How me and God made a difficult decision

I have a hard time making decisions. It once took me four hours to buy a pair of shoes at Kohls. I kept walking around the department store, getting very familiar with the various departments and even starting to recognize some of the employees by sight. A nice salesgirl had been helping me for a while and she must've gotten called to another department for a couple of hours, and when she returned to the shoe department and ran across me she said: "ARE YOU STILL HERE?"

I was like, Well, yeah.

So last night I was walking outside. (Seems I do a lot of walking.) Just my usual jaunt around the neighborhood. It was around 9:30 and a pretty decent night, maybe fifty still, not windy. And as I was walking down this long block I saw a car in a driveway. The car had a weak light glowing on the inside. Sure enough, as I got closer I could see that the car's roof light had been left on.

It was late. The house was dark. There was no outside light on. I could see faint light inside, shifting as if a TV were on, behind the curtains. I hoped that the car's roof light would turn off automatically, but I felt it probably wouldn't. In fact, it already seemed to be waning.

Ugh. I dreaded the idea of knocking on the door. What if it was an old person and they had a heart attack? I mean, I don't know about your neighborhood but nobody knocks on doors after say maybe seven p.m. here. My walking route called for going around this park and so I figured I'd keep walking and come back to the car to see if the light was still on.

Off I went. And of course I was thinking about the light and what I would do if it was still on. I weighed the pros and cons. Pros: the person doesn't have a dead battery when he gets up to go to work in the morning. Cons: the person has a heart attack when some stranger (me) knocks on their door in the middle of the night.

Okay, I told myself, maybe they won't have a heart attack. And I asked myself, what would I want done if the car were mine? I decided I'd want to be a little startled and have my car start in the morning.

But still I didn't feel like knocking on their door. That clearly made me a bad guy. An interrupter at best. A terrifier at worst. Yes, I was wavering in my thinking that I was going to knock.

I was getting close to returning to the car now and yep, the roof light was still on. Darn it, I thought. Why did I have to make this decision? I was just out for a relaxing walk and now my stomach was tied up in knots.

But I was coming up on the car. In a half a block I'd be there. I didn't want to stop walking (I still had a long way to get back home).

Well, I'd done all I could. I was willing to knock or not knock. The selfish part of me wanted to keep going by, rationalizing that maybe the car would start in the morning anyway, or maybe somebody else who lived there would yet be returning and would see the light, or that I was sparing somebody from having a heart attack, yada yada yada. The other part of me knew knocking was the right thing to do.

So, willing to go either way, and with the car right there, I gave it God. You know what, I was still a little keyed up, but I had a peace and a conviction come right over me. I walked up the sidewalk and rang the doorbell. But no one came to the door. I rang again. Still nothing. Great, I thought. So I gritted my teeth, pulled open the storm door and knocked.

There was a translucent little window in the door and I could see that somebody came up behind it. But they didn't open the door. I called, "The roof light is on in your car." After a few seconds, I could hear the deadbolt turning. The door opened.

It was a young guy (I'm pretty sure he didn't have a heart attack) and I told him I was sorry to be knocking so late but that his car's roof light was on.

"Oh," he said, looking over my shoulder and out at the car. "Thank you so much!"

As I walked away I could hear the car's door open and shut and the car start up.