A new paradigm

It's amazing how much having a decision made and behind you frees you up to move forward. When I went off to college at age 17, I was admitted to Yale University in New Haven, CT.  I was a graduate of a public high school in Portland, OR. To say that I suffered some culture shock would be a gross understatement. 

Most of the people I met at Yale were nice enough, but most of them also were graduates of private preparatory schools, mainly on the east coast, but also including one of my roommates who attended Punahou school in Honolulu, the same school Barak Obama later attended. These "preppies" had a completely different worldview than I had. They were, well, more worldly. They were self assured and seemed to have the notion that they were somehow a cut above those of us who had attended public schools. 

During the one semester I spent at Yale, I was miserable. I was accustomed to being a straight A student, but now I found myself struggling to pull down Cs. In addition, there seemed to be a different culture on the east coast. They were much more in a hurry, less patient, and always seemed to me to be angry. I had left a girlfriend behind, and of course, most of my high school chums had gone to institutions of higher learning closer to home. How I envied them the opportunity to go home for a weekend and enjoy familiar surroundings and reunions with their friends. 

My dorm counselor at Yale was a junior. He sat with me for hours listening to me complain about how miserable I was. When I would start repeating myself, he would say, "Tom, you're going in circles. Straighten out your thinking, so you can decide where you are going." The man was a genius. Eventually, I decided that, in spite of my feelings that I  would be letting down my parents, my high school guidance counselor, my one friend from high school who had preceded me in going to Yale a couple of years before I did, and myself, I made the decision to leave Yale at the end of that first (and only) semester. 

Once the decision was made, I felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders. I began to actually find things I could enjoy, knowing that in a few weeks, I would be back in more familiar environs. When I went home for Christmas break, I begged my parents to let me stay home permanently, but they wisely sent me back to finish the semester and salvage some college credit out of the situation. 

This week on Monday, I was facing what, to me, was a similarly difficult decision: whether or not to have a bone marrow transplant (BMT) as the next step in my battle with leukemia. If you read my last post, you will know that I was spared the agony of making that decision when no suitable donor was found on the worldwide database of volunteer donors. In other words, the decision was made for me.

Since Monday, Jill and I have been living in a new paradigm. We have no hospital visits looming. My oncologist has OKed our getting together with small groups of family members, provided we are all masked and vaccinated. At last we will be able to see our two granddaughters, whom we haven't seen since April. You know as well as I do that kids change almost daily. We don't know what to expect after eight months!! This is our best Christmas present yet!! We are even dreaming of a trip to San Diego to visit our daughter and her family, including our three wonderful grandsons. That trip could include a stop in the Bay Area to visit Jill's brother Bob and his family.

We also have a reservation for a condo in Newport, OR for the New Year's weekend. We made that reservation before BMT was mentioned as a possible treatment modality. In fact, during my penultimate hospitalization for chemotherapy, we were getting excited about the fact that I would be finished with chemo in early November and have nearly two months to recuperate. So, we made a reservation for our first getaway since we went camping in May. When BMT was put on the table, we were afraid that if we were to go ahead with that, our New Year's getaway would need to be cancelled. Now all of that has been resolved, and we are free to go away for a couple's retreat. 

And so, we are living in a new paradigm. Having a difficult decision behind us has freed us up to look into the future and think about doing life more as we remember it. We know that we are only guaranteed this very moment, and our Lord has told us

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— ¹⁴ yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13-15)

So, we will continue (or begin again) to dream, and “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” It is good to be in a new paradigm.