Day 313 - I love flowers

Happy Memorial Day!

I can't believe it's the last day of May already. Tomorrow it will be June! It's so amazing to me how quickly the days pass nowadays.

Last year on Memorial Day, Anderson had his spine surgery. We were the only people in the massive surgical waiting area. M.D. Anderson is a really great facility. Thinking back on how much they do and how far they go to make things easier on their patients and families... makes me really glad that God brought us there. I remember that night... the surgeon came to see us after the procedure... and told us the news that the tumor was growing inside of his spinal cord so it was basically inoperable. They debulked the tumor as much as they could, but there was only so much they could do. I remember being there but it almost seems like... it happened a lifetime ago... or that it didn't happen to me. When I think back on those days... it almost feels like I watched it all happen on the outside, as if it were someone else's life... someone else's husband... someone else's tragedy.

Even when I tell people about it nowadays... it doesn't hit me that I'm actually talking about my own life until the words come out of my mouth and I actually hear what I'm saying. I don't know if that makes sense at all. It seems so surreal.

A nurse was giving report to me yesterday and she was wearing a bracelet with a Brazilian flag on it. I asked her if she was Brazilian and she said yes. I said, "my husband was Brazilian." I didn't expect her to continue on, but she picked up on my tense. She said, "was?". I said, "he passed away." I was pretty matter-of-fact about it. I don't know if that seems cold or obtuse. Maybe I'll get a chance to talk to her again one of these days. Maybe I'll try out some Portuguese phrases that I still remember... or maybe I think I still remember until I actually try to say it. I get French and Portuguese mixed up in my head sometimes.

And then I was talking to another nurse at work and I mentioned my in-laws in conversation and she said, "oh, you're married?" and I said, "no, I'm widowed." Again, very matter-of-fact. I really don't know the proper social etiquette when it comes to telling people these things. Now that I can talk about these things without being so emotional... I wonder how it's perceived. Anyway... so that conversation continued on... as she asked more questions, I eventually ended up telling her our story mixed in with explaining my schooling... I barely got to the Friday before our wedding before we had to stop talking and both of us had to get back to work. I wonder if I'll get to finish the story one of these days.

It's kind of a neat story to tell. A lot happened. There's so much to tell. Oh yeah, so I wrote a short(ish) version of my testimony for Inheritance Magazine, it's in issue 6. The direct link to my testimony is here. Most of you already know the story. Anyway, it's there for you to read if you want.

Even in looking at my own story... oftentimes I wonder... why me? Who am I? Who am I that God would choose me? And who am I, really? I'm pretty average. I'm nothing special. The only thing extraordinary about me is the God I love and serve. I'm not the smartest, brightest, prettiest, most eloquent... I'm not brilliant at anything in particular. If anything, God's created me with inklings... very small hints of Himself woven into the very fiber of my being... and it is up to me whether or not I choose Him and allow Him to grow those inklings in me... to manifest Himself and His character in me and through me... and that is the only reason that I am who I am today. The only reason I'm standing and living... and not crippled, weighed down, and paralyzed by the weight and baggage of life, sorrow, and my circumstances.

Kind of like a small seed. Just a little speck of a thing. However tiny and insignificant, within it lies the makings of a beautiful flower. I love flowers. Flowers make everything better, brighter, and happier. But like a seed... without soil, water, and God's loving touch... the seed will remain just a precursor to a flower... and not a flower itself.

I can look at other flowers that have bloomed and be jealous and wish I were like them... or I can just take a good long look at myself and realize that... I am a flower too. I might not be the same kind of flower... but every single person has the potential to go through a similar process of sprouting, taking root, drawing nutrients, and growing towards the Light. We were created for this. It is our intended purpose. How freeing and liberating it is to no longer be trapped in my little seed's casing... but to be transformed... to grow and bloom and show color and beauty and life and eventually fruitfulness... to be the flower I was created to be. Perhaps a hot pink one, in the words of my late husband.

From Tifferson Continued

Here's another quote from Streams:

...in this life you are receiving a music lesson from your Father. You are being trained to sing in a choir you cannot yet see, and there will be parts in the chorus that only you can sing. There will be notes too low for the angels to reach, and certain notes so far above the scale that only an angel could reach them. But remember, the deepest notes belong to you and will only be reached by you.

Your Father is training you for a part the angels cannot sing, and His conservatory is the school of sorrows. Others have said that He sends sorrow to test you, yet this is not the case. He sends sorrow to educate you, thereby providing you with the proper training for His heavenly choir.

I'm not sure if you're anything like me but... in life (well and in choir for that matter)... I don't ever take the solo part. Even when I sang on worship teams, I'd much rather sing the harmony than the melody... to be in the background and to have my mic be second in volume to someone else. And yet, I would secretly wish that I had the skill and ability to actually take and sing a solo with brilliant clarity, confidence, and control.

And what if life were like a musical... and God decided to pluck me out of the chorus and train me for a different part? For a part that stands out from the crowd. For an extraordinary life? It would require a lot of hard work and pain... perhaps sorrow and being confronted with failure time and time again in the process of transforming me into something completely different than I was... would I up and quit? Would I trust that the God who created me... who knows me inside and out... every thought, every whim, every tendency... and also every bit of latent potential that lies beneath the awkwardness and insecurity... the eyes that stare hopelessly at the floor... the head that dare not raise to feign equality with those with natural gifting or those who have rightfully earned their principal or leading role in the musical of life. Are "principals" only used in reference to ballets? I dunno. Whatever. You know what I mean. Do I trust that God knows what He's doing or will I fight the training or quit the education to keep myself part of the chorus? What if after everything that's happened to me... I can't ever go back to being in the chorus? OK I'm getting lost in my own analogy.

I wonder why all of this happened to me. I don't really know why. I see snippets of good things that have happened. I wonder though... if this is it... if Anderson was my biggest training or if he was only just a small part of it... or if all of life plus now is training me for the next big thing that will happen in the future... I don't know. And not to say that I'm super duper special or anything... I honestly feel that my life is mine to live... all I can do is do the best with what I've been given... to make the choices that have been proposed to me... and to do what I need to do when I need to do it. I can't compare my life to anyone else's... it is unique. I also can't really compare my relationship with God to anyone else's either. What is beautiful about God is that each and every one of us can have our own personal relationship with Him... we can each star in our own musical and we can each be in personalized, individual training for the role that we are born to play. I can learn from yours, you can learn from mine but I'm my own flower... just doing the best with what I've got.

K. End of thoughts. Wow it's still early. :P

Day 310 - choose love, live love

I dreamt about Anderson this morning.

I rarely dream about him nowadays. It was nice though... to see him. The dream was a little bizarre, but almost all my dreams are.... at least a little bit. At one point... I remember that Anderson was snapping his fingers, one hand at a time. He used to always do this... to compare his left hand function compared to his right... the deficits he discovered would always depress him. I remember him showing me the differences in his hands... and then looking at me with really sad eyes. I hugged him. After a long hug, I pulled away, squared up directly in front of him, held his head between my hands... I remember that some of his hair fell out into my left hand and I quickly flicked it away so he wouldn't see... and looked straight into his eyes and said, "Now and until the day I die, I will always love you." And I hugged him again. I remember... a split second before I said those words in my dream... that I quickly exchanged, "until the day you die" for "until the day I die"... because I knew it would hurt him to hear me say it in reference to him. And then I opened my eyes.

