When you choose anything, you reject everything else.” G.K. Chesterton

The digital economy has created an endless buffet, and it’s easy to overeat. When confronted with infinity, is it okay to blink?” Seth Godin

I’ve been buying the same toothpaste and laundry soap for years. I buy it from one of those membership programs where you have to order a certain amount each month and if you skip an order they’ll automatically ship you some items you’ve preselected. My preselected order has always been vitamins and toothpaste and laundry soap.

The nice thing is I really do like the products. They’re natural and effective and it’s easy. I order online, or if I forget, the box magically comes to my door anyway. The not nice thing is that the shipping has gotten expensive and my vitamin needs have changed. I canceled our membership a couple months ago and now I am in need of toothpaste and I’ll have to go to the store; there are 46 different tubes of toothpaste to choose from at the store. I will be overwhelmed. I won’t know how to prioritize: save time, save money, save the planet, save our health, save our teeth from the effects of our habits?

This is freedom.

A few months ago someone was discussing the many options their family was considering for schooling their children this coming year. They live in a bigger city with more choices, but I could still sympathize with their quandary—time, money, benefits, etc. I realized during our conversation that five years ago we severely limited our choices in this area. We chose one very specific option for homeschool—because you don’t just choose between public, private, or homeschool; you choose one broad category and a hundred other options cascade from that. We got involved with a community that thrives on commitment to one another. If we pull out and choose another course, our community suffers because, though we are replaceable, we homeschool together with a group of like-minded people and the dynamics change with every shift in involvement. We are free and responsible for our own children’s education, but we are interdependent within that freedom.

Making this very specific choice has allowed me to trash and unsubscribe from the multiple homeschool catalogs, conferences, curriculum publishers, and magazines that provoke parents to question their choices. Prior to our decision, every summer was spent poring over websites and catalogs to plan The Best Course for the following year, chasing the greener grass and smarter schedule. I enjoyed some aspects of this planning, but my attic holds boxes of books that, if their marketing was correct, should’ve produced National Merit Scholars who radically love Jesus and Shakespeare and art history.

Did we make the best choice for our kids? Are we missing something? Are there gaps and holes and regrets? Yes. Yes. Yes and yes and yes.

We made a choice and then a commitment, and that’s what is important. My husband and I prayed over our decision, made mental pro/con lists, and counted the costs of this choice as best we could. There were unknowns, but calculating potential risks and worrying about the million other things we are not choosing by making this one choice will only leave the one choice unmade. Sometimes you just have to make a decision and commit to it.

Everything is imperfect. Every imperfect thing teaches us contentment.

The commitment to imperfections and problems may be the most important part. There will be issues with any choice—even following Jesus, which we would say is the best decision a person can make, will bring problems. But our decision to commit and to proceed confidently within our limitations is the real deciding factor, not the fact that our choices will bring problems.

This is the place we have to settle. In rejecting everything else, we are free to pour into our one choice, freed by our limitations to funnel our energy into this one decision. Marrying one man makes all other men off limits, and we are free to pour our energy into that one covenantal relationship. Living in one place takes all other places off the list, but we are free to be a visitor in the world with a refuge to return to. The side benefits are that healthy marriages produce healthy people who have healthy relationships with others; peaceful homes house peaceful families who welcome friends and strangers into that peace. Having children, having a job, keeping a schedule…all these give framework to a life that will not hold up if we have unlimited freedom.

We are on the last lap of our homeschool, with only one child and four years of high school left. I will have to make other choices with my time. The schedule will change, will flex and tighten with the seasons, but the need for limitations is still there. I have to look at busyness differently in this season because I am not a mother of small, needy children; not the mom who schedules playdates and nap times, who posts chore charts and daily lesson plans. I am the mom who is shifting from the primary voice in her children’s lives, to an ear, an eye. My prayers now are that my children narrow their own way and limit themselves to the wide expanse of kingdom God gives them dominion in.

Choose your limitations and commit to your decisions. Opt out. Unsubscribe. Narrow and refine until your freedom feels like it will hold up your life.