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.
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