This was not an unusual scene for us. It happened pretty frequently. He was always getting frustrated at his physical limitations... surgery by surgery... little by little... his body slowly failed him. After one surgery, it was his right hand that was slower than his left. And then after another... his right hand became the stronger of the two. Early on, his arms were less coordinated than his legs, and by the end... it was his legs that were paralyzed and his arms became his strongest assets. It broke my heart to see him limited in this way... especially since his body was one of the things that he always used to count on... he worked with his hands... he created digital art... he bowled, he batted... he played catch... he loved to drive. And all of that was taken away. He was stripped. His voice was the last to be taken away. After he was intubated, he had to point to letters and spell out words. Thinking back now... it was cruel on my part to plead with God to keep him alive. I would have spent the rest of my life at his side... even if he were unconscious, kept alive on life support. It really was because I couldn't let go. Even to a remnant of him. I would have rather had the remnant than to be left alone. One day though, I got to the point where... I knew I had to let go. My faith had shifted from hoping and pleading that God would heal him... to submitting to the Lord and acquiescing to His will. To know intellectually that God is sovereign is one thing; to live in a manner consistent with it... takes believing it with all your heart... and it also takes letting go of what you think is good for you in order to receive what God knows is best. It's been a long time since I've said it but it still rings true in my life... God's way is better than Tiff's way 100% of the time.



Someone asked me recently if Anderson ever hurt me. She said that it seems like from how I write about him, that he was the perfect man. He was not perfect. I am not perfect. But we were perfect for each other. In all the ways he hurt me... my character was grown as a result. In his struggles and weaknesses, I was able to be strong for him and vice versa. In every situation... there are almost always at least two ways you can choose to go. We could have let our differences frustrate each other and drive us apart. Or we could have used our differences to learn and grow from each other... so that both of us are stronger, better people together... even more so than when we are apart. Differences are hard to work with sometimes... but tapping into the strength that lies in diversity provides a richer, fuller, deeper experience than what can come out of uniform similarities. That's how I see it anyway. We chose to grow together. We chose to stick together, for better or worse, richer or poorer, til death did us part. And it was an active choice. Not so much a difficult one... an active one.

I also remember hearing that I didn't have to marry him. I could have left him and gone on with my own life. To me... that choice... was completely illogical. When you love someone... you love them... through thick and thin, good times and rough times. Anyone can love someone when things are good. It's the hard times that really reveal the character of your love... that show you what you're made of... that test how far you really would go to be found faithful and true. I know now for a fact that when I said "I love you", I meant it in the deepest possible way. Not "I love you if...", but "I love you always, no matter what". And I'm glad. Even though we had a rough beginning and a good time in the middle... it was the ending that gives me the most joy and peace about our relationship and our marriage. The ending was not lackluster... it was even greater than the beginning. And that is what I will always remember... not the hurt, the frustration, or the pain. So did he ever hurt me? Yes. But the outcome was always worth whatever pain it took to get there.

I can say this in retrospect now. But I also could have told you this back when we were in the very heart of darkness. I'm very, very thankful for this... for my life... for everything I've been through. I'm the one that's left here now... but I'd also like to continue similarly for the rest of my life. I want to always be thankful for everything and give God all the glory at all times. I want to study, know, and remember the Word of God, and to be a doer, not just a hearer. I want to be one who clings to the Lord, in darkness and light... through joy and sorrow... and to be found faithful. Like Job.

I read something the other day. You know when sometimes you read something and a line just sticks out and hits you? What I read was that, "Job never read the book of Job". It's kinda "duh", but it made me stop and think. This is the sentence in context:

It is easy for us to read Job's story and critique him at certain points. But we need to keep in mind that Job never read the Book of Job. He didn't know it would turn out well in the end. He didn't know about the conversations between God and Satan. He didn't know why everything was happening. All he knew was that one day, it all was going beautifully, and the next day, the bottom dropped out with no real explanation that he could see. Yet Job persevered in his faith and integrity.

We are told in James 5:11, "We give great honor to those who endure under suffering. For instance, you know about Job, a man of great endurance. You can see how the Lord was kind to him at the end, for the Lord is full of tenderness and mercy." God's plan finally ended in good, but Job could not see that midstream.-Greg Laurie

There was also a quote...

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator with all I have not seen. -Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I think when I read the stories nowadays, I really try to put myself in their shoes... or sandals... and when I do that, the way many of the people in the Bible acted becomes so much more real and alive to me. I don't see Job's lamenting so much as something to criticize but as something to admire. He was dealing with his situation in the most honest way he could. There was no sugar coating his feelings and there was no holding back or putting on appearances to "appear" that everything was OK when it really wasn't. He was who he was. He said what he felt. Even to curse the day he was born. When we read his story now, we read about what God said to Satan... how God protected him in the midst of his "stripping" time... but Job didn't know that. All he knew was one day things were going fine and dandy and then all of the sudden it was all taken away. So he cried out, "why?" but he never, ever cursed God or abandoned Him. He also stood firm as his friends lectured him. I wonder if he doubted. I wonder if he was tempted to believe them sometimes... to think that it was punishment for something he did wrong... for some unconfessed sin. But maybe in his honesty, Job knew that he had remained faithful and he had peace and confidence in that, at least. And at the end of it all... he said:

My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Job 42:5.

Job remained faithful, never cursed God... and he had only ever HEARD of God prior to his suffering. I know it's crossed your mind that... if ONLY I could have experienced a miracle like the parting of the Red Sea or manna falling from heaven... I would totally have great faith in God. You know what? I don't think so. The Israelites saw it and immediately forgot. What makes you or I think that we are any different than them? Even reading about the Israelites and how they worshipped idols... we say "we'd never do that" but... we do the exact same thing when we put trust in money before putting trust in God. Whenever the kings wanted to buy another army to help them in battle... they plundered the temple of the Lord to pay for it. How symbolic. The spiritual state of their hearts reflected how they treated the treasures of the temple. Didn't they remember how just a little while ago, they cried out to the Lord and God granted them victory, despite all odds? No. They forgot. And we do too. So, so often.

But reading about them... knowing how easy it is for me to be and act just like them... really encourages me not to be like them or live like them. And what admonition was repeatedly told to them ever since the days of Moses?

"So be strong, show yourself a man, ³ and observe what the LORD your God requires: Walk in his ways, and keep his decrees and commands, his laws and requirements, as written in the Law of Moses, so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you go, ⁴ and that the LORD may keep his promise to me: 'If your descendants watch how they live, and if they walk faithfully before me with all their heart and soul, you will never fail to have a man on the throne of Israel.' (said David to Solomon on his deathbed) 1 Kings 2:2-4

The LORD is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you. 2 Chronicles 15:2b

For all the love that Anderson and I shared... it was logical for me to abandon school, my career, my life... for him. The choice was easy. Why not get my priorities straight and spend the time with him? I put him before myself and it was the best thing I've ever done. Similarly, for all that I have heard that God has done... for others... and also now for all He has done for me in my life... it is quite logical for me to choose Him and to be faithful at the expense of giving up what I want to trust that He will bring what is best for me in His good timing. I want to continue living like this. I don't want to be like those kings who started out well and after a few victories got so prideful that they ended up forgetting the Lord and falling into sin and captivity. So what to do... what to do... keep on clinging to the Word of the Lord... allow His laws to reveal the sin in me... follow His commandments to complete obedience... walk in His ways. This is the way He meant for it to be. This is the way we were meant to live. The greatest fulfillment and joy of our lives comes from living out exactly what we were purposed and created for.

So really... the choice is easy and logical. In light of all I've learned, all I've read, all I've experienced... how can I NOT choose Him? I chose to follow Him when I was 6 years old. That, in and of itself, was God's grace to me. He sought me out. He sent His son to die for me and for you so that we could be with Him in heaven. All I had to do was choose Him. The hard work is already done. And even after that... having the Holy Spirit living within me... with all the power of the Father and Son... to tap into that power, all we have to do is choose Him too. Choose Him and resist the devil and he will flee from me (James 4:7). God does all the hard work in that too. We have absolutely no power to change, no power over sin... it is the Spirit of God at work in us that does all that... we just have to let Him do it. But love is not passive. Jesus says, if you love me, keep my commandments. If you love me, feed my sheep. I am to choose Him and also to live my life consistent with that choice. If I said I love Anderson and abandoned him in his greatest hour of need... is that love? No. Choose love, live love. That's how it shows and that's when it really counts.



