The Thing You're Avoiding

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D E V O T I O N A L

There was a phone call I did not make for about three months.

Nothing catastrophic. Just a conversation I knew was going to be uncomfortable, with someone I did not want to have it with, about something I would rather have not addressed at all. So I did what I am good at. I found other things to do. Important things, some of them. And every day I did not make that call, it got a little heavier and a little more awkward and a little harder to imagine actually picking up the phone.

When I finally made it, the whole thing took eleven minutes.

Eleven minutes. Against three months of low-grade dread that followed me around like a shadow. Three months of the thing sitting in the back of my head, taking up space, surfacing at red lights and at two in the morning and every time that person's name came up in conversation.

I had paid so much more for avoiding it than the thing itself ever cost me.

You have something like this. Almost everybody does. The conversation you have not had. The appointment you have not scheduled. The apology you owe. The email sitting in your inbox that you have opened and closed eight times. The doctor you have been meaning to call. The bill you have not looked at. The relationship you have let go quiet because addressing it would require something you have not been able to summon yet.

And it is not getting lighter. That is the thing about avoidance. We treat it like a pause button when it is actually a compounding interest rate.

Here is what I have noticed about why we do this. It is rarely laziness. It is almost always fear. Fear of what the conversation might turn into. Fear of what the test might say. Fear of the conflict, the rejection, the number on the page, the emotion we might have to feel if we stop looking away from it.

And avoidance gives us something real in exchange. It gives us today. It lets us not feel it right now. That is a genuine benefit, which is exactly why we keep choosing it, even though we know what it is doing to us.

But scripture keeps pointing in the opposite direction.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:23-24 that if you are bringing your gift to the altar and remember that someone has something against you, leave the gift, go be reconciled first, and then come back and offer it. Think about what He is actually saying there. You are mid-worship. And He says go handle the uncomfortable thing first. The relationship you have been avoiding matters enough to interrupt your offering for.

That is not a God who is comfortable with our avoidance.

And James 4:17 puts it even more bluntly. "Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it."

That verse used to bother me. Now I think it is mercy. Because what it is really naming is the gap between knowing and doing, and how much of our lives quietly leak out into that gap.

Here is what I want to offer you today, and it is not a lecture about being more disciplined.

The dread is almost never proportional to the thing. Your mind has spent weeks or months building a version of this that is significantly worse than reality. It has rehearsed the conversation going badly. It has imagined the worst possible outcome. And that version, the imagined one, is the one you have been avoiding, not the actual thing, which is almost always smaller and more manageable than the monster in your head.

Second, you do not have to feel ready. Waiting until you feel ready is just avoidance wearing better clothes. Readiness is not a prerequisite. Willingness is.

And third, you are not doing it alone. Whatever is on the other side of that phone call or that appointment or that conversation, God is already there. He is not waiting for you at the finish line. He is in the middle of it with you. Which means the courage you think you need to manufacture is not something you have to generate on your own.

So here is what I would ask of you today.

Pick one thing. Not all of them. One. The thing that came to mind in the first thirty seconds of reading this, because it already did, didn't it?

And do it this week. Make the call. Send the email. Schedule the appointment. Say the hard thing.

Not because you feel ready. Because you are tired of carrying it, and because eleven minutes is almost always cheaper than three months.

Much love and blessings,

Ramzi

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Writing these devotionals is a labor of love, and your support makes it possible. If Coffee With My Father has encouraged you, consider buying me a coffee. Every contribution helps me keep sharing hope and truth each week.

Family

The conversation you have been avoiding at home is not getting easier with time. Distance grows in silence. Say the thing kindly, but say it.

Relationships

If you owe someone an apology, the delay is costing you both. Go first. You will not regret being the one who moved.

Mental Health

Avoidance provides short-term relief and long-term anxiety. If you find yourself avoiding many things and cannot break the pattern, that is worth talking through with a counselor.

Finances

Not looking at the number does not change the number. Open the statement. Knowing where you stand is the first step toward doing something about it.

Physical Health

The appointment you keep pushing is the one to schedule this week. Most of the time the news is better than the dread. And when it is not, earlier is always better.

Eleven minutes is almost always cheaper than three months. Go do the thing.

Lord, You know the thing I have been avoiding and You know exactly why. Give me the courage to stop carrying it and actually face it this week. Go before me into that conversation, that appointment, that hard thing. Remind me that I am not walking into it alone and that You are already there. Amen.

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