But do you trust me?

If you watch the new and/or scroll through your social media of choice, you can't hide from the news of some of the awful, heartbreaking things going on in our world right now.  It's hard not to get lost in the opinions and disagreements on how we should react and respond, but I think we can agree on one thing: our world is full of brokenness.
                                 
This isn't new.  Don't you remember history and social study classes growing up?  Lessons about the Civil War, Christopher Columbus, the Crusades, WWII, etc, etc, etc.  Bad stuff right? But it's taken me till age 25 to really start feeling the gravity of processing our world's past. AND now our current mistakes?  Poverty, human trafficking, school shootings, racial division, etc, etc, etc.  Will we ever learn our lesson?

.............

Part of everything above is me ranting/processing this month, this week, this day.  Another part is me grieving for anyone experiencing injustice anywhere right now.  Another part is me realizing how indifferent I have been to these injustices as it is easier and I honestly prefer to focus on every single little worry, chore, and joy of my day.  The last part is huge. The last part is me remembering that we are broken but celebrating that the human race is not broken beyond repair // Look around. The Middle East,  Ferguson Missouri, your work place, your hidden but present family disfunction.   Everywhere you walk, people are screaming for a savior.  Someone to fix someone or something or some situation which seems so impossible.

For God did not send his Son [Jesus] into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him / John 3:17

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved / Acts 4:12

For the Son of God came to seek and save the lost / Luke 19:10

And everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved / Acts 2:21

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not parish but have eternal life / John 3:16

Jesus didn't come to make our lives on this earth perfect or even comfortable.  He came to save us from this world that we made a mess of...that I have made a mess of.  Thank you Lord that I am not broken repair and that the only lesson I can hold fast to is that you are the solution.

.....

One last thought: yesterday a friend shared with me and a few other ladies something her professor had said in class.  That even in our moments when things are NOT good, one bit; God is asking us, "But do you trust me?"  This friend is having lots of stupid, stupid little and big bad things pile up in her life right now.  It was encouraging to hear her say she was finding freedom in that simple question from our sovereign God.

I instantly applied that question to stuff going on in my own daily life that is dragging me down. From navigating singleness to pouring out myself physically and mentally to my patients in an intensive care unit to making sense of the atrocities of ISIS to knowing that there are people out there without a nation let alone a physical shelter to call home.

But do you trust me?  

.....I have tried putting my trust in everything BUT you, Lord.  The world has tried. We are tired. We are feeing the gravity of our depravity. We need a solution. We have you. We have a Savior who has and will continue to do the impossible in our world and our hearts.  

Help us trust. Help us believe.
[Old photo dug out from sometime in college. This is my friend Patrick. He is a teacher in China. He is changing the world one student at a time. He is bringing joy to the world one dance move at a time =D He also loves to teach history and social studies, go figure.]        

Self-Care, Sleep, & Spotify

Nightshift & GOOD Self-Care are almost antonyms.

I tell people I know (& don't know for that matter) to be healthy yet I rarely get sufficient sleep in a normal week. I pull all-nighters on my first shift and sometimes only let myself sleep four hours after my last shift.  Nurses are notorious for awful health habits: over-eating, smoking, holding our bladders for 12 + hrs (guilty), binge drinking, etc.  

Unless you live under a rock, you probably can guess that we turn to these habits to cope with the weightiness and stress of our jobs.  I know, I know.  A lot of other people who aren't nurses cope this way too and they, too, have stressful jobs. There is just something extremely heavy about having someone's (very sick) life in your hands.  Also there is EVERYTHING stressful about having someone spit, hit, curse in your face but that is another story for another post. 

Needless to say,  I make sure to make time for self-care on my time off.  Making this time is a big reason why I rarely pick up extra shifts.  I need me time to be sane at work and with friends.  One of the very obvious things I do to take care of myself is CROSSFIT !  I like to squeeze in 4:30 pm class RIGHT before I go into work even though it means less sleep and little bit of a crazy rush to get to the hospital on time.  It is significant how much more energy I have at work if I have done the WOD that day. 

On my random nights off in-between shifts I usually stick to my nightshift sleep schedule with the exception of going to bed around 3-4 am verses 8:30 am.  These nights are all about catching up on life.  I grocery shop, meal prep, do laundry, clean, watch netflix, read, and RELAX (Thank goodness my roomie Hilary can sleep through anything)

My friend, Mollie, recently ask me if I had any tricks for going to bed.  I have certain nights when I WANT to go to bed at the normal time of a person but lay sleepless until 3 or 4 am.  There are also times when I am trying to take a nap before work during the day and it just doesn't work.  She told me about epsom salts. I've heard of people soaking in a tub of epsom salts to relieve soreness but there is no way I am taking a bath in our creepy bath tub.  Mollie referred me to this this website to make an epsom salts and water concoction to spray on your body to help with relaxation and sleep.  