Alritey. I think I'll stop writing now.

Day 304 - graduation

The night before graduation.

I wasn't all that excited about this graduation. I wasn't sure if it's because it's just another graduation for me... or if it were for any other reason... but tonight as I was steaming my gown and hood... it kinda hit me. This time around... he won't be there.

We met during college. School plays an important role in most young adults' lives and our lives were no exception. Our relationship was punctuated by graduations... I remember the night before his graduation from UCI. I remember leaving post-it note encouragements inside his cap, inside his shoes... all over his apartment. I remember his joy after he graduated. We'd barely been dating a month and a half or so and I distinctly remember how happy he looked that day. I think that was the first time I saw him smile like that... that smile of pure joy... mixed in with pride and accomplishment. It really showed on his face.



I remember the night of my honors convocation... he always used to make fun of me with the stuff I did for school. He'd say "honors convocation" with his silly british accent (the same one he used to make fun of me and Harry Potter and the Phineas Banning Alumni House). That night of the honors convocation... I don't think my parents went... he was my biggest fan. The one that I stared at from my seat. The semi-stalker who would zoom in on me and take pics of my head in the crowd.



I remember the night before I graduated from UCI... he took pictures of me in cap and gown and then later photoshopped me into strange backgrounds. (sorry I can't find those pics)



And then having him fly back from Brazil to be there for me when it was my turn to graduate from UCI...



In grad school... these little things started to become more meaningful... the night of my Eta Sigma Gamma induction was the first time he met my public health classmates... and he went out with his beanie... the beanie that covered the hair that he lost from radiation treatment.



The day of my masters graduation was the first day he went out in public without his beanie... after his hair had grown back after radiation and after he finally let me cut his hair. I remember being so proud of him. He looked so good.



And he was there the night of my nursing pinning ceremony... that was the last school event that happened just a few weeks before we found out the tumor had come back the second time.



And this time... he won't be there.



Even though this cum laude medallion thingee is totally NOT completely legit (they transferred over my UCI grades + my public health grades + my nursing school grades and averaged them out all together... only undergrads are supposed to get these things)... I KNOW he woulda made fun of me... half cuz I was his favorite nerd to harass and also half because I know he was always proud of me and every single one of these little accomplishments and "graduations".

Maybe subconsciously, I was avoiding facing it... not being excited that he won't be zooming in on me in the crowd this time... that he won't be waiting for me with another big wreath of orchids (which I totally think are a waste of money but somehow coming from him... it always meant something special)... or texting me while I'm sitting there listening to all the speeches quoting Helen Keller and all the grand hopes and dreams for the future and how we're going to change tomorrow.

But it's just a graduation.

On a daily basis, I'm hit with realizations and memories. Going to the Huntington today... I was reminded of the time we went... right before we left for Houston... I pushed him around in the wheelchair along the black asphalt walkways... through the Chinese garden... through the little windy path flanked with towering bamboo stalks or whatever you call them. Even driving on the freeway, I get flashbacks every time I exit Azusa Ave... the very exit I used to get off to see him in Hacienda for years and years.

A few people have asked me lately... what I do with the pain... how do I respond to the emotions, the memories... the flashbacks... the heartache...

The simple answer is that I just let myself feel it all... I try not to suppress anything. Usually, I cry. I probably cry every other day... maybe even everyday. Just a little bit. Sometimes the tears just fall out. Sometimes my eyes are just dry. If it comes, it comes. If it doesn't, it doesn't. I don't feel bad about it, but I'm simply honest with myself about how things make me feel and I let myself feel them. This is not sad. This isn't something that you should be worried about. This is life. This is my life. It's normal and natural. It's normal to feel things and it's normal to cry... just like it's normal to laugh at something that's funny. You don't have to be surprised that I still grieve. You don't have to feel sad for me either. I don't think I will ever stop remembering or stop feeling things... I let myself feel things but I don't let it cripple me.

Using the amputation analogy again... losing my husband... or any kind of loss really... kinda like losing a limb except in my case it's not obvious to everyone when you first look at me. Let's say it's like losing an arm or a leg. Once it's gone, it's gone. Life will never be the same, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's worse than before... it's just a different reality than it used to be. I can learn to adapt and live life in this new reality or I can spend all my time pining after the old reality... wishing, longing... but in all of that... comes self-pity... comes bitterness... resentment... jealousy... those things... blind and cripple a person from seeing and experiencing all the good that still remains in the new reality... and also might keep a person from being able to pick up and move on.

Someone asked me if it was easier for me to go back to the way things were because we were only married for a short amount of time. Easier. I don't know. I don't think any of this is easy. Being healed from this kind of thing... is downright impossible. Impossible for me, impossible for every human being. But God... the Lord, Yahweh... is the God of the impossible and He has made the impossible happen in my life. And actually... things aren't the way they were before... yes, some parts of my life resemble the life I lived before Anderson was ever in the picture but... I know for a fact that on the inside... I have not gone back to the way things were... I do not WANT to go back to the way things were. Things are a billion times better now than they ever were before and I never ever want to be the same person I used to be.

I am still me. I am exactly who God created me to be... God has done the work to exchange the years of accumulated baggage, the bitterness and cynicism, the hardness, the callousness, the hurt and the pain... and replace it all with a heart of love and hope.

I actually hope that everyone would experience God the way I do... or even more powerfully. It always floors me when I think about the fact that God chose me... that He gave me the life I've been given... that He's revealed what He's revealed to me. A love so amazing.

I've also been thinking a bit about widows... and how God's heart is so tender towards them (and also towards orphans, foreigners, the sick and hurting). But as far as widows... God has extended a few of them extraordinary grace in the Bible... as evidenced by the widows that experienced miracles of provision and even bringing back their sons from the dead through Elijah and also Elisha after him... God's grace towards Naomi and Ruth... even also for Tamar (who was also widowed... made some mistakes but her son is in the bloodline of Jesus Christ), Abigail (who was immediately taken care of by King David after she was widowed) and also Bath Sheba (who became the mother of king Solomon... the one who was chosen to rule after David). Their stories teach me about the heart of God... their stories show me how God takes care of His own... and how His heart breaks alongside mine... and how much and how far He goes to tenderly care for me, my heart... and how He does the work to provide for me and restore my brokenness.

OK... it's way past the time that I should be sleeping if I need to wake up when I need to wake up for tomorrow. I guess I'll stop writing now. Night!

Day 302 - I survived

Alritey... well, I told you guys I'd update you with how work went my first day being on my own.

Everything went ok. I'm sure you would tell me "I told you so" but... how would I know that before it happened? I guess... compared to some of the other things I've been through, getting through my first real day of work seems like such a small thing... but it was kind of a big thing. One more step I'm taking towards growing up, I guess. Moving on. Growing. A milestone if you will. I'm sure I'll look back one day and tell other people that they'll be fine, not to worry... don't freak out... eh. I dunno. I just thought I'd write about my feelings about my first day on my own... just for me if anything.

I'll just describe my last 3 days of work.

Day 1:
Was supposed to be my final day on orientation, but during that shift, I sat down with one of my managers and we found out that they had counted a day that I wasn't working so I actually would get an extra day on orientation. :) Also, I wasn't working with my regular preceptor... I was working with another nurse. It was a really good day at work. Things went smoothly, no problems... I had plenty of time to do everything I needed to get done and I did take my time.

Day 2:
My last day on orientation. I was working with my regular preceptor so I had to get a whole new set of patients, which was fine. It was also a very good day at work. I finished my work quickly, no problems, everything went smoothly, had lots of time to fill out my skills day packet, did some self-learning education things from the yellow folder at work... it was just a very smooth day. My preceptor left me by myself pretty much the entire shift. It was almost like I was on my own already.

