Today I found a yes. I found a resounding yes to a decision that I have had in my balance beams for some time now. This is never an easy place for me, and my history with decision-making has not been great when taking too much time weighing options.

I knew this about myself and even set myself a personal deadline by which to decide. But I let that day pass last week and figured I would give myself another. Well this weekend came and was almost gone when I got a short text asking the beautiful question, “Are you in?”

So right there on the spot, without any hesitation, I reached down into my freshly practiced vulnerable embodied self and said, “Give me another night to think about it?”

Yeah, I sort of chickened out, but it was honest. I didn’t feel ready.

I hadn’t quite mustered the voice to say yea or neigh. I had been weighing, and feeling, and imagining, and writing, and feeling some more. I spent a long time being patient in the company of myself in the feelings of both yes and no. This conversation was the one I needed to stop having. It was time to ask for help. It was time to decide. Through the magic of serendipity, an old friend and trusted advisor of mine happened to be in town and was expecting me for dinner. This felt like visible and invisible help conspiring to come to my service in this moment.

We sat down and it was like time hadn’t passed. We first knew each other after I had come down out of the ivory tower of the university and was determined to engage the world with my hands. I was living on a rural property and was teaching people how to build homes with local materials and alternative methods. I was, literally, elbows deep in shaping my life.

Face to face with this old friend I could recall the feeling of that younger self. I could recall it in my hands. I felt the excitement for adventure and call of curiosity. I told her about the decision that lay before me, and before I finished talking I felt the answer emerge, from my belly. She looked me dead in the eye, and gave voice to what was headed from me toward the light, “Yes, of course. There is no question.”

It felt like fresh water hearing here unequivocal response matching my feeling. Excitement rose and then ebbed and for a moment and there was a pause. She knew, and caught my eye. “Give me your phone. Write the text now.” It was one of the best texts I’ve written:

“No need for anymore sleeps. Hell yes. I’m in.”

It was a little scary and a lot exhilarating. At first I worried that deciding so quickly would somehow diminish all the work that I had done to care for myself in the decision process, but it was the opposite. This was what all that work made space for. So hell yes, I’m in.