Sometimes it’s really easy to know where we’re headed. We do the sensible thing and create a plan, mark a route with guide posts along the way. Sure, sometimes creating the plan is a whole lot more fun than having to do the hard work of implementing it, but at least we know what to do.

And then there is everything else.

The times when we know where we want to get to, the end result, but we don’t know how.

Or the times when we don’t even really know what the end looks like, but we’re fairly sure we’ll know it when we see it.

Or even the times when we know we want to get somewhere excellent, but we haven’t yet figured out what ‘excellent’ actually looks like for us and the people we love yet.

Frustrating, is it?!?

And yes, that was putting it lightly. Sometimes it’s a right old pain in the arse with a side-serving of other stuff we’re far too polite to say out loud.

So, what do you do when you don’t know what to do next?

On my way back from the World Domination Summit, whilst waiting to board my last plane before home, I found myself sat next to a man who I didn’t know. Not that surprising, I was at an airport in Amsterdam! Me being me, the man and I got chatting and it turns out that he was from a place not all that far from where I live, although maybe that wasn’t as much of a surprising coincidence as it would have been, had I bumped into him on my flight to Portland but still, it was a nice coincidence to hear a familiar accent.

He asked me about what I do for work and, me being me, I fudged around a bit, mentioned the project management stuff and then got to telling him about Heaven And El.

“I’m on a mission to reclaim Christianity”, I told him.

“How are you going to do that?”, he asked.

He didn’t ask it in an antagonistic kind of a way. He sounded genuinely interested and it was a very good question. A very good question that I didn’t have a very good answer to yet. I still don’t really.

And that’s where I’ve been sat, since July 15th, until today.

The summer holidays arrived and the children finished school for the six week break.

Never mind, I thought. I’ll have plenty of time to figure it out when they get back to school.

September 1st. School starts tomorrow. Do you think I’ve figured it out yet?

You guessed it, nope, I’m still stuck, not knowing what to do next.

So, what do you do when you don’t know what to do next?

I don’t know about you, but I did what any self-respecting writer does when she’s stuck, I wrote about it. I doubt it’ll be winning me awards any time soon, but it did serve one purpose … it got me taking a step forward.

Oh, alright then, a shuffling half-step forward, but the net result was the same (forward motion) so I’m taking that.

I figured that while I don’t know all the answers and I haven’t yet got a clear grasp on the “how are you going to do that?” piece, I could choose one tiny little shuffling half-step action and do that, safe in the knowledge that lots of little half-steps have the uncanny knack of working together to add up to one giant leap, if given enough time and provided the one taking the half-steps doesn’t quit too soon.

And so that’s your challenge for today, if you choose to accept it 😉

If you think you’re stuck and don’t know what to do, ask yourself and God what that one tiny little half-step action is. Listen for the whisper (or even the loud clanging of a whole new idea that you have no idea from whence it came!) and do that.

Are you ready?

Get to it! 🙂