Day 3:
Had a crazy beginning. I got a few of my patients back but one was discharging at 6pm and another was getting discharge orders written at 6pm (when I get to work), I got a new patient (with communication problems w/pharmacy and more communication issues with the admitting doc, plus stuff & skills I'd never done before), and one of my patients from yesterday. Thankfully, my preceptor was the resource nurse that day so her job was to float around and help everyone else so I really needed her to help me at the beginning of the shift when all the craziness was going on. By about 10:30pm all the craziness died down, meds were passed, patients were stable and settled, caught up on charting... and then sat down and realized that I had 2 empty beds which could possibly mean 2 admissions. I was bracing myself for more crazy. Thankfully again, my manager was really nice and she didn't give me another admit in the middle of my crazy period from 6:30-10:30pm and since there were too many staff nurses working that day, she sent a nurse home... the same nurse from my work day 1 so that nurse gave me 2 of her patients... 2 patients that I already knew and had taken care of two days ago. So the day ended up totally fine. I also went to skills day for two hours after work (which is something that the hospital does to make sure that the staff are updated and reminded about important skills and policies). I had a donut. Watching Chuck last week made me want to eat donuts so since they had them there for us... I ate one and it was beyond delicious. Just a chocolate cake one with glaze and sprinkles. Yummy.

Very many thoughts but... none of them fully formed yet.

I feel very thankful. Thankful for my job... thankful for my co-workers, for my manager, for being done with school, for being blessed with all the desires of my heart...

I realized the other day that I pretty much always get what I want. I remember thinking in Jr. Hi that I will ALWAYS get what I want and if I don't have it, I'll go get it. I distinctly remember thinking that way. Nowadays... it just seems like... either my wants have changed, my needs are different, I'm extraordinarily blessed... maybe all of the above, but the things that my heart wants, just always seem to come. Or maybe I've just learned... contentment.

Things that I don't have... if I don't get them... it's fine. Things that I want, but don't need... didn't really need them anyway so whether or not I have it, it's usually OK. There's always a silver lining, always something to be thankful for. And I know I used to always force myself to "look on the bright side" but nowadays it just seems like all of life is a bright side. I don't really need to convince myself to be appreciative... I AM appreciative. This is really different for me. I used to be very rational about things... and then will myself into doing what was rational... but something happened. Something changed. Maybe... it was that I was living life one way but my heart was never really aligned with the way I wanted to live. It just wasn't natural. Now things are aligned and things make sense. Life is very calm and peaceful nowadays. I don't even know if what I'm saying is making any sense. Like I said before... lots of thoughts but none are very clear.

Anyway... the whole point is that I'm feeling very thankful for the way everything turned out. Things weren't perfect but I survived... I made it through... and I appreciate all the little things that happened here and there that made a tough time just a little bit easier.

Day 299 - it's time to fly

Random thoughts today. Just musings really.

So I'm heading into a 3-day stretch of shifts at work. This wouldn't normally be too odd except that after the first night, I'm going to be on my own for the first time. For the last 2.5 months, I've been on orientation which means I've had a nurse by my side, teaching me, helping me along, showing me the ropes... the time for that is swiftly coming to a close... and now it's time to fly.

I know I might be making a big deal about this. I'm sure thousands of nurses all over would tell me that I'm gonna be fine, not to worry, everyone goes through this, no one ever feels ready... and I'm sure in a month or maybe in a year, I'll look back at this time in my life and think "why did I ever think this was a big deal?" but today... this morning... it's a big deal to me. I feel like one of those baby birds that needs to get pushed off the cliff so that I would be forced to spread my wings and fly... or the alternative would be to fall tragically to my death... paralyzed by fear, unwilling to do what I've been trained to do... immobilized by the desire to want to stay where it's safe and not move forward.

I've been a student for the greater part of my life... I'm getting my second bachelor's degree this coming Sunday... after having gotten a masters already. I haven't been "on my own" hardly at all... my entire life. This is definitely a scary time. It's a time full of unknowns. It's a time of changes. I just lost my train of thought.

I really didn't want my orientation to end. In fact... I realized today that I spent the past few days or maybe the past week trying to avoid it. I've watched more TV this past week than I have in a long time. I watched the entire second season of Chuck. I thought it was just something I could to do... a mindless activity... to just let my brain rest and veg... but it was more than that. It was me... retreating. Escaping. So I've thoroughly vegged and now I probably should be getting to sleep soon because all it did was eat away time.

It sort of encouraged me though. Chuck... is a good show. I like it. It's about a guy... who in the world's eyes is probably a loser/failure... but his circumstances worked out in such a way that he ended up living a pretty remarkable life.

And I've been thinking lately about what makes a life remarkable. A remarkable life is special because it has endured hardships and has been refined, strengthened, and purified by it as opposed to being destroyed. It's not remarkable to be destroyed by hardships... that's pretty much what's supposed to happen... it's expected. When things blow up, you expect ugliness, chaos, disorder... you don't expect things to come out even more beautiful, more orderly, more put-together AFTER something crazy or horrific happens. The more I listen to stories about believers and how God found them and has been working in their lives... I see that that is precisely what happens when God enters into someone's life. Their life becomes remarkable. There is hope. There is healing. There is meaning. And none of that comes without some sort of pain and suffering.

Pain and suffering = sadness. Horrible hurt = baggage that someone carries the rest of their life. Lost my train of thought again. ARGH. Maybe what I was trying to say... that to overcome these things are like tests... tests that show whether or not we're what's expected... or if we're something more... something remarkable... more specifically... living proof that the all-powerful God can do a miracle within us... that all He's said is true... that He delivers on His promises... and that we can trust that what's been done since the beginning of time is still at work because He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

I don't really know what's going to happen. I hope I won't fail at being a nurse. I hope I won't make fatal mistakes that will end up hurting other people. It's possible. It could happen. Telling me that it won't happen is just... encouraging me with a false sense of security. No one knows what's going to happen in the future... only God does.

I'm not sure how this ties in but I just wanted to share a memory with you guys. I'm not sure why I thought of it today, but I did. It's about Anderson. I might have shared it before but I'll just share it again. He'd probably hate that I was blogging these things. Anyway. So I was lounging on the couch talking to him. He was about 15 feet away at his desk... facing me, talking to me. Maybe listening as I told him whatever weird stuff I used to talk about in college... probably about boys or something. Then in mid conversation, he got up, ran towards me, grabbed something on the couch next to me and then walked out of the room. I thought this was strange behavior. When he got back, I asked him what was up with that. He said he saw a spider. And instead of telling me, which he knew would freak me out, probably cause me to jump up and scream... and then give the spider time to escape... he didn't tell me, he pounced on it, and caught it with his bare hands. He told me he just didn't want to lose the spider, but I'll just think about it as one of the sweetest things someone's ever done for me. To use his bare hands to kill a spider that might have creepy-crawled on oblivious, self-absorbed me. If I hadn't been so self-absorbed, maybe I should have just stopped right there and asked him to marry me. I don't think we were dating yet at that point. Just thinking about that time... thinking about how he used to protect me... even from a spider at the very beginning... to protecting me as his girlfriend, fiancee and later on, his wife... I dunno. Does all protection come to an end sometime? No more school to protect me from the real world? No more preceptor to protect me at work? No more husband to protect me... at all? Eventually, no more parents either.

Is it the loss of certain protections... or is it moving one step closer to revealing who I really am... who I'm meant to be... just part of the journey? Can I be who I'm meant to be underneath the protective shelters that have been keeping me safe my whole life? I don't know. All I know is that right now... I have no idea what I'm doing... but I'm about to be pushed out of yet another protective shelter. It's scary. I don't know if I'm going to fail or succeed. But I know that it's going to be OK because God says so. Can't grow if you don't move forward into the scariness of the unknown. Pray for me though. I'm about to become a real nurse.

Time to fly. Night. :) I'll let you know how it goes... in about 3 days.

Day 293 - really random stuff about bruises

Finally... I have a few days off from work. Got home not too long ago. Also got a free blanket from the hospital for nurse's week. Yay for nurses!

Today... I wanted to write about... bruises.

