December 2018

It has been a good long time since I sat at this keyboard to write a blog post.  In logging in today, I found a post I started about the day I sat for my board exam for my nursing license.  Even though I never finished it, I pushed the publish button because it needs to be remembered!

But here we are at today, the Saturday before Christmas.  2 days to finish a mountain of to do projects...all of them important to me!  I have been up for hours, and this is still where I am

I hopped out of bed, threw on a sweatshirt and stretchy pants over/under my jammies...grabbed a cup of coffee with all good intentions of moving on fairly quickly.  And screeched to a halt!  I have my notebook beside me to write the master plan for accomplishing all the things.  I have a pen I like, ready to write.  Instead, I logged onto this page.  Where I haven't been in 3 years!  Because suddenly...I need to write!  It is on the mental list of things I want to get back to in 2019.  But it isn't 2019 yet.  Today feels like the right day for some reason.  Maybe because it has been a really long couple of weeks.  Maybe because my focus was on fund raising for a few projects that were huge in my heart, and when they were done I didn't know what to do next.  And just maybe because I am procrastinating...because I am super good at that!  My mind is on constant whirl & plan...but the doing, that takes some "doing.

before sunrise...                                                                                           …and during

A pot of coffee, 3 Christmas cookies, and a more reasonable breakfast later, the paper still sits unwritten on.  I am marginally ready for a nap, but there is no time for that!  So instead, I will write for just a few minutes!

I mentioned before that I had done a few fund raising projects this year.  I spent a lot of time focusing on making Christmas better for people who were in tough situations.  I also had the great joy of spending time with my grands/littles focusing on the needs of kids that were in tough situations that were not of their choosing.  We had a Grinchmas Day, and it was so fun!  We shopped for other kids, and then dove into the rest of the day/night doing "grinchy" things.  They are amazing kids!  They don't always make good decisions, and they can be trying to their parents...but in this project we did together, they were awesome!  

There is a downside to this that I didn't expect.  My capacity for extending grace for selfish words or actions greatly reduced.  In listening to, or reading about, people talking about how horrible their lives are, or how horrible the world situation is...I had no patience.  Things in my life that normally would be big things, turned into occasions for frustration.  I know I am probably not relating this well, but that is as close as I can come.  Most of us have amazing lives.  We have all we need.  Our wants may not be met, but we truly want for very little.  I was talking with a doc at work yesterday about a mutual case we were working on, and how neither of us felt it was going well.  But I ended up by telling him that I had the extreme pleasure of pushing along approval for admission for a kidney transplant, and 3 chemo stay approvals for 3 different families being affected by new cancer diagnoses.  I'm not saving lives the way I was focused on as a nursing student, but I have to remind myself that the work I am doing is important to ease some of the worries these folks are dealing with daily.  It doesn't fill all the parts of my heart that want to be filled, but it is important work regardless of that fact.  

What has been made abundantly clear, is that I am not satisfied with settling for a minor role in my own life.  If there are changes to be made, I am the one that is going to have to get about making them!  I still have this great big dream of nani's house, and providing comfort and love for these cancer families is high on my list of things I want to get about doing.  What I am realizing now however, is that the dream I had may need some reshaping.  So...the mind will continue to whirl and whoosh around.  But my heart is settled on a plan to move along whatever path God has for me!  I will work harder on not apologizing for who I am, and who I desire to be.  I will remember that no one has the heart for my dreams but me (even though I have some amazingly supportive friends!!).  I will listen less to the voices that tell me I can't do it, and focus on the One voice that guides the ship!  And if I hear/interpret wrong, I will adjust my sails to whatever direction the wind takes.  Because the God I serve doesn't run out of grace, and although I have given him numerous reasons to lose His patience with me...He's all in.  Every day.  Every time.  ...the beginning continues

The beginning...

The last several years, I have written lots of posts on my facebook page about my journey through nursing school.  For most of them, I added "the end." on the end.  I'm not sure why...maybe it was just a form of punctuation, because I like to make those up too.  I also am fond of lower case letters when they aren't appropriate, but so was e.e. cummings, and he said things like "the most wasted of all days is one without laughter" and "it takes courage to grow up and become who you really are".  You can't argue with that kind of guy!  But this week, when I was finally able to write the post that exclaimed my passing of the licensing exam to actually be a nurse, I added "the beginning" on the end without thinking.  As I have thought more about it, that is exactly how this journey felt.


As I was going through, each step felt like a jump from stone to stone along a path.  Then suddenly...the road before me opened up and the weight of not believing fell off my shoulders.  I have also had a few moments of panic when I felt like I needed to be studying, and it feels like those 2 new letters at the end of my name don't quite fit yet.  But I will grow into them.  Hopefully every day for the rest of my life I will have opportunities to do justice to what was an extremely hard journey.


Sitting for boards is a very intimidating process, or at least it was to me.  You aren't allowed to take anything in to the testing room with you...even water (which didn't matter anyway since I forgot my water bottle at the hotel!).  Before you go in you have to pat down you pockets, take off jewelry and let them look under your hair and behind your ears.  I felt like I was going to jail!  At one point, my palms got damp and I laid my hands on my legs for a minute...all the while worrying that the proctor would think I was reaching for a cheat sheet!


