Do the next right thing

One night this week, I had a phone call from a single mother in great distress.  She was crying and feeling overwhelmed as life seemed to come crashing in on her.  She was holed up in her room with the door closed.  While we talked, her children kept coming to the door, and she kept telling them to go away.
It was 6:30 pm, and I finally asked her if she had fed her children supper yet.
No, she hadn't.
"Well, then, go feed your children supper."
She protested that she couldn't until she had solved the current problem that was so distressing her.
But, this was not a problem easily solved....there was no quickly obvious course of action.
My advice, when you don't know what to do about some big problem is to DO THE NEXT RIGHT THING!
Don't sit around paralyzed and weeping.  Decide what is the most important thing to be doing right then, and go do it.  Put the problem on the back burner of your mind. As you go about normal life, ask the Lord to work in your heart and mind and give you clear insight into the path you should take.  Don't obsess over it.  Fix supper, or clean the house, or do the laundry or get groceries or whatever needs to happen in order to keep life running smoothly for your family.  Let God concern Himself with your crisis.  He is expert at handling the seemingly impossible.
Another component of this advice is that life needs to be broken up into manageable pieces.  You don't have to decide right now what you are going to be doing a year from now.  It's fine to do long-range thinking when you are feeling emotionally stable, but when you are under great stress, don't think too far ahead.  Just ask God for the strength for the next day...or hour....or 10 minute particle of time.  When you have passed that milestone, you can face the next one.  
I have followed my own advice on this many times, and I know it works.  If you keep pulling yourself back to doing what is right in the present, the future somehow falls into place.  By the time you reach the point where a crucial decision must be made, the correct path is clear.
Just do the next right thing.