How do you make a life-changing decision?
As I sat in the pediatric dental office waiting area, it was too agonizing to be with my thoughts. I began to journal. “Dear God, I don’t have faith in you. I don’t believe in you. I don’t know how to surrender to you. I feel depressed, paralyzed, scared, terrible, bad, fearful, helpless, weak and hopeless. I don’t know what to do”.
My two-year-old son Dominick was under anesthetic and there was nothing I could do but wait.
Two hours earlier, the anesthesiologist had told us that they could not be liable if Dominick experienced brain damage from being put under. It was an agonizing decision to make with my husband Nick because we were responsible for Dominick, his life was in our hands and I felt the weight of needing to make a decision.
The irony is that if a client had come to me with a decision like this, I would have been centered, grounded, and full of faith for them. I was aware that because of my perception of past experiences I had the belief that the universe would not take care of me, or my loved ones.
After an hour of asking the anesthesiologist and pediatric dentist many questions we decided to go ahead with the procedure. My heart felt like a ton of bricks. Dominick sat on Nick’s lap facing him as the first injection was given to our son. He began to scream and I felt every cell in my being breaking. As Dominick’s head and eyes rolled back, I felt like our son had died in our arms. The anesthesiologist scooped him up and took him away.
I fell to my knees hysterical, if my husband had not been there, I would have been lying on the ground because I felt absolutely helpless. We had made the decision and there was nothing we could do to change it.
I didn’t have faith for myself so I reached out to three friends who I knew had faith and I asked them to pray for Dominick.
When Dominick came around from the procedure, I was grateful and still scared. Dominick bounced back quickly and the next day he was back to himself, strong and happy.
My lesson was to surrender, surrender, surrender. This created the space for a little more grace to come into my life.
We will always have to make decisions, some big and others small. Taking full responsibility for your feelings and your thoughts will help you make the right decision.
I think when you are faced with a big life-changing decision, choices that used to be challenging can be made more easily.
In this last week my clients have been faced with making decisions including:
Is it the right time to start my business?
Do I invest more money into this marketing campaign?
Should I fire an employee?
Do I leave the marriage or should I stay?
Is it okay for me to take out a loan to grow my business?
Can I trust this person enough to let them into my heart?
Sometimes your decisions will be hard, other times easy. It is always easier to see what is best for someone else if you are not emotionally attached and you have confidence in them.
Therefore a good place to begin making decisions with ease and grace is to let go of what you are feeling and create space for the wisdom of your soul to guide you. Cultivate confidence in your ability to make empowered choices on a daily basis, and with these actions your soul will grow.
May your day be filled with love.
Love & miracles,
Joanna Garzill
Joanna Garzilli is an intuition expert, author, TV & radio personality. Follow her on Twitter here.
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April 21st, 2012 at 9:10 am
Hi Joanna, I just read the “making a decision” segment and found myself going back to a dreadful place that I visit too often, the moment was daughter was killed just a few feet away from me. It was long ago but I re-live it so often and so easily.
I’m very happy everything turned out well for your family when your son’s life was in hanging in the balance.
What haunts me so much is that the decision I made to protect my daughter from a dangerous situation actually resulted in her death, even though it was the most loving and logical decision anyone could have made at the time. It seemed like the perfect solution. I realized some months later that the high anxiety (more like dread) I was feeling in the 20 minutes before this happened was because, as her mother, I sensed something catastrophic coming our way and I didn’t recognize it as an intuition at the time. This lack of recognition limited my options in protecting her. I thought I was just being a mom exercising a normal amount of caution; but it was something much more.
Losing a child is beyond anything words can describe. As a parent, you feel guilty no matter what role you did or didn’t play in it. But, in my case, it felt and still feels like a doubt hit of cruelty that in the process of protecting my child, the decision I made cost her very life. I’ve internalized it to the point of thinking I must be such as terrible person that I deserved this pain, despite the fact that there is no evidence of being a terrible person. I know it’s irrational to think this way but it just keep coming up again and again.
I’ve heard people say, it’s was her time. And sometimes I think that must be true. But what throws me off with this is that she, at the age of 21 months, had premonitions of her death in the weeks preceding it, things that we didn’t understand until after she was killed. She was seeing her death in her dreams and crying for the person who accidentally killed her, not to. She had never before woken up in this kind of distress. This happened 2 or 3 times that I witnessed and possibly more when I was out of the room during her nap.
If it was her time, why was she begging to live? She was clearly happy with her life, but if she was consciously nearing the end, why would she have so much resistance? Babies and young children live in so much more consciousness than we think. It’s difficult to imagine that a being so young would be so far removed from knowing she was to be here for just a short time. She was still so connected with Source.
I don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions with certainty, but despite the years that have gone by, I still feel so destroyed by the traumas of my life. This particular experience goes way beyond what we normally think of as trauma and, yes, I have all the symptoms of PTSD. Many times during the day, I think that I can’t hold on another moment of feeling this way.
Despite being in the healing arts for many many years and so effectively helping others, I haven’t been able to resolve my own deep traumas and move forward in a way that reflects real healing. My mental and physical conditions have never been so precarious.
When people try to help, they are never able to tell me things I don’t know already or offer something that can help shift my energy and motivate me to take better care of myself, to surrender (even though I’ve experience the joy of ultimate surrender in my life), to transform, transmute, and release.
I will continue to read the other sections of your postings. If you have some insight that feels very clear to you, I would appreciate hearing it.
May 22nd, 2012 at 9:35 pm
Dear Cheyenne,
I just read your post. I cannot imagine what you experienced. I thank you for sharing so openly and I understand about others not having been able to give you insight. I will meditate on what you shared and put you in my prayers for now. I will respond in more depth soon.
Love & miracles,
Joanna
June 18th, 2012 at 2:59 pm
thanks for a great post Joanna. I totally relate to having no faith, especially in those trying times when I really want to have more control over the universe, or specifically what’s happening to someone I care about or myself. I love how you came to surrender. This is my lesson now as well, to surrender.