Super Nurses

When it was time to say goodbye to my job in Indianapolis, I felt like an immense weight was being lifted off my shoulders. While working with the patients was extremely rewarding in some ways, a career in mental health requires you to give more than you get (and not just in monetary terms). For the first time since I graduated, I am not pursuing or engaged in a job outside the home.

AAAhhhh.

Now most careers don't involve people who are actively seeking to end their life and/or injure you, but with my chosen career path, it did. I chose to work with people who were a danger to themselves or to other people. I found that some of my gifts listening, redirecting, responding slowly...helped to de-escalate even the psychotic or enraged. I was calm and good at calming others in crisis. However, that constant vigilance, monitoring, and confrontation created such anxiety. And to leave that behind was not a hard decision.

I was however, sad to say goodbye to the nurses I worked with. Many were believers, and all had been working in the field for over 20 years. I learned a lot from them, not only clinically, but from watching their lives. So I made them this card on my last shift to say thanks. It is probably one of my favorite cards I have made in a while, so I thought I would share it here:

to some truly super nurses who have touched so many lives, mine included.

More like her

From the age of 3 until 13, it was a regular occurrence for perfect strangers to stop and ask if I was Terry Steiner's daughter. I could just give a simple "yes" and be on my way without needing to stop and hear the explanation. I knew how they knew...I looked just like him.

On the other hand, my mother and I had many trips to the grocery store where people would look at us both and then ask if I had been adopted. "No, she just looks like her father," was the gracious reply. And while I have always liked my blonde hair and blue eyes, pouty bottom lip, and German nose...no little girl wants to look just like a boy. I wanted to look like my mom.While the physical resemblance strongly favors one end of the gene pool, I am noticing as I get older that I act like the perfect balance of both parents:

- My love language is gifts, I take lots of pictures, I start stories in the middle, I love trivia, hate confrontation, am sentimental...I am my father.

-I favor thoughtful over expensive, love nature, strive for excellence, I am nurturing, I like to read, hate waste...I am my mother.

And as I start this new chapter in my life I look around my home and realize that I look more like my mother than I ever have. Perhaps not as reflected back at me in the mirror, but reflected in how I live my life and keep my home. And looking more like her is a pretty good goal.

Update:

*we have purchased 5 rolls of bubble wrap over the past two weeks
*my bunny ran unattended through the house and ate 2 croissants and half of a paper wrapper today
*I wore stretchy-pants every day for the past two weeks
*the bathrooms have not been cleaned in...a very long time
*we learned that you can fit 14 apple boxes in a honda accord
*our fridge contains a gallon of milk, ketchup, and yogurt and that's all
*we're getting together with friends and family every day this week to soak it all in

.....you know we must be moving :)

Dealing with it.

These are my big girl panties:
I am putting them on and dealing with life.

My emotional stability often depends on where my stuff is.
And right now all my business is
All Over The Place.

That's one reason I'm not a big fan of moving.
That and the price of bubble wrap. Twenty dollars! Seriously...for $20 my teacups should pack themselves.
I think it might just be cheaper to buy all new stuff and forget it.

But anyway, moving is an exercise in doing things I don't really want to.
Like overpay for packing material,
And box up all our belongings,
And find new friends.

Getting to our new home will be great. My husband will have a job that involves more significant interaction and less hypothermia. And my job will involve more homemaking and no...make that... less...crazy people. Just as long as getting there doesn't kill me first.

So until we are settled in our little two bedroom townhouse just down the street from cute shops...I will pack. I will suck it up and put on my big girl panties and deal with it.

Kind of like another situation in my life. Even once the boxes are be unpacked and each little Russian tea cup finds it's home on the shelves...I will still have to do things I won't really feel like doing. My back will hurt and I won't feel like cleaning my house. It will hurt and I will feel like staying on my sofa and watching Dr. Oz instead of leaving and meeting people.

And I will have to put on my big girl panties and do it anyway.
For now.
But one day...I won't have to deal with it anymore.

Because Revelations 21 tells me :

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”

From back pain to bubble wrap I'm trying to see these inconveniences as momentary reminders that one day my home will be with God. And I won't ever have to move out.

My New Arrival

What do you do when life changes drastically? If you're like me, I need a distraction from all the lists, planning, and (ahem) *occasional* bouts of worrying.

Well, when I was getting ready to move to South Carolina, I had the planning of our wedding to occupy my mind.

