As most of you know, I am a nurse. I've been a nurse for going on 6 years now. I do not know everything about the medical field, and do not pretend to know! I don't think God sent me to be a nurse to educate, and fill other curious minds with tons of medical terminology and knowledge. I faithfully believe He saw my heart and knew exactly where I belonged. I have held geriatric hands while they took their last breaths. Fed patients their last meals. Even cried when I saw a critical patient defy all odds and walk out with his family and return home.
But nothing can compare to the roller coaster of emotions that I feel where God sent me next. I didn't quite understand why and how I ended up in surgery after 4 years of bedside medsurge nursing. Those of you fellow medical professionals know the extreme difference between the two. I cried everyday on the way home to my mother asking her and God "what have I done?". Now here I am a little over a year later and it is all too clear to me now. God has placed me in a position to reach people. And I mean REALLY reach people. My patients are not just numbers. Or cases. They are my sisters. The area of surgery I have been chosen to do is women's health. This is where my nightmare comes to play. Single most difficult time of my life was miscarrying our second child. Women come through almost everyday that are experiencing something similar to what I have. And God has place empathy in my heart. I FEEL what my sisters feel.
I've prayed for years for God to show me what to say. That's always one thing I have lacked in all previous situations. I've been a nurse of no words when bad news is given. Until this job. I have learned there isn't always something to be said with words, but with your actions. I pray everyday to let me be the hands and feet of Jesus. And I can feel Him working. I am dragged through the emotional trenches with these sisters that are suffering the loss of their children, and I pray for them. I am drained of tears with and for them. I come home exhausted to my healthy family, and I suffer from survivors guilt. I wonder, why can I have a healthy pregnancy and children after my miscarriage but yet so many women suffer miscarriages over and over?
I wake up the next morning, and I do it again.
Just when I feel like the darkness of guilt and shame are about to take over, the other facet of women's health takes place to reach in and pull me into the brightest life. A cesarean section. I cry with those mamas too. I'm over there in the corner. Hiding behind my computer screen wiping away the tears. God gets all the credit for those miracles first cries. I am but a tiny piece in the deliveries puzzle, and it is such a reward in life to witness so many miracles. I thought medsurge nursing was full of ups and downs. I really had no idea.
"I will not cause pain without allowing something new to be born" Isaiah 66:9
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