How do you make decisions?

How do you make decisions?  Sometimes the decision-making process is as important as the decision itself.  I'm not referring to the daily decisions we make such as which route to take to work, what to have for breakfast, or even if we should have regular or decaf.  Now you know whether you should be drinking decaf or no coffee at all for that matter, but even the wrong decision is a decison.
Then there are decisions that you should make with extra care.  You should take time, not because of  indecision, but because the result of your decision will be with you for the rest of your life.  When it is time to make an important decision and you find yourself in the process, there are several things that will help you make that correct decision.  
You may view the decision from many vantage points such as where you are in life, where you have been, and where you would like to be.  You may also seek assistance through books, articles, and even websites devoted to the decision making process.  With all of these resources at your disposal, how important do you think it is to make the right decision? Oh, there is one other thing on the list. Prayer.  I believe prayer is the most important of these decision-making resources. 
The thing with prayer though, is that you must listen for the answer.  Scary thought huh?  Scary because the answer may not be what you want to hear.  So if you pray, which I suggest you do, be prepared to comply.  Even in the 'no', God has a reason that you may or may not ever know.  Either way, make the right decision because you have to live with it for the rest of your life.




Life/Religion

What are you doing?

I am often asked if I have more books coming and the fact is, I have several book projects in the pipeline but they are on hold, except one.  Funny though, the one I have brought to the forefront is proving to be difficult to write. Granted I am trying to write it while working full time and heading back to school to obtain a graduate degree.  My first book took just under a year to write and it was written under much easier circumstances.  I kept a schedule of writing four hours per day until the book was written, and then I put it down for a few years. The manuscript sat gathering dust because I was not ready to publish.  "Down Again" was finally published and is available on Amazon.com or via my website at www.civillamorgan.com.   
The book I'm writing now is all over the place, or as I like to say, discombobulated.  I am working on several chapters at a time, there are  peices of chapters here and there, I can't seem to get it together.  However, it's a book I need to write because it will help a portion of society that goes largely ignored and misunderstood.  As we all know, most people tend to ignore what they do not understand, hoping if they look in the opposite direction the issue or problem would just go away.  Some of us however, are not afraid to walk down the road less taken.  We are not afraid to stand up for people who cannot stand up for themselves, or defend the people who are too broken to defend themselves.  We defend even when we are made fun of, ridiculed, and cursed.  I would even dare to say people like us are fearless. Hey, there's only one life to live, why live it on the fence? I've heard that 'if you don't stand for something you will fall for anything'--Unknown.  I don't plan on falling for anything.
So yes, I am at this moment working on a book. Even when I am not working on it, I'm working on it.  It's always on my mind: morning, noon, and night.  I believe it will be until it's finished.  That's ok, I am up to the task. 
What are you working on? What should you be working on? Life is short, no one should have to prompt you to do what you know you should be doing.         



Life

Money makes the world go round

We all know how the current financial conditions have affected almost everyone in our country and around the world.  People have lost jobs, homes, cars, and savings.  Life looks bleak and for some there will be no way to recoup their losses, at least not to what they had before the financial nightmare happened.  Most people believe the financial breakdown started in 2008  and I would agree, to a point. The financial breakdown showed its face to us in 2008 but it did not begin in 2008. 
Like any problem or issue in life such as the current financial conditions, they do not just pop up, or 'happen'.  Bad things were happening long before 2008.  Mortgage brokers and bankers were approving bad loans long before 2008.  Buyers were shopping for and being approved for homes they really could not afford, and the stock market, well the stock market was just going through a typical cycle. 
The fact is, everything, including life, is cyclical.  If you are old enough to look back over the last 20 or 30 years of your life you will see that even your individual life was cyclical.  You made it through the tough times that occurred even when those tough times happened at the hand of someone other than yourself.  The financial loss you may have suffered since 2008, made you either sink or swim.  If you swam and did not sink, it should have taught you how to 'live a new normal'.  What is a new normal? Learning to live on quite a bit less than you used to, and appreciating the fact that you have a job.  This includes having to live without certain  things that you may have previously taken for granted, and having the best possible attitude about your changed situation.

The fact is, there may be days when you may feel sorry for yourself, but you get over it and keep pushing through until things turn around.  You learn how to brew your own coffee at home instead of stopping for that daily $4 cup on the way to work.  You learn how to make your own lunch instead of paying between $5 and $10 per day for lunch. You play little games like treating yourself to lunch once or twice per month or buying yourself a little treat here and there to help you keep your chin up.
Two important thing to do during this time though, is to never give up and to keep putting something away for yourself in savings and in retirement.  It sounds crazy because you may have just lost everything, but the fact is, life goes on.  You cannot make the excuse 20 or 30 years from now that you could not save anything because there was a crash in 2008.  You may have been able to save $5,000.00 per year before your life crashed and can now only save $2,000, $1,000.00, or even $500.00. You cannot live off the crash of 2008, you cannot live off of the pitfalls of life,  but you can live off of doing the best you can with what you have left.  And who knows, because just like the market, life is cyclical, your new normal may be the best thing that ever happened to you.


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 In my final post at Examinercom, I wrote an article entitled 'When God says no'. In that article I discussed the fact that sometimes God's answer to our prayers is 'no'. We pray for years; hoping, having faith, only to find at the end of say, 15 years, that the answer to our prayer is no. That means it has been no all along. Well, that's one way of looking at the situation. Sometimes God allows negative situations in our lives because he wants to strengthen us through the situation. Sometimes negative situations happen in our lives because it is just life. In either case, we must hang on to the promise that Jesus loves us and he will not allow any more than we can bear even when it does not feel that way. I don't know about you, but I sometimes feel like the things I have gone through were grounding me to dust, not strengthening me. The fact is though, I am still here so I was not ground to dust. I do have a better understanding of how Job felt though. You trust God, you know everything you have: your family, land, and riches, are all from God, but suddenly everything is taken away. In Job's case his children are killed, his livestock is killed, he suffers financial loss, and physical debilitation. How could that be when he was living right, doing all the right things? Then to top it off, the people that he thought would be there for him were not. His wife told him to curse God and die and his friends were convinced it was something he did that caused this tragic turn of events in his life. Well, we all have a choice as to how we will react to the unexpected tragedies in our lives. I don't think God minds that we question him when we are 'going through'. In fact I believe we should keep praying, even when we do not feel like it. The last few months have been quite difficult for me and I did not really feel like talking to God about the situation, I wanted to withdraw until I could get a grip on the reality of my situation. When tragedy happens, the healing process takes time, it always does. Everyone deals with life in different ways. We should not stay away from God but instead draw closer to him. When we have suffered loss, been broken, or even ground to dust, it helps to look at other people's situations. When I think about what I have gone through I think about people, Christians, who have suffered loss as well. How have they dealt with loss? How do they live with it? I watched an interview with a scientist/doctor who talked about Oscar Pistorious, the double amputee who made it all the way to the Olympic semi-finals in track. The scientist said that 'Oscar's not broken, he is perfect.' Regardless of what we have been through, what we have lost; we are not broken, we are perfect. We need to trust that God knows what he is doing and in the meantime allow ourselves to heal. By the way, reading the book of Job will put things in perspective too.