When we moved from S.C to N.Y. it all happened to fast that I was working full time and packing the entire house solo while Nathan spoke at a week of camp (he has assured me history will not repeat itself with our next relocation)

And then with our move from N.Y. to Indiana we were planning our 3-month road trip and I was reading a lot of books.

So what is my plan to handle stress with this move?

Scrapbooks...
Lots and lots of scrapbooks.

I'll be joining in the Employee Craft Fair at Community Hospital East October 23rd. So join me, if you want. And from then on, I'll be opening up a little shop on etsy.com to share my little ready-made scrapbooks with the world.

Because, let's face it, a one bedroom apartment has a limit on the number of scrapbook it can hold and I think we just might be approaching that limit over here.

Overtaken

There were two women in the room that were not pregnant.

One was in the front of the birthing class holding a plastic model of the female pelvis and the other was a glutton for punishment. The second one was me.

In an attempt to be a supportive friend, I found myself in a room surrounded by shifty nervous husbands and very pregnant women. You see, a good friend was having a baby and her husband was away. She asked for some company and support in his absence, and in a moment of what I can only assume was temporary insanity, I agreed to fill his place at the childbirth class.

I really did learn a lot at the class and while there was a lot of information to take in, I was impressed with two take away points from that afternoon. The first, and most important lesson is: women who are struggling with infertility should not attend birthing class. Or at least, if you have been trying to have a baby for years, the decision to willingly place yourself in a room full of occupied uteruses should not be entered into lightly. I spent most of the class fighting back tears and asking myself a barrage of questions.
"Will I ever get to experience this?"
"When will it be my turn?"
"Do these women even realize what a gift they've been given?"

I tried to be supportive. I really did. I put up a strong front. I smiled and took notes. I drove her home, hugged her, and bawled my eyes out the whole drive home.

Which brings me to the second lesson from that day. I learned to let the pain overtake me. Back in the class we had to watch several videos of women in labor. We saw the different methods of pain management they chose and the various consequences of those choices. We followed laboring women who chose between oral pain medication, epidurals, and natural birth. They saved the natural choice for last and during this woman's post-pardum interview she stated, "You just can't spend all your energy fighting the pain. You have to let it overtake your body and guide you through your labor." Her pain had a purpose...maybe mine did too.

That statement, "You have to let it overtake you," kept running through my mind and I gripped the steering wheel and headed home. I stopped fighting what I was feeling and let my pain overtake me. I grieved right there on the highway. And I found out something.

When I let go and stopped trying to fight the fears and doubts I felt bubbling up in my throat and heart, when I just let the pain overtake me, when I stopped fighting...

it guided me.

Through the pain and onto the other side. The pain was still there, but my energy was free to be spent on other things. I was able to talk about my experience and share my feelings with my husband when I got home. I was able to hear the fear and anticipation in my friend's voice when she talked about her upcoming birth. Able to find freedom from jealously and bitterness that so easily entagles us when we aren't getting what we want. And I was able to hear the voice of God whispering sweet answers to all my questions and fears.

And sometimes I still feel like I'm in that car. Gripping the wheel as I find my way home through the tears. But I'll get to the other side, past the pain and onto the blessing on the other side. As long as I let myself be simply overtaken.

Lessons from Jury Duty

1. essential items include a book and 500 mg. of tylenol
2. leave your explosives, large belt buckles, and tape measures at home
   
3. if you deliberate over dinner time...they order pizza for you...they choose the toppings
   
4. if you speak out during jury selection the lawyers approach the bench and then the judge tells you that you can go home.
5. if you speak when spoken to-they make you stay.
6. when the judge starts the day with, "This is actually my first trial with a jury...." you know it's going to be a long day.
7. When the Bailiff says...this is the second criminal trial we've had in this court since January...it's going to be an even longer day.
   
8. long deliberation: when the other five jurors come to an opposite conclusion than you
9. "reasonable doubt" does not mean no doubt at all...just enough doubt that a reasonable person would come to.
10. It makes it hard to come to any solid conclusions when the three witness give three contradicting accounts.
11. 5:30 a.m. is not a pretty time for me...ask Nathan
12. If you're reading "A Prayer for Owen Meany" and are finding similarities with the movie "Simon Birch" it's because the ARE the same. different name.
13. Don't look at evidence pictures from the emergency room while eating meat lover's pizza...just don't.
14. If someone attacks you in your trailer park...run away and call the police...don't attack the dude with a metal pipe repeatedly and then hide the pipe under your sofa. It will save six people a lot of time and the State of Indiana $40.00 per juror.