The Open Enrollment Spreadsheet I Built and Still Couldn't Use
The Open Enrollment Spreadsheet I Built and Still Couldn't Use
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 7, 2026
Open enrollment at work closes at midnight tonight, and I built a spreadsheet eleven days ago to make the decision easier. Four plan columns, premium rows, deductible rows, HSA contribution rows, everything color coded so the obvious answer would just jump off the screen at me. I have opened that spreadsheet almost every night since, usually after my wife goes to sleep, and every single time I highlight the same two columns, stare at them for ten minutes, and close the laptop no closer to an answer than I was the night before. Tonight is the deadline. The computer will pick the default plan for me at midnight if I do not act, and some small, tired part of me has started to wonder if that might honestly be easier.
I have been sober nine years, and I used to think the hardest decisions I would ever face were behind me, the kind with a bottle in them. What nine years of ordinary life has actually handed me is a different kind of hard decision, the kind with no wrong answer that will ruin me and no right answer that will obviously save me, just four reasonable options and a deadline. In my drinking years the only real choice most nights was which bar and how much, and I made that choice without a single ounce of hesitation. Sobriety gave me a life with actual options in it, and it turns out having options was never the relief I assumed it would be. Some nights I almost miss how simple the wreckage used to be to navigate, which is its own kind of warning I try to pay attention to.
I used to assume this kind of paralysis was just carefulness, proof I took the decision seriously enough to weigh it properly. Standing in front of that spreadsheet for the eleventh straight night, I think it is something closer to fear wearing a responsible costume, the fear that if I choose wrong I will have proven something true about myself that I have spent nine years trying to outrun. James does not tell me to build a better spreadsheet. He tells me where the actual wisdom I am missing comes from. "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him" (James 1:5, NKJV). Liberally and without reproach. I had been treating this decision like a test I could fail in front of God, and He is telling me plainly that is not the kind of giver He is.
Solomon hands me the posture I keep skipping past on my way to another pro and con list. "Commit your works to the Lord, And your thoughts will be established" (Proverbs 16:3, NKJV). Commit, not calculate. I have been trying to establish my own thoughts by sheer force of spreadsheet, and Solomon says the establishing was never going to come from my side of that equation at all.
Here is where my own reasoning runs out every single night at that laptop. I can list every deductible correctly, I can run the math on both plans twice, and the math has never once been the thing I was actually missing, because the paralysis was never really a math problem. Isaiah describes a guidance that does not arrive through better analysis. "Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, 'This is the way, walk in it,' Whenever you turn to the right hand Or whenever you turn to the left" (Isaiah 30:21, NKJV). A word behind me, not a formula in front of me. I keep looking at the screen for an answer that was always meant to come from somewhere else entirely.
This is what abiding in the Spirit gives that my own spreadsheet never could, not a louder certainty about which column wins but a willingness to actually move once I have asked. Paul tells the Romans plainly who is being led and how. "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God" (Romans 8:14, NKJV). Led, present tense, which means the leading is happening even on the nights I cannot feel it happening. He tells the Galatians what that leading looks like set against my own anxious calculating. "Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law" (Galatians 5:16-18, NKJV). Not under the law of my own eleven nights of circling. Jesus told His disciples exactly who would finish what my own reasoning cannot. "However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come" (John 16:13, NKJV).
David asked for the same thing I have been too proud to actually ask for out loud. "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye" (Psalm 32:8, NKJV). Guided, not left to guess alone in a spreadsheet at eleven at night. He asked again in a different psalm with the exhaustion showing through. "Cause me to hear Your lovingkindness in the morning, For in You do I trust; Cause me to know the way in which I should walk, For I lift up my soul to You" (Psalm 143:8, NKJV).
I picked a column about twenty minutes ago, not because the spreadsheet finally produced a verdict but because I finally stopped waiting for one and asked instead. It might not even be the better plan. I am done needing to be certain of that before I act. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which deadline you are stalling in front of, which two columns you cannot stop highlighting. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on you calculating your way to a perfect choice, and He has told you Himself that He will never leave you alone with the decision after midnight.
Scriptures used (NKJV): James 1:5; Proverbs 16:3; Isaiah 30:21; Romans 8:14; Galatians 5:16-18; John 16:13; Psalm 32:8; Psalm 143:8.
