florence nightingale

in the past few weeks i've tried several times to write an entry about why i'm in nursing school. i've found that i have a lot of thoughts, but mostly they just come out jumbled and incomprehensible. turns out i'm a bit too long-winded for my own good.

it isn't because i don't know why i'm in nursing school. it's pretty simple, actually. all over the world people are living and dying without access to clean water, food, medicine, education - just to name a few. and i take Jesus seriously when He says that what we do or what we don't do in the lives of those who are struggling and suffering around us - we do or we don't do to Him (Matthew 25).

but before you start thinking i'm some sort of compassionate saint, let me correct you. i don't have any answers and i'm sure i don't have the ability to change much of what's wrong with this world. i'm actually incredibly weak and usually feel overwhelmed by all the brokenness. it's just that i've learned that when we open our eyes to see the suffering around us, we have a choice. we have to either harden our hearts and look away, or we let it change us. my instinct, just as much as anyone else, is to run in the opposite direction of pain. it is unpredictable and uncontrollable and therefore scary.

i guess i'm becoming a nurse because i'm actually quite selfish. i know myself well enough to know that if i don't force my life toward the fringes, i will waste away in the land of comfort and convenience while people die of preventable disease, unjust war, loneliness, poverty, cancer, heartbreak, AIDS, natural disaster, selfishness, materialism. well, everything. i just know that i don't want to harden my heart. so the only option i have to is to jump in and engage the world in all its brokenness - scary as that is.

i'm becoming a nurse because i finally (finally!) figured out that i probably won't be able to rid the world of much of its evils. i've already exhausted myself trying to do that or be that. but at least this way i will be able to physically come alongside someone - whether that be a mentally-ill drug addict in the san francisco tenderloin, or a woman dying of AIDS in kabul, or women giving birth to babies in southern sudan, or your grandmother as she's admitted to her local hospital - i will be able to stand by their side and touch them like Jesus touched the sick and the hungry. i will be able to look that person in the eye and not only feel their pain, but serve them in the midst of it.

it's really quite practical. going to nursing school might actually be the most practical thing i've ever done. and, mom and dad, i get to use my biology degree. for a while there i had everyone convinced that thing would never again see the light of day. but go figure. i was actually on to something when i chose biology as my major (and when i rejected biology as my career).

and so tonight, or random night 6 months from now when i'm exhausted and overwhelmed and crying in a hospital hallway because i feel so incapable of really being strong in the face of suffering, i remember why i'm here. and i'm excited. i'm 25. this summer i turn 26. and my life turns in a whole new direction and i can't wait.

i realize that some of you who are reading this might find this all a bit over-dramatic. it's just nursing school, after all. but there you go. life for me is dramatic. i wouldn't have it any other way. (and you'll probably appreciate it someday when i'm taking care of your sick mom)



nursing school brings me incredible joy tonight. walking forward in the path God has laid out before me, timid and weak as i may feel sometimes. throwing myself into the uncomfortable future - knowing that i have no idea where this is going to take me, or how i'm going to get there. but i know i'm going to get there because He promises He's going with me. my cup overflows.