I keep trying to write this next section “massive update 2” but there’s this weird block. It’s hard to explain. I’ve been sort of waiting for this weird block to go away so that I could write this next section, but it’s not. So I think I’m just gonna have to push myself to do this one. Here goes.
So I went to Him in prayer with my dilemma knowing that doing so I was allowing the possibility of doing my final placements in the area that I hated. But as soon as I went to Him, He simply confirmed my desires. He confirmed that He places desires and passions in our hearts and that there is a reason I am particularly drawn to mental health. So I wrote it down, “Mental Health” and I had peace.
The last semester of my nursing degree was too good to be true. I had two amazing placements. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.
My first very short six week placement was at BC Children’s Neuropsychiatry Outpatient. I had to wait longer than most students to find out about this placement that I had requested. I worked alongside an amazing nurse and just learned tons about OCD, Tourettes, ADHD, autism, FAS, and more (Basically things that were never covered in nursing school.) I loved it. It was…almost…too natural. Although I did not have any experience in this area something seemed to click. The nurse clinician that I was working with was quite simply impressed and sent a recommendation email to the Educator who sets up all of the preceptorships to see if I could get my preceptorship experience in child or adolescent psychiatry. Oddly enough the preceptorship placement that I was suppose to get at Venture did not go through which came as quite a surprise to one of the nursing students who was doing her placement there, but instead a placement at BC Children’s came up on the Eating Disorders unit through the connection between the nurse clinician I was working with and the Educator.
This kind of scared me since I had absolutely no experience or knowledge on Eating Disorders but I was also excited to see what His reasons were for connecting me in this way.
I finished my preceptorship on this unit and I still am in the process of unpacking and reflecting on everything. However, so far this is what I have:
1. I had an amazing preceptor. She was sweet, understanding, flexible, and really allowed me to grow in my own kind of way on the unit.
2. I pretty much got to choose my schedule. This worked out so amazingly because I really didn’t know what I was going to do about my commitment as a youth small group leader if I got the typical nursing shifts (working 4 on 5 off). He took care of this!
3. The Eating Disorders unit was nothing like I expected.
There’s more but like I said I haven’t discovered/realized/unpacked them yet. But with what I have written so far, it almost seems like God was trying to have some mercy on me or have favour on me. The contrast between this last semester and some of the semesters I’ve been through just seems too contrasting. I don’t really know how else to describe it. It almost seems like I’ve been given a gift and I have yet to find out why. Or perhaps it was just a gift that I am to accept.
All in all, everything was too good to be true, but it was true. Now I am finally done nursing school, I have made some connections, I have some great references and am praying about the next steps to take.
“God reveals in the midst of obedience.” P.D.
I suppose I am trying to find out what I am to be obedient to. I haven’t really been getting anything lately. Things are still pretty unclear.
But while I was moving out of my place in Vancouver I was taking down some of the stuff on my Dream Wall. I made a wall in my room into a Dream wall where I posted all of the dreams and desires that God has placed in my heart. Sometimes I lose sight of these dreams when I get caught up with stuff. And sometimes the stuff muddles up or blinds me from the dreams God has placed on my heart. Whether I will reach them or not I have yet to find out but I still wanted to have them there.
But now that I am out of my Vancouver suite I will post them here.
1.Regent College (Every time I walked past this school to go to UBC Hospital for my nursing classes my desire to go to this school grew and grew. I want to go and take classes there not for any other reason or objective but to learn the stuff because I want to. I want to get into it and understand the culture and context of the word that I read. I want to just soak it all up. Also, there’s something about that school. Perhaps there is a visual attachment but that visual attachment is what has been continually stirring my desire till now.)
2. India (I have wanted to go to India for some sort of work/missions for a long time now. My heart is drawn to that country and I can’t get it out of my mind.)
3. Adopt a child (This has been on my heart ever since I was little. I feel like unless I make a conscious effort to keep this on my mind and heart other things in life will steal it away and give me a million reasons not to.)
4. Open up a Coffee Shop Ministry in Vancouver (as written in more detail in one of my other blogs)
5. Write a book (Now, I think/know I am a horrible writer but I am hoping that as the years go by perhaps things will get better. If not, there are always editors. ha. This particular desire is not because I think I can write but because I want to keep record of God’s workings in my life. Just like the blurb in my profile description, I want to
Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God" Ephesians 3:18-19. What does this mean? What does this look like?
Anyways, now that there is this hiring freeze, as much as I would really like to have a job right now and start paying off my loans and get a start in “life”, there isn’t a more opportune moment to take a class or two right now at regent. I keep making excuses for myself to not go after these dreams that have been placed on my heart. What better time is there than now to take these classes? When I’m married? When I have children? When I am in more debt because of “life”? What is living? Life is truly lived when we live it in the fullness of God. It is often too easy to forget that our life is like a mist that is here and then vanishes away when we try to make our own story. Rather, may I take part in a bigger story, His story, the only story that will actually last.