Firstly, I'd like to explain about this thing that Anderson and I had with bruises. One of the most appalling things that I learned about Anderson when we first started dating was that he rubs his bruises. Not only that... he wanted me to help him rub his bruises. When we first started dating, he had a collision on the softball field with another team member... he ended up getting pretty scraped up and bruised on his shins and I remember him saying that it was so painful that he couldn't rub them himself. He wanted me to help him. I asked him "WHY in the world would you rub your bruises?!?" He said something about how his dad told him that if you don't rub them, the blood will just clot and stay there and you'll always have a bruise underneath your skin even if you can't see it and it'll block your circulation when you get old and then you'll die. OK. I kinda exaggerated about the dying part but he made it sound really bad. This being the first time he told it to me, I pretty much thought it was bogus but hey if he wanted me to help him rub his bruise, then I was going to help him rub his bruise. How often does a guy allow you to inflict pain on him... willingly? One other time, I asked a guy if I could kick him in the nuts and he let me. Maybe he didn't understand what I was asking. I have no idea why he would agree to that. But he did. So I did. I think he regretted it. This was in high school, btw...

Anyway... so over the years of dating Anderson... he'd consistently rub his bruises. His sister would rub her bruises too. You know when they rub their bruises because they get really bright red and wavy along the edges. That was all fine and dandy... until I started getting bruises and when he'd see them... he'd rub them. He'd see a bruise on my arm or something and then he'd just grab my arm and then rub it like a madman. I fought him a lot. And then it got to the point where I'd just hide my bruises. And if he saw them... he'd say "HEY, is that a bruise I see?" and I'd say no and then pull my shirt over it or hide it with something else. And then he'd grab my arm or whatever and then go fishing around... pressing places until he found it and I'd make faces and/or curse him (sometimes) while he'd rub. Sometimes I'd give him time limits. Like he could only rub for 5 seconds. I'd start out counting normally but then he'd rub really hard and then I'd speed up the seconds. It became kind of a painful game for us. So because he'd find my bruises and rub them... I had to find his and rub his too. Just to get even. But he didn't care. He actually wanted me to rub his bruises.

I don't think I was ever convinced about the bruise rubbing until I got a really huge bruise one time... I'd missed catching a softball that was thrown at me from about 15 feet away... and it hit my thigh. Really hard. I had a welt. I couldn't hardly put weight on that leg. I was also out of that particular game. I think it was our championship game too.... the last one of the tournament. Anyway... I had the hugest, nastiest bruise I've ever had in my entire life. It was massive. The size of a softball and you could tell where the seams of the ball hit me because it was darker in a semi-circle along one part. The whole thing was dark and you could tell it was very deep. And very painful. I really couldn't hide that one. I closed my eyes and I let him rub it for as long as I could stand it. After rubbing... it changes colors. It starts to get bright red and then the redness spreads so the thing actually got bigger and more oddly shaped. I felt like it was eating up my entire leg. But after just one week of rubbing, the thing actually went away. Completely gone. After that... we played the bruise game but I didn't resist as much as I used to.

The only reason I write about it now it because I have an equally massive bruise on the same thigh... not because of a softball incident... but because I fell down the stairs. I pretty much fell down half the stairs on the staircase at home and we have wooden stairs. When I got to the bottom, I almost passed out. I'm a fainter though. I've fainted many times in my life so I know when it's coming and I usually know with enough time to get myself into position so I don't fall again when I pass out. So I laid there on the floor for a while until I felt better. The dogs were just walking all around me... totally ambivalent. I wondered... if I couldn't get up... how long would I lay there before someone found me? Living alone would be scary. I also sat there thinking to myself... how could I have prevented my fall (I'm such a nurse). I definitely could have NOT worn my shoes that I already knew had very little grip. I probably shouldn't have been carrying so much stuff on the way down. I probably also should have gotten enough sleep so I wasn't walking around like a zombie with slippery shoes and carrying too much stuff. This also isn't the first time I've fallen down the stairs... it's just the first time I've fallen down so many of them and have been alone in the house while it happened.

Anyway... so I'm OK... obviously. I just have another massive bruise because I fell on my left thigh. It is very big once again and very deep. I measured it... I thought about taking pics of it... because that's what we'd do at work... take a picture and measure it. It's about 5 in x 3 in.

This time I don't have a boyfriend or husband to rub it so I've been trying to rub it myself. It's really painful. I know he wouldn't be proud of me the way I'm doing it but... I'm doing it and every time I do, it reminds me of him and how much I miss him taking care of me. Yes.... I even miss how he rubbed my bruises. That was his way of doing what was best for me and even though it was painful... he really meant well and it was him loving me in that way.

So... I thought about what happens when you bruise and what happens when you rub them. Trauma to soft tissue probably causes blood to leak out or the normal piping system (veins and such) and it gets stuck there. Old blood turns dark brown... I guess as your blood flows to the area, it'll start picking bits and pieces of the old blood and carrying it away. It's a pretty slow process but eventually your body takes care of it. What rubbing does is it probably increases blood flow to the area and breaks up the localized clots or old blood... breaking it up and increasing flow make it go away faster. I think that's why it changes colors to bright colors (instead of dark ones) and goes away faster. Those are my simple thoughts as to why rubbing makes bruises go away faster.

I'm sure western medicine would not endorse incurring MORE pain than is necessary, especially if the body will take care of it on its own. Actually. I'm not sure. But if you asked anyone if they'd prefer to have it take longer to heal but with less pain or to heal faster with more pain, they'd probably opt for less pain. Not Asians. Somehow I think the phrase "no pain no gain" was perfected by Asians. They're totally willing to cause short term pain for long term benefit. Like massaging pressure points that are TOTALLY painful... but they'll probably like restore "flow" to your system cuz it's painful when your "flow" is stuck or blocked or something like that. I don't know. I have no idea. All I know is that for most of us... we try to avoid pain, not create more.

And then I thought more about... blood. Lots of things remind me of blood. I baked red velvet cupcakes the other week and it looked like blood batter to me. Blood batter... reminded me of Jesus's blood and how His blood washed our sins away. And I was thankful for the reminder. So yeah... as I rub my bruises and I think about increased blood flow... I thought about how addressing the bruise instead of hiding it... and pressing on it and rubbing it... actually promotes healing even though it's not what we'd normally do and definitely not very pleasant in the beginning... but increasing the blood flow is a good thing in this case. Bringing the blood to the place where it's needed most... the clots, to the things that aren't supposed to be there... to the consequences of a mistake or an accident or trauma... is a good thing.

So I thought about healing. You cannot heal when you're hiding. Putting your shirt over it doesn't make it go away... it's just making it less obvious to other people around you... but if you press on it or someone else does...it hurts. Sometimes our hurts and our life trauma... are all hiding under our clothes or hiding under the smiles... hiding behind the things that we use to shield them from other people's eyes... but that doesn't mean that it's not there. Healing comes when we bring things out into the light... when we address the issues... and desire to take care of them. Asking Jesus to increase the flow of His cleansing, purifying, healing blood to the areas we need them the most is the best thing we can do to heal... and not just heal... but to heal quickly. He's got the power to do that. He can do the impossible. And I know it's true... He's done the impossible in me.

The first few days after I got my bruise, I couldn't walk without feeling it. Every time I sat down I felt the pain. When I'd change and glance at myself in the mirror, the discoloration would startle me. After a while... it doesn't hurt to walk anymore even though it still hurts to touch it. And then after a while... it goes away and it doesn't hurt anymore even when you touch it. That's what someone once told me to think of when I asked her what it felt like to be healed from having my heart broken by being widowed. I've also heard it compared to an amputation. I still think an amputation works better as an analogy but any kind of healing works too.

