In one Peanuts cartoon, Charlie Brown is lying in bed talking to Snoopy, who’s lying atop the covers at Charlie’s feet. Charlie says, “Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, ‘Is life a multiple choice test or is it a true or false test?'” Next, in the closing panel, Charlie says, “Then a voice comes to me out of the dark and says, ‘We hate to tell you this, but life is a thousand-word essay.'”

It should make sense that the older you get the easier life gets. After all, you should have all your dumb mistakes behind you, right? You have the advantage of experience, and you are wiser, more seasoned. But the problem is that whatever help comes from being experienced and wiser gets counteracted by life’s issues becoming more complex.

When I lie awake at night, I sometimes think back to the days when I was a kid playing with a plastic baseball and bat in my backyard. Those were such simple, carefree times for me. The only thing I had to worry about was hitting my ball so far into the surrounding woods that I lost it. If I got hungry, I went back inside and ate, and I never gave a moment’s thought to what all was involved with getting those groceries paid for and placed in those cabinets. For that matter, I never gave a moment’s thought to how the mortgage on our house got paid. I know now that “baseball stadium” back yards don’t come cheap.

Am I being a good husband? Am I being a good father? Am I being a good pastor? What sermon should I preach this Sunday? What blog post should I publish next? What am I going to do about retirement? These are the kinds of topics that I struggle with nowadays. And, yes, despite all my experience and seasoning, it’s a struggle. You want essay questions? I got ’em.

I’ve read that at Boot Hill Cemetery in Arizona there is a grave marker that reads: “Lynched By Mistake.” That inscription tells me that all mistakes aren’t created equal. Obviously, some of them carry far greater consequences than others.

This is why I obsess so much over God’s specific will for my life, which just also happens to coincide with His specific will for my family’s life. Seriously, I don’t want to make a bad decision that will get me or any of my family members lynched in the sense of ending up in a setting or circumstance that isn’t in God’s will. You see, gallows are everywhere if we only had the spiritual discernment to recognize them for what they are.

It is for this reason that I pray frequently and fervently, and I try to talk with God as opposed to just talking at Him. Why do I want my prayers to be dialogues and not monologues? It’s because I understand that I don’t have the answers to life’s essay questions. The truth is that my best decisions come when I willingly play the role of sheep and let the Lord play the role of shepherd.

While I don’t always agree with the direction in which God leads me, I do try to obey Him. That takes more faith in regards to some decisions than others, but I’ve learned that whenever I obey Him, a great weight of responsibility is taken off my shoulders. The reason is simple: If I’m carrying out His will, how the decision turns out is His responsibility, not mine. And, trust me, any responsibility that I can scratch off my list these days is a good thing.