part of your life is hopeless, dead. But as you enter this mystery and trust in the guidance of one leading you forward in the dark, you see a new light and birth awaiting on the other side. The only way out is through. The only way to speed up the process is to slow it down. The only way to find your authentic path is by moving inward instead of grasping for answers outside of yourself. And the only way to receive the rebirth of spring is moving through the dead of winter.