Last week I bought some LAVENDER (oh my goodness this smells amazing) epsom salts and since I didn't have a spray bottle at the time,  I decided to make my own hot water foot soaking bath. 

It was GLORIOUS.  I can get pretty distracted by my phone and computer when I am sitting still.  I struggle spending time with God, just me and Him. Oh how too often I skip out of sweet time in his word and breeze through prayer. I think I am going to make my epsom salt foot bath time from here on out, my quality time with the Lord. 


Another way I de-stress is listening to music. Thank goodness for Spotify premium because on any given day at my apartment I am blasting tunes through my phone wherever I walk. Some of my favorite artists to listen to as I relax are : Sleepingatlast, Jon Foreman, Jose Gonzalez, Sufjan Stevens, Explosions in the Sky, and Bon Iver to just name a few. 

Ryan O'Neal is the man behind Sleeping At Last. He is from Chicago (AYO!) and writes the most beautiful lyrics not to mention his gorgeous music to accompany.  His piano and symphony tracks melt my heart. Fun fact is that his music is played on multiple ABC primetime shows (Dancing with the Stars, Chicago Fire, Grey's Anatomy...) If you take a good listen you will hear a lot of spiritual undertones.  

Ok time for less blogging and more of my self-care night off. Goodnight world. 

Perhaps

can·cer

ˈkansər

noun

-Disease caused by the uncontrolled division on abnormal cells.

-DEVASTATING Disease affecting almost half of my patients on a weekly basis.

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I prefer surgical patients. Surgical patients come to me with an abundance of "access" (term nurses use to describe how many IV's a patient have available to use.)  Many surgical patients even have a special line going right into their artery so we know EXACTLY what their blood pressure is at any given second. PLUS the line can be used to draw blood, painfree & needlefree in a matter of minutes.  Surgical patients usually have a "foley," catheter in their bladder (sorry, some people might cringe at that word if you have ever had one in).  Basically surgical patients are an OCD ICU nurses' dream come true because of the control we encompass with all those lines not to mention cardiac monitoring.  To top it all off surgical patients equate to evading one shift without having to clean up excessive and massive BM's due to anesthesia and pain meds working their magic to plug up the poop shoot (just being honest.)

Some surgical patients undergo surgery knowing that the hurt of the procedure is a hurt to heal process (i.e. getting a hip replacement or getting an appendix taken out,) so really my surgical patients should be rejoicing when they have finally made it to their room post-operatively. They have survived anesthesia! The have no where to go but up (especially as they start receiving cocktails of morphine or fentanyl or oxycodone or dilaudid!!!) 

But...this isn't always the case as you might expect from the heading above. Waking up from anesthesia doesn't always mean you are cured from cancer. No longer does the care I provide have a happy, easy peasy lemon squeeze attitude floating about the room.  The reality of this disease hits harder than a four ton load. 

I had a patient this week who had "beaten" cancer once but it came back again. This time with vengeance landing himself in the ICU with a really, really bad infection.  This time surgery wasn't even an option. This time he knew how much chemo and radiation sucked the life out of him. 

Towards the end of my night shift the hospital starts buzzing with life again as med students and residents come flooding back for another day. I stuck my head into my patients room as his team of doctors started to inspect his wound. As they wrapped it back up, they started discussing the day, the plan,....and prognosis. 

"You have about six months to live in my medical opinion...........has anyone ever told you how long you have to live, sir?" 

....silence....."nope"

As the doctors awkwardly shuffled out a few minutes later, I decided to stay. I could tell they had said a few confusing doctor things to him so I offered to answer any questions he might have. He agreed that it was confusing but declined. I truly did have a few tasks to accomplish before the next shift started but I also knew my patient was hit...hard...four ton load of reality hard.  

I worked silently for a few minutes. Finishing, I found a stool so I could sit down.  He didn't even have family in town, let alone with him in the room. He started with a light hearted joke then talked about living, living with cancer, and dying. He ended with a glean in his eye and he expressed his sadness that the shift was ending and he would have to teach the next nurse his flavor of sarcasm. He shook my hand and thanked me. The shift ended. 

My heart could not break harder on a Friday at 6:30 am. This was not a simple surgical patient. He could no longer be hurt to be healed. He was fully broken. 

It is easy to loose track of why I wanted to be a nurse but this week God reminded me in such a saddening way.  It is even easier to loose track of the fact that God created me for his plans and for his purposes.  I tend to think that God's plan for me revolves around me and the "progression" of my life (being a super smart nurse, totally in shape, super stylish, with an abundance of friends, getting married to a smoking hot dude who loves me only second to Jesus, & having the most amazing, athletic kids, etc, etc,!!)  

Perhaps not all those things will happen. like ever.  Perhaps they will. Perhaps my patient will pass away in six months. Perhaps he will live another year. Either way God is still good.

But perhaps God has even better plans for us. I have no doubt that it was in His plans that I walked into my patient's room that morning.