Rhythm Regained

A posting long overdue. My apologies.


And so I begin yet another phase of my life. The week following my last shift in the ICU, July 10, was spent primarily in a horizontal position so fatigued was I, and in the few things required to get myself hired with the Little Sisters of the Poor. During that week, home and rest were the thoughts that solely occupied my mind. Hence, a sudden flight back to California for a two week rest before starting my new job. Such a blessing that it was! It was the best thing that I could have done. There is no place like home.

During this time of difficulty and sudden transition, God has been revealing to me once again just how loved I am. There have been certain low points in my life when I have felt as if God was carrying me, and this can definitely be counted among them. I could sense that I was in the prayers of many, and I felt like a little baby wrapped in the arms of God with no other care in the world than to coo and play with whatever bauble He had just given me. Once again, wrapped in the loving hearts and arms of family and friends, I realized just how spoiled I am by both God and those I know. Ah, home. A place where life is slower, gentler, more humane. Where there is no such thing as rush hour and where no one honks. There at home, playing with babies and drinking goat’s milk, I finally found the rest that I needed. Although it will take a few more weeks and various forms of therapy to recover from the physical effects of the past six months of intense stress, my soul was healed and my energy revived. Life is good again. After three weeks off of work, I returned to Maryland/DC, and have begun my first couple of weeks in training with the Little Sisters. During those weeks, like Peter, I felt as if the Lord was teaching me to walk on water. The thunder rolled, the wind whipped and howled, waves crashed violently around me, yet with His hand in mine, His grace sustained me and kept me afloat. Despite the turbulent sea there was a solid surface beneath my feet and I was lead to level ground.

My new job is, truthfully, extremely easy and were I not to start school soon, I would end up bored out of my mind. Despite the number of people I must look after, the amount of work I am now required to do is about twenty-five percent of what I was doing previously for two patients. Nevertheless, I am thoroughly enjoying the absence of stress and the relationships that I am developing with my residents, at the end of their years, fragile, totally forgetful, confused, burdened with the limitations of age, full of hilarious remarks, and altogether delightful. As the RN and the charge nurse of twenty residents and three nurse’s aides, my primary duties lie in passing out meds, making sure everyone gets out of bed and to breakfast and their appointments on time, making sure vital signs and such are taken when scheduled, tending to the rare medical problem, and… paperwork. God is so good. Although this is not what I intend to do with the rest of my nursing career, in God’s perfect will this is precisely the job that I need at this time. No doubt it will bring many learning opportunities in the future. In addition to that, during these last several weeks of leisure time and a slow job, I have had ample opportunity to reflect on my experience of the last seven months and the great contrast that exists between the mentality and practice between my two places of employment. This I shall expand upon in a later post.