Whatever I Choose I Will Wonder

You worked it out on Sunday afternoon and it stopped you dead.

Whichever one is chosen, you will wonder about the other one.

If the machine is repaired and it runs for three years, there will still be a small voice that says the new one would have run for ten. If it is replaced, and the old one would have kept going, nobody will ever know that either, but the voice will say it anyway on some Tuesday in a year.

There is no outcome that closes it. None. The information that would settle the question does not exist and will never exist, because the road not taken does not report back.

And once that is seen, it is very hard to unsee, and it has stopped you rather than freed you, which is the opposite of what a true thing usually does.

So the question worth asking is not which one. It is this: why is proof being required before a decision is allowed?

You are a woman who will wonder either way and not a woman who chose badly, and a question that stays open afterward has never once been proof that the choosing went wrong.

He shall not be able to find it out

There is a verse in Ecclesiastes that says, flatly, that some things stay unknown, and it says it without any distress at all.

Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea further; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it out. (Ecclesiastes 8:17, King James Version)

Though a man labor to seek it out, yet he shall not find it. That is not addressed to lazy people. The man in that verse is working at it. He is seeking. He is doing everything a person can do, and the verse says he still does not find it.

And then it goes further, and this is the sentence that matters on a Sunday afternoon: though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it out.

Even the wise one. Even the person who is genuinely better at this than everybody else. The limit is not a limit of effort or of intelligence. It is a limit built into the arrangement.

You are up against a boundary that Scripture describes as belonging to the world, and a thing that cannot be found out has never once been a thing you failed to find. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who saw it clearly on a Sunday, and Ecclesiastes 8:17 puts the wise man and the laboring man on the same side of that line.

Now notice the tone of the verse, because the tone is doing as much work as the content.

There is no alarm in it. He is not warning anybody. He beheld all the work of God and reported a fact, the way a person reports the weather. The unknowable part of things is described as ordinary.

You are living inside an ordinary limit and not a personal catastrophe, and a future that will not tell you what it holds has never once been treated in Scripture as a problem to be solved. The written word records the limit calmly and moves on, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a woman live inside something she cannot see the end of.

And there is a freedom sitting in that verse that takes a moment to arrive.

If the wise man cannot find it out either, then finding it out was never the standard. Nobody is being measured against it. The decision was never supposed to be the kind of thing that gets verified.

You were never being graded against a standard that no one has ever met, and a decision made without proof has never once been a decision made below the bar. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a standard down off a wall in a woman's kitchen, and Ecclesiastes 8:17 removes the finding out from everybody equally.

The wondering is not a symptom

Something practical, and it is about what to do with the voice rather than how to silence it.

The voice is going to come. In a year, on an ordinary Tuesday, while doing something unrelated, it will say: I wonder what would have happened if.

That is not a sign that the wrong thing was chosen. It is what a mind does with a road it did not take, and it does it to everybody, about everything, including the decisions that turned out well.

You have a mind that revisits what it did not do, and a wondering voice on a Tuesday has never once been a verdict arriving late. The written word says plainly that the work under the sun stays unfound, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when an old question turns up again.

So the plan is not to avoid the wondering. The plan is to expect it and to let it come.

Here is the difference that makes, and it is larger than it sounds. A woman who expects the voice hears it in a year and thinks, there it is, I knew that was coming. A woman who has promised herself she will not wonder hears the same voice and treats it as evidence that something went wrong.

Same voice. Two completely different weeks.

You are allowed to plan for the wondering instead of promising it away, and a question that was expected has never once had the force of one that arrived as a surprise. The Holy Spirit is the one who prepares a woman for a Tuesday in a year, and Ecclesiastes 8:17 tells the truth about what stays hidden so nobody has to be ambushed by it.

So: choose one tonight. Then say out loud that the wondering is allowed to come with it.

That second half is not decoration. It is the part that stops the decision being reopened, because a decision that has already absorbed its own doubt cannot be undone by the doubt showing up.

You have a way to make this decision doubt proof tonight without making it certain, and a choice that has already swallowed its own question has never once been a choice a Tuesday could reopen. The Holy Spirit is the one in the kitchen when both halves get said, and Ecclesiastes 8:17 states the limit plainly rather than hiding it.