I was driving home today from work... I go against traffic in the mornings when I get off work. It's very nice because I'm really tired and the last thing I want to do is sit in traffic. When I am sitting in traffic though... I wonder about those people who are going the other way. How lucky they must be to need to go the opposite way that everyone else needs to go. Sometimes... that's kinda how I feel about my life. I feel like... I'm very frequently going the opposite way that most people are going... and I'm going very quickly... but it's pretty lonely... cuz everyone else is going the other way. The price I pay to go this way... is that I work at night while everyone's sleeping... and I go home when everyone else is mostly still sleeping but other people are heading out to work. Most people don't understand my schedule. Most people ask me when's the earliest I can transfer to work on days instead of nights. I actually like nights. I think that it suits me pretty well. I get more sleep working the night shift than I would working on days. I have to plan my schedule pretty well so that I can fit in enough time to sleep before or after a shift. It makes me more diligent. I take care of myself better. Sort of. I also eat better because I have to plan a little bit better since the cafeteria's not open overnight. I think this job is pretty perfect for me at this time in my life. And much in the same way... my life... the life I've been given... is perfectly suited to me right now as well. I've gone through a lot in my life... sometimes I can't even believe what's happened. I've been getting flashbacks lately about holding his hand in the ICU... a nearly lifeless hand... swollen from fluid imbalance... limp from unconsciousness... but it was my husband's hand... the hand of the love of my life... the hand that used to rub my bruises so lovingly... the hand that I held when I vowed to be his faithful and loving wife until death do us part. I wouldn't wish this life on anyone else... but I'm glad that if anyone had to go through it... that it was me. Not really because I'm uniquely equipped to handle this kind of stress or loss... but because... it was a bruise...MY bruise... a bruise that happened and that I allowed to get rubbed... so that it increased the flow of the healing blood of Christ into my life. And the blood not only healed my heart but healed everything else in my life along with it and it continues to do so even now. So even though it was painful and I never asked for it... I'm thankful for it.

This is kinda how my thoughts flow here and there as I'm reminded about things which reminds me about things which make me thankful for the life I've been gifted with.

And I've been awake way too long. Night (for me)... good morning (for everyone else)!

Day 289 - The Solution

I think I'm going to be kicking myself for not going to bed... but I just had a thought and I decided to write it down before it disappears.

So many times I'd just love to pinpoint one solution that would solve a particular problem. As if a life issue were like an algebra problem and solving for X would make everything alright. Matters of life usually don't have just one X to solve for... sometimes there's X Y Z... sometimes even more than that.

For example... last night... Jon was talking about contentment... he had 3 points (from Phil 4:10-23) and then also 3 points of recognition when it comes to contentment. I pondered the 3 points of his sermon and then also the 3 things to recognize about it. Wouldn't it be sad if I didn't tell you the 3 points?

First, the 3 points from Philippians

1. Must cultivate a grateful attitude
2. Must be satisfied with what God gives
3. Must be concerned for other people

And then the 3 points of recognition about contentment:

1. God is in control and I am not.
2. God is always good, even when you don't understand.
3. God always knows what is best for me even when I think I know better.

I was thinking about how often times... you can't just focus on one thing... it's all of the things all at once that all combine from different viewpoints and angles to build on one another... to equal one truth. And the list is by no means exhaustive.

And it kinda related to what I was thinking about on my way to work yesterday... or maybe 2 days ago... whatever.

I was thinking about how... I'm a nurse. I'm a person. I'm a woman. I'm a friend. I was a wife. I am a widow. I'm a Christian. I am all of those things individually and yet all of those things are me, Tiffany Chen.

I was trying to think... if being a nurse made me a better person. Yes. Does being who I am make me a better nurse? probably. Did being a nurse make me a better wife? I think so. Did being a widow make me a better nurse? a better person? Being a Christian make me a better nurse? a better person? Being a nurse, make me a better Christian? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So what was the starting point or does everything just coalesce, build upon one another, enhance and support each role... improving everything? A is related to B is related to C is related to D and A and back again.

From every angle... if I talk about nursing and how it's changed my life... I can talk about that. I can talk about being a widow and how it's changed my life... most definitely. All of these things... some things I can change, some things I can't... some things I had to work for, some things were just gifted or given to me... they are all just angles that I can use as a starting point to start talking about or thinking about me, my life... etc. etc. but it all kind of runs together into some kind of crazy convoluted web.

And then I started thinking about meaning. About purpose. And then I realized that I'd always felt lost with regards to my purpose in life... until I found God.

I'd been jumping from one role to the next... thinking that with every new phase of my life, my entire life would take on new meaning, new direction... Jon said it pretty clearly when he said that we're always looking for bigger, better, newer, more. There's always something to strive for and attain. And I didn't want to leave this earth until I'd found it. Is that why everyone's so afraid of dying? Afraid that shortening life would mean missing out on something awesome? I'll never get to have kids... I'll never get to have my own family... my own home... I don't know what else. The life that I'll never get to have.

But what if the life that I've been given... what I have right now... this is it. Am I appreciating what I've got or am I constantly looking out for what I don't have yet because I think that THAT's what really matters... over THERE is where I need to be...

So in looking at what I've got. It's a pretty darn good thing. And I didn't realize it until I found God and everything just fell into place.

From Forrest Gump:

Lieutenant Dan: Have you found Jesus?
Forrest Gump: I didn't know I was supposed to be looking for him, sir.

There's a deep seated yearning in all of us to look for something to make us happy. I think God placed those desires in us in the same way He gave us hunger so we'd know to eat, thirst to know when to drink. We're yearning for happiness because we need it.

The beauty about God is that... He created us with this hunger and yet... He is the one pursuing us.

the Bread pursues the hungry.
the Water pursues the thirsty.
the Creator pursues the creation.
Joy seeks the sad.
Fullness seeks the empty.
(heard this one on the radio somewhere... but I have no idea who said it)

Isn't that amazing? The problem and the solution are drawn to one another but the solution more so. The solution wants to solve the problem... but it is up to the problem to realize that the solution is there and has always been there.

I didn't even know what I was going to write about and I don't know if it made sense at all.

But all my problems... all my issues... all my identities... really fell into place once I realized and truly accepted the solution for who He is. And after that... not only did one identity improve the other... they all began to improve one another... because being a follower of Jesus is so pervasive that it touches every single aspect of my life and makes them all better. Not only that... I am grounded in the truth... grounded in my faith... grounded in my identity that no matter what happens... I know Whose I am. The more I learn about Him, the more thankful I am that I am His, the more grateful I am for the life I've been given, the more I hope to use what I've got to the best of my ability... basically to wear it loud and proud... and if you want it... I hope God uses me to help you find it. We might be different, but we were all created for the same purpose therefore the Solution applies to all.

If I died tomorrow, I'd be happy. If not, there's plenty to do in the meantime. If I die 50 years from now, I'm OK with that... but sooner rather than later, would be nice. This life doesn't define me. This life doesn't confine me. This life is about finding what it is we're supposed to be finding and I've found it. Kinda like... finishing my final paper and now I'm just cruising til graduation which is actually what I'm doing cuz I finished my final papers last Monday. :D But yeah... can't just focus on that part... the other parts are just as important... to know Him AND to make Him known. To love Him AND love others. All my roles are just a means to do so.

Ok I am WAY tired now. Night.

Day 287 - God makes me smile

I really shouldn't be blogging seeing as I'm working tonight and should be sleeping but I had such a remarkable night at work last night that... I decided to give myself 11 minutes or so to tell you about it.

So... have you guys been praying for me regarding work or something?

Last night, I had the craziest shift I've ever had. And yet, I think it was probably the best day at work I've had yet.

So... actually just backing up a bit... I'd just like to say, for the record, that God hears the cries of my heart... even when they're not cries but just utterances or musings... He hears even when I don't even ask Him outright or outloud... and He answers so amazingly that I cannot deny His love for me, His sovereignty, or His grace in my life.

Small things...