Because I am me, I also did not do this test the "easy" way.  There are a total of 265 questions allowed (minimum of 75).  I got all 265!  You are allowed a total of 6 hours to complete the test, and I took just over 4 hours.  I heard people getting up to leave started to panic.  I lost focus for a few questions and had to mentally smack myself up alongside the head.  At questions 175, I knew I needed to take a break or I was going to lose it completely.  I raised my hand to be escorted out of the room, and opened my locker for some fruit snacks...hoping the sugar would jump start my brain!  I reminded myself that the computer hadn't turned off yet and was still giving me questions, so I needed to get back in there and focus because I wasn't done!


I had to go through the pat down scenario and be escorted back to my computer terminal, took a deep breath and dove back in.  To a question with meds I had never heard of and having no earthly idea which of the 4 answers was the rightest one.  I picked one, and can not even begin to tell you why.  I pushed the "next" button, and was absolutely certain the computer would turn off because I had chosen wrong.  And then I had that feeling after every question all the way to 265.  I reached a point where I just wished it would shut off and I could be done...even if I did not pass.  I just wanted out of that room.  And then suddenly, question #265 popped up on the monitor.  I narrowed it down to 2 answers, and could not decide which way to go.  I looked at the clock and realized I had almost 2 hours to make a decision...I did not want to get it wrong!  I'm sure the proctor was keeping a good eye on me, because I was moving my hands all around trying to recreate the question.  Finally, I just made a choice, sat back and looked at it for a minute...then clicked the button to finish. 


I wanted bells and whistles.  What I got was an exit questionnaire!  13 more questions!!  When I had trouble answering the first one, which asked me my gender, and I had to pause to think...I started to get emotional.  I don't even remember the rest.  I just knew I was going to lose it and I had to get out of that room!  I managed to make it across the street to my hotel, and almost to my room before I couldn't hold in the nerves any longer.  Thankfully no one was in the hallway, because they would have thought I had been drinking because I couldn't get the door to my room open! 

***This is a post that I never finished, and in reading it this morning, I was whooshed back in time and have been staggered by these memories.  I will not finish the story now, except to say I had to wait several days for the results of my exam.  I did pass it...and the story is so much bigger than that.  But this part, the horrible exam day part...needs to be remembered.  So I'm just going to post it as it!

...plan A?

It is the day before the first day of classes for my last semester of nursing school.  For days I have felt so many emotions...excitement to dread and everything in between.  I recently saw a picture that prompted some thoughts...

If I go with this thought, I am deep into the alphabet by now.  But after mulling this over for a bit, I don't think it works that way.  Years ago, while sitting outside of the boys locker room in my high school waiting for a certain boy to show up so I could ask him to go to the homecoming dance with me...I started on the "plan A" path.  It was the first decision I made for myself that eventually put me on the path I am on currently.  Oh...there have been many twists and turns and huge boulders in the path to moving forward, but I believe I am still on that path.

That was my senior year of high school.  Tomorrow I will start the last semester of my senior year of nursing school.  I have the same feelings in my stomach/head/heart that I did on that day.  What if he says no/what if I fail?  What if he says yes/what if I'm a great nurse that no one wants to hire? 

My plan A has been an amazing adventure!  I have lived in 6 different states.  I have birthed and raised 2 amazing kids, who have given me 4 of the most wonderful grands a nani could ask for!  I have made some lifelong friends...some that still speak to me, and some that don't.  I have moved twice without having jobs in the places I was going to (and drove the AlCan Highway by myself in April...and got lost, and almost ran out of gas, and got a speeding ticket from a real live Mountie), but knowing that God was directing me there just the same.  Neither of those moves ended up looking the way I believed they would, but both taught me more about myself than I ever thought I would know.  Both allowed me to be part of the lives of some people that are still so dear to me...and I don't even know all their names.  I was able to experience the beaches of California and Alaska, and loved them both for different reasons. 

And today, on the day before I enter the "ending" of what has been a very long, hard and trying journey...I know that I am still doing plan A.  I never stopped being me.  Since crawling over a huge boulder in my path 14 years ago, I have been a business owner twice, a customer service rep, a bookkeeper and a hospital registration clerk.  All different jobs, but all jobs that are part of my plan.  It may look like I started over (several times!), but I don't see it that way.  I see a direction change when a door remained closed.  I see growth through hard things.  But I haven't ever left everything I am and began again.  I'm still doing plan A.  I am building on the failures and successes of my past.

I don't know where the path will go when this part of the journey is completed, but I have dreams I pray for.  God hasn't dropped me yet, and He has promised He won't do that at all...so I just keep moving forward.  There hasn't been any ringing cowbells to mark my successes like there was that night of that homecoming football game, but at least I still mostly have my hearing.  I am just doing my part to make my plan A something special...something that will have a part in changing the lives of the people around me.  Let the journey continue...