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 7, 2026
Open enrollment at work closes at midnight tonight, and I built a spreadsheet eleven days ago to make the decision easier. Four plan columns, premium rows, deductible rows, HSA contribution rows, everything color coded so the obvious answer would just jump off the screen at me. I have opened that spreadsheet almost every night since, usually after my wife goes to sleep, and every single time I highlight the same two columns, stare at them for ten minutes, and close the laptop no closer to an answer than I was the night before. Tonight is the deadline. The computer will pick the default plan for me at midnight if I do not act, and some small, tired part of me has started to wonder if that might honestly be easier.
I have been sober nine years, and I used to think the hardest decisions I would ever face were behind me, the kind with a bottle in them. What nine years of ordinary life has actually handed me is a different kind of hard decision, the kind with no wrong answer that will ruin me and no right answer that will obviously save me, just four reasonable options and a deadline. In my drinking years the only real choice most nights was which bar and how much, and I made that choice without a single ounce of hesitation. Sobriety gave me a life with actual options in it, and it turns out having options was never the relief I assumed it would be. Some nights I almost miss how simple the wreckage used to be to navigate, which is its own kind of warning I try to pay attention to.
I used to assume this kind of paralysis was just carefulness, proof I took the decision seriously enough to weigh it properly. Standing in front of that spreadsheet for the eleventh straight night, I think it is something closer to fear wearing a responsible costume, the fear that if I choose wrong I will have proven something true about myself that I have spent nine years trying to outrun. James does not tell me to build a better spreadsheet. He tells me where the actual wisdom I am missing comes from. "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him" (James 1:5, NKJV). Liberally and without reproach. I had been treating this decision like a test I could fail in front of God, and He is telling me plainly that is not the kind of giver He is.
Solomon hands me the posture I keep skipping past on my way to another pro and con list. "Commit your works to the Lord, And your thoughts will be established" (Proverbs 16:3, NKJV). Commit, not calculate. I have been trying to establish my own thoughts by sheer force of spreadsheet, and Solomon says the establishing was never going to come from my side of that equation at all.
Here is where my own reasoning runs out every single night at that laptop. I can list every deductible correctly, I can run the math on both plans twice, and the math has never once been the thing I was actually missing, because the paralysis was never really a math problem. Isaiah describes a guidance that does not arrive through better analysis. "Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, 'This is the way, walk in it,' Whenever you turn to the right hand Or whenever you turn to the left" (Isaiah 30:21, NKJV). A word behind me, not a formula in front of me. I keep looking at the screen for an answer that was always meant to come from somewhere else entirely.
This is what abiding in the Spirit gives that my own spreadsheet never could, not a louder certainty about which column wins but a willingness to actually move once I have asked. Paul tells the Romans plainly who is being led and how. "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God" (Romans 8:14, NKJV). Led, present tense, which means the leading is happening even on the nights I cannot feel it happening. He tells the Galatians what that leading looks like set against my own anxious calculating. "Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law" (Galatians 5:16-18, NKJV). Not under the law of my own eleven nights of circling. Jesus told His disciples exactly who would finish what my own reasoning cannot. "However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come" (John 16:13, NKJV).
David asked for the same thing I have been too proud to actually ask for out loud. "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye" (Psalm 32:8, NKJV). Guided, not left to guess alone in a spreadsheet at eleven at night. He asked again in a different psalm with the exhaustion showing through. "Cause me to hear Your lovingkindness in the morning, For in You do I trust; Cause me to know the way in which I should walk, For I lift up my soul to You" (Psalm 143:8, NKJV).
I picked a column about twenty minutes ago, not because the spreadsheet finally produced a verdict but because I finally stopped waiting for one and asked instead. It might not even be the better plan. I am done needing to be certain of that before I act. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which deadline you are stalling in front of, which two columns you cannot stop highlighting. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on you calculating your way to a perfect choice, and He has told you Himself that He will never leave you alone with the decision after midnight.
Scriptures used (NKJV): James 1:5; Proverbs 16:3; Isaiah 30:21; Romans 8:14; Galatians 5:16-18; John 16:13; Psalm 32:8; Psalm 143:8.
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