One night, I wanted fritos. I didn't just want fritos. I wished that someone would deliver me a very small bag of fritos to my doorstep. I was sick that particular day and I was having cravings. So sue me. I went to bed that night... woke up the next day... and a friend had emailed asking to borrow my camera... and in conversation... found out I was home and sick... and asked if I wanted any food or anything. He not only brought me 2 little bags of fritos, he brought me easy mac and a can of soup... right to my doorstep. Isn't that just amazing? Who'da thought how God could orchestrate someone to deliver me a bag of fritos. One reason why I seriously contemplate moving somewhere like NY is to have food delivered (more than just pizza). I <3 food deliveries.

Another small thing... but kind of a big thing...

I was thinking to myself that I missed Anderson (which is not unusual)... but also that I missed him for all the ways that he used to correct me and tell me ways that I could be a better person... basically for his constructive criticism in my life. And... I think a few days later, I was having a conversation with a friend and he indirectly pointed out some things about my character that made me think... and then decide that I didn't want those things in my character or personality and that I was going to make a point to work on it. I don't even think he knew that it impacted me in that way... but I'm really glad that it did. And I'm really glad that even though Anderson's not here to bring me food... or tell me how I need to improve as a person... that God provides people in my life to help me out in those ways... even if it's just once per person.

And here's a huge one.

I've been struggling at work. I blogged about that last time... and I was wondering when I'd ever feel better about work... and also whether or not I'd ever earn the respect of my preceptor... who is a very good teacher, but she has extremely high standards and I never feel like I measure up... until last night.

Last night... I had a discharge, a transfer, and FOUR admits. For those of you not familiar with the nursing world... I'm on a telemetry unit... which means I get a maximum of 4 patients per shift. We groan when we have ONE empty bed (which means we'll get an admit). When I saw the assignment, I had TWO empty beds. And after getting report, I found out that one patient was just about to be discharged. That meant THREE empty beds. Admits are a LOT of work. And at my hospital... with paper charting... they're a LOT of paperwork. One of my patients... after I'd received report, settled him into the room, did my assessment and then did my admit history... found out that he needed to be transferred to another unit. Some time after he was transferred, there was a stat room clean for his room... and the beeper went off... which meant... I was getting another admit. At 4am. I'm supposed to be off work at 6, and giving report until 6:30. That didn't give me much time for this one. But thankfully... the admits weren't too bad and thankfully I had my preceptor there to help me. Oh, and one of my patients also needed to have a blood transfusion. Thankfully... I had my preceptor there with me to help with that. It's handy having another RN by my side for... procedures that require two RN's to check things.

Anyway... so... this was my craziest day of work... and yet the most blessed.

I was thinking to myself... how can I improve as a nurse... and the two things that I thought were most important to improve were to be faster at admitting patients... and to gain confidence in talking to doctors. When you admit, you probably have to call the doctor for additional orders or for consults, etc. etc. I talked to a LOT of doctors last night. I even got yelled at and got asked 3 times if I was really a registered nurse. I can't help it if the connection's bad and you have an accent and I don't understand what you're saying. When you do telephone orders you also have to read back everything they order to make sure you got it right. Suffice it to say... that conversation was a very frustrating one for the doc who already didn't want to be inconvenienced with this particular consult. I survived. I didn't cry. I didn't have a meltdown... I handled it. And also... the fact that I admitted 4 patients in one shift... I definitely improved on my speed of assessing, admitting, and shuffling through the paperwork. God answered my musings by giving me a shift where I was bombarded with the very things that I needed to improve on. Awesomeness.

I kept up with my charting... I did all my paperwork... and I even was done with report by 6:20am... with enough time to talk to my manager about some scheduling issues that I've been having. Amazing. And I was still smiling by the end of the shift.

Not only that... I think I finally won the respect of my preceptor. She normally hovers over me and critiques my every move. She says that sitting with me stresses her out sometimes. Today, she actually said that I impressed her with how much I've improved in my speed. And then she congratulated me on surviving this shift. She was proud of me. I had to stop and think back... and I am actually amazed that I survived. It felt like... just dealing with what I was handed... when it got handed to me... but looking back... that was some nursing craziness. I hope I don't have another night like that tonight... but man... if I do... I hope I handle it even better next time.

PRAISE GOD. He takes such good care of me... He makes me smile. Thank You, thank You, thank You... for never letting me forget that You love me and when I want to be better... You provide me situations that encourage/force me to grow. I love it. OK. I took 17 minutes more than I wanted to. Night!

Day 285 - I'm a nurse and it's gonna be OK

I can't believe it's already May. I can't believe it's been 294 days since I last saw Anderson in the flesh.

7 years ago, Anderson and I weren't even dating yet. Barely... but not quite by May 3rd. 1 year ago, Anderson and I were living in an apt in Houston, TX. We hadn't found out about the spinal metastases yet. Actually... 1 year ago on May 4th, Anderson was baptized on our patio in Houston. With a plastic water jug.

So here we are... in May of 2010. I'm about to graduate with my B.S.N. (Bachelor of Science in Nursing). I'm training to work as a nurse... and in a few weeks, I'll be on my own. A full fledged registered nurse. Wow. Amazing. Both that so much has happened in a year and that I'm actually working and on the brink of leaving school behind... at least for now. I've been a student for so darn long. I have a masters degree and I'm getting my second bachelors. I will be SO happy to NOT have homework to think about on top of everything else. Good times.

So how's work going? It's pretty darn hard. And I'm struggling.

I was at a gas station the other day... waiting by the pump and I overheard someone else having a conversation. This young lady was telling someone else that she was taking pre-req's for nursing... and that she's wanted to be a nurse since she was little. The man responded by saying, "wow, that's so good. You'll never be out of a job." And she proceeded to tell him how hard it was to get into nursing school.

If I weren't slightly sick with a sore throat, I might have chimed in and offered a tidbit of information... but then again, I thought about what I was going to say and I thought that maybe that would be unwelcome advice... at a gas station.

I would have said that nursing school was the hardest schooling I've ever been through. I had never been so stressed out, so on the brink of burnout for so long, pushed to the limit in every way... and in absolutely no way did I feel that nursing school prepared me to actually be a nurse in the real world. I have a stressful job. It's hard on the feet, hard on the legs, hard on the body in general... and my profession actually demands perfection. It's not OK to give a medication to the wrong person. It's not OK to leave an order undone. It's not OK to leave my work for tomorrow if I can't finish right now. It's not OK to NOT pay attention. It's not OK to not know things... we are expected to know and to know what to do. And I'm "just" a nurse.

At least I get to wear glorified pajamas to work.

If I just wanted to care for people... I might have wanted someone to tell me to choose another profession. But actually... I don't think that's the real reason I went to nursing school. I went for practical reasons... like the fact that registered nurses are recognized internationally... that I'd have a skillset that would make me useful if I wanted to go on full-time or part-time missions trips... that nursing jobs are in high demand and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. That and I didn't have the will, the grades, or the desire to spend another decade of schooling to be a medical doctor. Nursing seemed like a feasible and viable balance between my laziness and still being a part of the medical profession. And when I actually did find myself in nursing school... which was absolutely an act of God because I only applied to one school and it wasn't at all difficult for me to get in... (I was a horrible interviewer back then too... I really don't know what they saw in me) I began to feel like this is where I was meant to be.

On the first day of nursing school, you go around and introduce yourself and say why you want to be a nurse. Everyone else said that they wanted to care for people. I think I half lied and said the same. I didn't really want to become a nurse to help people primarily... I actually didn't like people very much. I did it because it made sense and it was useful. And it basically landed in my lap.

I don't think I would have become a nurse if I had to work hard to get into school for it. At the time, I probably would have just given up and looked for work in the public health arena. But that wasn't what God had planned for me. I didn't even know it back then... how perfectly God worked things out... how nursing school really pushed me out of my comfort zone and brought together everything I'd learned in the past... all the bio... all the public health... everything... melded... or maybe collided into a crash course to teach you in the manner of bombarding you with way too much information, thousands of pages of reading that they don't expect you to finish (but that they don't tell you that) and still somehow are supposed to have mastered the information to the level that you are critically thinking on your feet for multiple patients all at once. Getting back to my point though... nursing school was precisely where I needed to be at that time... and my program was exactly the program that I needed to be in... timed perfectly in our lives (mine and Anderson's) to prepare me for what was to come.

