Decisions, Decisions

(Disclaimer: NO decision has been made about graduate school. These are just a few of the 2 billion thoughts that have gone through my head the past few days.)

When it comes to insignificant things, I'm one of the worst decision makers on the planet. I can't ever decide what movie to watch, where to go out to eat, what to have for dinner, what to wear (like today, for example). I think it drives Chris crazy sometimes. But the big decisions, the ones that really count, usually come easily to me, probably thanks to the help of a loving Heavenly Father.
BYU was a no-brainer for me. I had been planning to be a Cougar for longer than I can remember. It was the only place I even applied to--no other school was worth the application fee.
But sometimes you plan things, things you think are supposed to happen because they seem to work perfectly. When I entered BYU as a freshman, my plans were set. I had a missionary who had just left. I was going to marry him. But in the mean time, I had two years to become a brilliant history major, study abroad in Europe, run a lot (I would never say I wanted to do something as insane as a marathon), and learn how to be an independent woman. It was coming together perfectly. Then funny things started to happen. I was signed up to live in the dorms (that would keep me away from any returned missionaries who might try to woo me), but I got a strong feeling that wasn't the right place for me. My sister-in-law told me about an off-campus apartment complex, so I pulled out of the dorms and decided to live there. A month after arriving at BYU I met Chris in that apartment complex. And somewhere between the day I first laid eyes on him and December I realized I wouldn't be able to live without him. Somewhere in there I learned I could never be a history major and fell in love (for some strange reason) with sociology. My plans were falling through. What about the missionary? The brilliant historian? Europe? I thought things had been planned perfectly. Its funny how un-perfectly things were working out. But the new spontaneous plan was making me happy. It was what I wanted. I wanted Chris; I didn't really know love until I knew Chris. So I made the decisions, and 'Dear Johning' the missionary was an easy decision (compared to some girls I know). And it has worked out beautifully. I have, thus far, become everything I really wanted to become all along (including, believe it or not, the 'independent woman' -- in a married woman kind of way;-)

Now the point of all this is the current decision on the table. Chris and I had everything worked out perfectly. He would go to Purdue. We would stay here until I graduated in December and then go to Indiana, where he would start school in January (Purdue was the ONLY school that would let him do that). We would be in a familiar place, have family in town and in nearby Chicago (not to mention the proximity to Wrigley Field). It was the perfect plan--until we didn't get into Purdue. What?! How could that be? It was the PERFECT PLAN! It jolted me; I had no idea what we were going to do (still don't, actually). Today, the main debate is between the old and the new, the easy and the hard, BYU and Tennessee. The thought of staying at BYU is a comfortable one, but also a heartbreaking one. It is easy: no moving, stay near family, stay by all these Mormons (sad, but true), stay somewhere we know we can deal with. But I just feel like we (Chris, especially, but also me and our future family) deserve better than that. The education and opportunities Tennessee has to offer far exceed those offered at BYU. And by 'far' I mean FAR. It would be an adventure: a wonderful, horrifying, exciting, frightening adventure. The thing is, 80% of me really wants to go to Tennessee. However, the other 20% of me is very VOCAL. It is so scared to even consider trying to move to a strange place, so far away from everything I have ever known. Honestly, more than anything else, it hurts my heart to think about being so far from my mother. (Yes, I'm a baby.) I am really close to my mom and love her so much and the though of being permanently away (yes, there are airplanes--but tickets are out of our price range these days) is really, really hard. Don't get me wrong, Chris is my priority, my everything, and if Tennessee is right, we will go to Tennessee and have a wonderful experience. I just keep wishing the University of Tennessee was somehow magically in Eastern Idaho.
Well, this was complete blabbering on my part. The point is decisions are hard; sometimes harder than you expect them to be or want them to be. And what is even harder is that the right choice is quite frequently the harder one.