When I started nursing school or... backing up to even before I applied to nursing school, I didn't think that it would be hard. I pretty much had the mentality that "I can do it"... so I forged ahead and went for it. I applied to nursing school thinking that if I got in, I'd decide at that time to go. After I got in, I remember thinking... now that I'm in, I might as well go.
Nursing school was hard. I was pretty stressed writing my thesis and taking prereq's at the same time, but that stress in finishing my MPH was nothing compared to the stress of nursing school. Regardless, I got through it... thank GOD and now I'm working... amazingly enough.
I keep thinking about why it was so hard. Looking back, I'm not sure if it was so much that it was "hard" than that it was different than anything I'd ever been through. Not only did we learn the theory, we had to remember it, carry it over, and build upon it. And while we were learning the theory, we were in the skills lab practicing it, watching videos on how to do it... and in the hospital applying it. My previous schooling was pretty much strictly theoretical; and while we had labs to "apply" what we were learning, if we messed up, it wasn't that big a deal... we'd just scrap it and start over (or we'd just write up what should have happened and why it didn't come out that way). If I mess up in nursing... it affects someone else and their health. This is a serious job with serious consequences if I fail. Pressure.
I never really thought about it, but it all got progressively harder as time went on. Nothing ever got easier. We started out learning very simple things and built up to working critical care. Doing clinicals while in school... you start out protected. You have an instructor there, you have your nurse who looks over you. They don't really expect you to do much other than practical skills and even then, they prepare everything for you, tell you what to do, and you just do it. Now that I'm working, I still have a preceptor (a nurse) who looks after me, but I need to bring it all together, prioritize things on my own, and I am expected to take care of it all, start to finish. It is the next logical progression in my preparation to be a full-on registered nurse... but it is hard. And I'm fighting for it. I look forward to the day when things will get easier, but I'm not sure if they ever will. My job will pretty much always be rough and stressful... but I will be in a better place to handle it... because I've grown... because I'll have experience behind me.
There's something to be said about learning it vs. living it. Learning is very necessary... I don't think you'd want to be taken care of by a nurse who never went to nursing school. But after you learn it, you need to live it; otherwise, what's the purpose of learning it to begin with? Nursing school was to prepare me to be a nurse. Now that I'm done with schooling, I'm actually supposed to be living it out. I AM a nurse. Woah.
I feel like... I'm at a point where my work situation parallels my life situation. I'll never stop learning about God, but I'm not satisfied with simply learning it... I need to be living it. I've spent years and years and years of my life learning about God, learning about Jesus, learning about Christianity... but learning it isn't the same as experiencing it. Now that I've been experiencing it... I can't go back to just learning. Must move forward. Go a step farther and higher.
Living it is... scary in a sense that work and life are both unpredictable. I'm not working some M-F 9-5 routine. Every single shift is different, just like every single day of life is different. I don't need to know what's going to happen to know what to do. I don't even need a step-by-step guidebook to get me through the day... I just need to apply what I know, apply what I've learned, and do my best to put things together...with help of course.
Sorry, I start every post with the intention of being succinct, but it never happens. Thanks for getting to this point if you're still reading.
Everyone wants a lab manual for life but handing me a nursing textbook doesn't make me a nurse. I'm never going to find a page that corresponds perfectly to every single situation I'll encounter at work. The textbooks guide, but it's up to me to take what I learned and practice it myself. Similarly, I think sometimes I tend to want to get caught up in the rules and do's and don'ts of life. "If only I knew what to do"... "if only I could hear God tell me what I need to do"... I think that a lot of times... He's already told us. He gave us everything we need to know in His Word and through His Spirit. We just need to live it. The manual gives us the steps for how to do it in real life, but all of life is not a string of lab-manual procedures one right after another. And thank goodness too. How boring would it be if it were? Life is different everyday, it's exciting, it's vibrant, it's full of new things to be encountered and discovered... the procedures are just one way that the principle is realized. When you know the guiding principles, its applications are endless.
Love God & love others with everything I've got.
There is oftentimes the right way to do things and the wrong way and those things are not negotiable. But really... everyone inserts an IV slightly differently even though it serves the exact same function and it's done basically the same way across the board.
I've been reading through my journal lately. There's one particular page that's full of quotes, excerpts and highlights.
God's desire is to take you from where you are to where He wants you to be. You will always be one step of obedience away from the next truth God wants you to learn about Him. Experiencing God, March 13.
God doesn't want you to merely gain intellectual knowledge of truth. He wants you to experience His truth. There are things about Jesus you will learn only as you obey Him. Your obedience will then lead to greater revelation and opportunities for service. Experiencing God, March 14.
When almighty God speaks to us, what we do next proves what we believe about Him, regardless of what we say. Experiencing God, March 11.
Much of the frustration we experience as Christians has nothing to do with what God does or doesn't do. It has everything to do, rather, with the false assumptions we make about how we think God will and should act. Experiencing God, March 12.
God responds to faith. Unbelief hinders the work of God, but faith unleashes it. Greg Laurie, Daily Devotions, March 17.
Faith is the consent of the will to the assent of the understanding. Faith always has in it the idea of action. It is movement toward its object. Faith is a restless, living thing. it cannot be inoperative. Faith moves. Faith acts. Faith does. It doesn't just sit. It has to move. And faith develops by listening to, studying, and immersing ourselves in the Word of God. Faith gets stronger through use. Greg Laurie, Daily Devotions, Mar 16.
It's one thing to learn it, and quite another to live it. Live it.
I think there was more I had initially wanted to write about, but I forgot now. Maybe I'll remember tomorrow.
good concept. i like it.
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