Before-thoughts and After-thoughts

The last post was to tell a little about the decision I made and why I made it, but I also wanted to write a little about the thoughts I had before and the thoughts I have had since.

Before I made the decision I thought a lot about people that I had asked to write me letters of recommendation and how several wrote specific letters to Harvard so that I could get into Harvard, and I felt like I owed it to them to go to Harvard after I got in. That was stupid. It was my life the decision was affecting not theirs. Stupid.

Before I made the decision I thought a lot about how Harvard would open so many doors that I could use to spread the gospel through my example to influential people in influential places, etc. etc. After I made the decision and was talking about this to a friend the friend said something that I wish I would have heard along time ago. He said, "Sure you want to do something that opens doors for you, but how are you to know which doors are the best to open" or something like that. I was just assuming that Harvard would open the best doors and lead me to where I could best serve God, but really, how was I supposed to know that Chicago wasn't better? Stupid.

Before I made the decision, I thought about the people who said I would be "CRAZY" to not go to Harvard, who said "no-brainer here, Dan." After I made the decision, I thought back and realized that if I would have made the decision simply out of fear of what people like that would think of me if I didn't make the "obviously best" choice, I would have been a "man-fearing man" rather than a "God-fearing man." And besides, if those people really knew me they would know that I am CRAZY as it is. Stupid.

In the end, it was a hard decision and I learned a lot from it. I learned that when we feel like we aren't meant to choose the path that seems at first to be the obviously best path, it is a very hard decision and requires a little faith. I am very glad that this decision was one where I had to choose between to awesome paths because I think that it would be a lot harder if the feeling were to choose a path that didn't seem at first to be a beneficial one. I learned a lot more too, but I have already breeched my year's quota for Total Words For Blog Posts. So I guess that this is farewell until next year...