What’s in the way is the way.

I've been having a difficult time lately with analysis paralysis. Or really, choice making.

Sometimes it's great to have choices. But when the choices are too many, it becomes difficult. And when you are a person with executive function deficits in planning and choice making, like me, they become overwhelming.

Right now, there are so many choices to be made.

Do I stay in Florida?
Do I choose to date?
Do I open a business?
Or do I try for a baby (something I want with all my heart?)

I've been thinking about the phrase, “what is in the way is the way.”

And now that Passover is coming up, I keep thinking about the Red Sea.

When the Jews left Egypt, they came right up to the sea. It was a huge wall of water, and God had told them to cross it. Many were afraid. I know if I was alive then, I wouldn’t have trusted Him either.

You want me to walk through that? I don’t think so.

So it makes sense that they wanted to go back to what was familiar. Go back to their comfort zone. Go back to their Egypt jail.

I get it.

It’s easier to go back to what you know: even the discomfort of it. It’s much harder to believe that there is an indescribable future right ahead when you’ve been enslaved for so long.

But then there was Nachshon.

He said, even though there is this huge barrier in front of me, this huge wall of water, I’m going to go on regardless. Because this is what G-d has told me. This is what I know to be true.

I wonder if all my choices are like that big ocean wall.

To me, it looks overwhelming and a bit terrifying. Also… there are sea monsters in the sea ;)

But maybe I just have to go forward anyway.

Going back is not an option.

I spoke to a single parent this morning. She has twins: beautiful and intelligent 5-year-olds with autism. She runs a cleaning and organizing business full time, and on top of that, she works another job in the evenings because she just has to.

I told her it was commendable, and she laughed. Because what choice does she really have?

She has to provide for her kids.
She wants a better life for them.

I keep thinking about that big wall of water in front of me.

Maybe I just have to stop thinking so much and just go. Keep doing. Keep building.

Writing definitely helps.

The story goes that Nachshon walked into the water up to his neck. up to his nostrils. And it was at that moment that Moshe lifted his staff and the sea split.

There is personal meaning for me in that image of the water reaching the neck. That is where I had surgery, and it represents a very difficult time in my life.

At that time, I fell apart.

But do I choose differently this time?
Do I choose to keep going, or fall apart?

Some say the water reached his nostrils.

The breath that the nostrils inhale and exhale, and the word neshama, soul, share the same root. There is something about that moment, at the level of breath, where you can’t rely on thinking anymore.

There is a core, soul-knowing that you just have to keep going, no matter what.

I don’t necessarily know what choices I have to make, or what actions to take, or even what it really means that “what is in the way is the way.”

But what I do know is that I just have to start taking steps, in the confusion, in the mess- and be okay with whatever scary sea monsters might be there.

My neshama knows it will all work out in the end.