Free Will?

Why is it that free will is so important? As a Christian I have always believed that it is very important that God created humans and gave them the ability to freely make decisions to determine the course of their lives. I believed that not having free will meant that our lives had no meaning. I wanted to know that it was true that the decisions I made had meaning and that I was actually running my life. The view of God as the man upstairs who was controlling everything in the world was completely unappealing to me. Lately I have been thinking about this a lot more and I'm not sure what I'm feeling.

What does it really mean to make a decision? Lewis talks about how you need to know the reason that you are making a decision in order to make a decision for a reason. Weilenberg explains Lewis' point of view in the way that if God commands you to do something that you enjoy doing you can't believe that you are doing it because God commanded you to. You aren't doing it because you were commanded to, you are doing something that God wants you to do simply because you enjoy it. It is all a coincidence. But what does this mean when you have no idea why you are making a decision?

The thing that I have been thinking about the most lately is the decisions that I have made in my life. Some of the most important decisions of my life are the ones that I don't really remember making. When I graduated High School I knew that I was going to attend NWC, but I had no idea why. I don't remember making the decision about where I was going to attend college. I know that I am in a place that is working in my life and possibly the best place for me to be, but I don't know how I got here.

If a person doesn't have any reason for making a decision, did that person actually make the decision? Is God up there making decisions for us and changing our lives around to make them how he wants them to be? Is it possible that because I wasn't taking the initiative God just came in and made my decision for me? I really don't know what I am thinking about this, but I have begun to wonder just how important it is for us to have free will. I feel like my options are either that we don't have free will at all, or that maybe we do have free will to a point. Maybe God lets us have free will, but steps in when we aren't making the decisions on our own. I wasn't making my own decisions, but somehow I continued to move on in my life. I have always kind of gone with the flow and my life continues to move forward. Some of the decisions in my live are ones that I have consciously made, but there are others that I have no memory of making. This is what has made me question the importance and even the existence of human free will. Do we have free will? Is there something else going on that makes it so we have no control over our lives? Or is it possible that there is something in between?