I applied to nursing school midway through my masters program which meant that I was writing my thesis and taking pre-req's at the same time. It was actually a good thing that I never dropped out of biology at UCI. I really considered switching to something like... social psychology or something fun like that... but I never did. And thankfully... I knocked out a lot of my pre-req's by staying in bio. I was able to finish up my last year of my public health degree, write my thesis, finish up my pre-req's and start my nursing program in the fall of 2007. I remember having to defend my thesis... and then rushing to microbiology and then micro lab... and then rush across the street to take a human communications class. By God's grace alone I got through that year.

We found out about Anderson's tumor in the fall of 2006, I think. Or was it 2007. 2006, I'm pretty sure. He spent 18 months in remission before it came back again... in the middle of my pediatrics rotation. I remember doing peds care plans while spending the night at UCLA's ICU. I also remember it was finals week and all my professors let me take my finals early so I could be free to take care of Anderson. And also by God's grace... I got straight A's that semester. That was also the summer we got engaged. June of 2008.

The absolute midway point of my nursing program... the perfect stopping point if I ever had to stop... was precisely the time that we found out about Anderson's second recurrence. January 2009. I was in the middle of my NCLEX review course when I got the call that the tumor had come back again. If you know us... you know the story. 4 days after we found out... we got married. A few weeks after we got married... I took my boards and passed. THANK GOD.

I took 2 semesters off from nursing school. I was fully prepared to never go back if I had to take care of Anderson for the rest of my life. I also was fully prepared to live in the hospital with him because I was uniquely equipped with just enough knowledge to make me comfortable in the hospital and all the craziness that goes on there... and also... I had no job to keep me from being with my husband 24/7 for as long as we both lived. It was the most precious time of my life. I would not have traded it for anything. I gave everything I had to Anderson and I have absolutely no regrets about that.

Even the timing of his death... allowed me to come back just in time to start a new semester. I don't know what I would have done had I not been in class with 3 of my closest classmates in those first few months I was back home. Once again, I took way more classes than was recommended to me by my academic counselors... especially having come back from being widowed. But it actually... worked out that I did that. I came back to school this time with a different perspective. I was busy, but I put God and people first and papers second. And seriously, by God's grace... it was the easiest semester ever, in terms of paper-writing. I had never written so well, with so little effort, in such a limited amount of time as I did that semester right after coming back from Houston. And even though I probably only put in about 30% of the effort I normally would have put in to school... I still managed to come out with straight A's. Amazingly enough.

December of 2009, I was presented with the option of transferring into the BSN program instead of going on to finish and get my MSN. And because I had taken such a heavy load that particular semester... I only had one class left to take to get my BSN... versus 3 more full-time semesters, plus another thesis or project for my MSN... weighing... weighing... one class and no stress... 3 more semesters and a lot of stress.... weighing.... I chose the BSN route. And little did I know that I was one of about 6 people who was given that choice... and I wouldn't have known about it if I wasn't with my 3 friends in that particular class that semester. It was fairly easy for me to transfer... but many others have tried and have come up empty. God hand really was in this.

Because I knew that there was the chance that I might have an easy semester in the spring of 2010, I thought... why not apply for jobs? So I did. I applied to a LOT of places... absolutely no response. I REALLY randomly applied a second time to a hospital in Torrance and it just so happened that this time, someone happened to be looking... and I got an interview. It was during finals week at that time and I REALLY MAGICALLY was able to squeeze some letters of rec out of my professors in record time. God helped me out there as well.

I almost didn't want to blog about the whole process until it was done... but I figured... why not. The process is just as important as the outcome... so I blogged it. And because I blogged it... a few people (including my mom) found out that I was looking for jobs and they decided to help me out. So it turned out that I didn't get that particular job... but that a few other options had risen in its place. I had 2 options before me... one required me to take a few more certifications... so I cultivated that one by getting ACLS certified... and then another one had a luncheon about a week after I found out I didn't get the other job. So I got ACLS certified... and a few days later I went to the luncheon... and immediately after the luncheon, I had 2 interviews and after that was done, I had a job offer.

Somewhere in the middle of nursing school... I grew a heart. I began to take joy in caring for people. I began to look at my patients and see that they were real people. Actually, I think it happened after I came back from Houston. I began to see that what I do as a nurse... is really important. It's not just a useful set of skills... these are real people that I have the opportunity to serve, care for, and minister to every single day I go in to work. My work does not just demand perfection because I'm going to get written up if I fail... my work... demands perfection because I am working for the Lord in this capacity. Even if technically, I have achieved perfect outcomes... there's something about the heart and about caring for people... that's not charted, that you can't see in the records or pass on in report... there's something about caring for another human being that I feel compelled to do to show a little bit of God's love and God's light in my workplace. And I need to remind myself of that whenever I get so bogged down in paperwork or in the minutia of charting. I have been gifted and blessed with this job and I'm in the business of caring for people. My profession gives me very tangible ways to do that... and I get paid pretty well to do it too.

So all of this... really shows me and affirms me that even though I might not feel like I'm an awesome nurse at the moment... that I am doing precisely what I need to be doing right now. All the shifts where I come home on the verge of tears... feeling inadequate... feeling like a failure... feeling like I'll never be good enough... I feel it all... I let the full brunt of it fall on me and I cry it out sometimes... but mostly... I take it to God and tell Him how I feel. And He reassures me that He's got a plan... He is sovereign... and that I am exactly where I need to be right now... doing exactly what I need to be doing. So... press on.

I read through the first few books of the Old Testament recently... and I think... reading about the Israelites and their journey through the wilderness... when they got to the Jordan... after 40 years of wandering... they came to the point where they were supposed to take possession of the promised land. But what was occupying their land at the time... were giants... were large armies as vast as the sea... with chariots of steel. They were outnumbered on every front. The promised land wasn't going to be handed to them... they had to fight for it. They had to fight against horrible odds to any human eye... but if God was with them... who could be against them? They just had to go, prepare themselves, and fight for it... and victory would be theirs.

That's how I feel my journey has been. I don't know if you look at my life and think "wow, she had it so easy" or that a whole lot of things have been handed to me or have fallen in my lap. Seriously... a lot of things have really landed in my lap... but that didn't mean that I did not put any work into it. I chugged along. I did my homework. I wrote my thesis. Heck, I even got it published while I was in nursing school. I was faithful to do what I needed to do and God granted me victory. I applied to so many jobs before I got one interview. I worked hard to get my letters of rec... but I did all I could and my professors had to deliver me the rest of the way. My boyfriend/husband and I struggled through brain cancer through it all and I, miraculously, am still graduating in 2010... which is the year I was supposed to have graduated had I not taken the leave of absence. I fought hard... I fought in faith sometimes... and God miraculously granted me victory.

I don't know if I'm in my promised land right now or if I'm still fighting. Maybe I'm still fighting... but I definitely know I'm in the land flowing with milk and honey... the land of abundance and beauty. And I have absolutely no worries about my future. All that I have seen... in my life... in God's Word... has given me confidence to be sure of what I cannot see... to hope in His promises even when I don't feel them or see them or can even fathom it in the foreseeable future. Whether or not there is another husband in my future... whether or not I fail at being a nurse... whether or not even more of what I love on this earth is taken away from me... I know that God is in control and there is a perfect reason that things have happened the way they have... and I have a lot of peace about that. Everything's going to be OK. Alrightey. I'd better get to bed. Thanks for reading this super long blog post if you've gotten this far.

Last quote:

Faith does not say, "I see this is good for me; therefore God must have sent it." Instead, faith declares, "God sent it; therefore it must be good for me."

Faith, when walking through the dark with God, only asks Him to hold his hand more tightly. -Phillips Brooks.