The Decision That Closes on Friday

There are two names and a form, and the form goes in on Friday whether or not you are ready.

You have read both inspection reports. You have read the older ones as well, the ones from before the current head, because somebody in a forum said that mattered. You have read the parent reviews and then discounted about half of them, correctly, because the people who write reviews are the delighted and the furious and almost nobody in between.

You have looked at results tables and then read three articles about why results tables are misleading. You have looked at the intake numbers, the travel time in both directions at eight in the morning, and a planning application near one of the sites that you found at half past eleven one night and have not been able to unfind.

You have a document. It has columns.

And here is the thing that has started to frighten you, which is not either school.

The document has stopped resolving. Every new piece of information now lands on both sides at once, and the more you add the less it decides, and last night you found yourself reading a review from four years ago written by somebody whose child, by now, has left.

You are not gathering any more. You are circling.

And underneath the circling is a sentence you have not said out loud: if I get this wrong, it is on me.

What this page will not do

I am not going to tell you which one to pick. I have not met your child, I do not know your road, and anybody who would decide this from a distance is not being helpful, they are being loud.

I am not going to tell you the research was wasted. It was not. You now know things that will make you a better advocate for your child in either building, and you will use them at a parents' evening in eighteen months without noticing.

And I am not going to tell you the decision does not matter. It matters. That is why you have done all this, and being told it does not matter is one of the more insulting things people say to parents. Scripture settles that in Proverbs 3:5-6, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it rather than these words.

What I am going to do is name the thing the reading has quietly turned into.

You are not failing at this by not being certain. Scripture says if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, James 1:5, and the giving is described as liberal and the not-upbraiding is written in for people who have asked more than once, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives without ever making a careful parent feel foolish for being careful.

The verse is about the walking, not the map

There is a pair of lines in Proverbs that gets quoted at people in your exact week, usually badly.

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.Proverbs 3:5-6

The bad reading is that this tells you to stop thinking. It does not, and it cannot, because Proverbs is a book that spends thirty chapters telling people to think.

Lean not unto thine own understanding is not an instruction to have none. Leaning is what you do when you put your whole weight on a thing. It is about load, not about use. You may use your understanding all day; what you may not do is rest the entire weight of your child's future on your ability to foresee outcomes, because it will not hold, and it was never built to.

Then look at the promise. He shall direct thy paths. Direct is a steering word, and steering happens to a thing already in motion. There is no version of this verse in which somebody is steered while standing still at a fork with a spreadsheet.

Which means the guidance you are waiting for before you decide is described as arriving after you move.

You are not going to be steered while stationary. Scripture says in all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths, Proverbs 3:6, and the directing is attached to a person already walking, and the Holy Spirit is the one who corrects a course rather than handing out a map to a parent at a kitchen table.

What the columns cannot hold

Here is why the document stopped resolving, and it is not your fault and it is not a failure of research.

You are trying to make a decision about a person using data about a place. I am not putting my own idea over you; Scripture says it in Proverbs 3:5-6, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it live.

Everything in your columns is true about a building: its intake, its results, its inspection history, its travel time at eight in the morning. None of it is about your child in that building, because that information does not exist anywhere. It has not happened yet. It will be produced by a particular boy or girl meeting a particular teacher in a particular September, and no source on earth holds it.

So the columns will never resolve, however many rows you add, because the deciding factor is not in the dataset.

That is not a reason to despair. It is a reason to stop looking for it, which is a different thing entirely, and much lighter.

You are not going to find the missing column. Scripture says the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart, 1 Samuel 16:7, and the outward appearance in your week is precisely a spreadsheet of measurable things, and the Holy Spirit sees the child who is not in any of the data.

The sentence you have not said

If I get this wrong, it is on me.

That is what has been driving the last four nights, and it deserves to be looked at properly rather than left running underneath everything.

Two things about it.

The first is that it assumes there is a right and a wrong here, one of each, discoverable in advance. Almost no decision of this kind is shaped like that. There are two roads with different costs, both survivable, both containing good years and hard terms, and the version of this where one is correct and one is a catastrophe exists mainly in your chest at eleven at night.

The second is heavier and more freeing. Your child's life is not resting on your ability to choose correctly. You are not the only thing standing between them and the future. That is a load that no parent was built to carry and that God has never once asked anybody to pick up.

You are not carrying your child's whole future in a form. Scripture says casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you, 1 Peter 5:7, and casting is a throwing word rather than a managing word, and the Holy Spirit is at work in a nine year old's next four years in rooms no inspection report has ever described.