Learning to grow

There are days that you dread, and on those days you dread, you usually get to anticipate their coming.

Monday I got into class, and it was my worst nightmare unfolding before my eyes. We weren't prepared. We didn't know what was about to happen. For some it might not have been a big deal, but for me, it was pretty much my worst nightmare multiplied by a 100.

Have you ever done something that you just dread? The mere thought of it just makes you squirm uncomfortably?

We were told on Monday that the whole day we would be practicing physicals on each other.

This might not seem bad for some, but after they disclosed what this would encompass, I could feel myself squirming, feeling sick, and hyperventilating just to even think about it.

We were told we would get in a hospital gown, the ones that sort of fasten up, and have to be nearly naked at moments in front of our peers. Awkward. Very, very awkward.

I could feel a very prominent thought inside my head forming,  "I did not sign up for this!" 

It's not so bad if you actually have a doctor you see, but to have to spend a whole day in front of these people that I know on a personal level, people that I will see every day for the next two years except for weekends and holidays, and then add this uncomfortable scene into the picture.... Well it just wasn't what I really wanted to do. I'm conservative for goodness sakes!

This concept was a stretch. 

And then I thought about it, and then some more again, and then a little bit more. I thought hard.

I wonder how the patient feels to be in those places, exposed, vulnerable, and uncomfortable. 

Maybe this fear is a good thing as we learn to stretch ourselves. 

Maybe this fear is showing us how it feels to be human and in other people's shoes. 

This fear is showing us how to feel empathy for someone, because we have once been in their same spots enduring the feeling of being on the hospital bed and vulnerable. 

This raw fear was recreating a scene we might have to live in only a matter of months, but played out on the other side of the situation.

I guess things that make us think, make us think hard, will help us grow and stretch in a way that breeds compassion.  

You have to find understanding in all trials, no matter what they mean, big or small. 

Monday the lesson I learned is what feels to be truly empathetic towards another human being as a nurse. I will carry that in my heart as long as I live.

Empathy- the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. 

Finding home

School
Phew.
Week two is over.
My brain feels somewhere between a balloon full of water about to burst and a dendrite on its last leg.

There is no wasting time, and I feel like I am wasting time sometimes, or that I could have been more productive with this or that. I am a perfectionist, but I am definitely having to realize my shortcomings in this!

I'm feeling like my brain isn't smart right now. I hope I am not the only one that feels this way. I have been studying like it's nobodies business, and I am curious what the study habits are of my fellow classmates.
If any of you are reading this, care to enlighten me? :]
There are so many rabbit holes of information that it's hard to keep things straight.
I know that if it weren't for my fellow classmates, and their reminders of deadlines, I would feel like I was drowning slightly more than I am, haha!
All I know is that I am always praying about something.

Life in general
I've had a full week this week!

We got a baby grand piano on craigslist for an amazing deal. It's in amazing shape! I haven't had a piano for a long time, and I used to play everyday. I missed it, and I didn't realize how much until I started playing again.
Playing the piano is free therapy.
The minute my fingers strike the keys, I feel at home.
I'm lost in those keys.
Sometimes you can find home in the simplest of places. When your life is in transition constantly, which I feel like I have been over the last year or so, you long to feel some normalcy.
Normalcy in the sense that you are grounded in a routine. My routine is-- I don't have a routine. School starts on different times every day for the most part, and I'm having to place my life around my studying. I mean really who wants to be normal completely, I guess this is my new life and I have to grow accustomed to it.
You grow to find solace in the simple things in life like playing the piano for five minutes, the laughter of your nieces and nephews, praying, sipping coffee, attending weddings of people you care for, just taking part in life in small ways that you can.


I miss my friends and family I don't have as much time for as I did before
My best friends, you know who you are, I miss you so much.

Here's a glimpse into my life this week:

Love,

Amber

Family

Tonight I was lying down after feeling nauseated. I was about to text my mom and ask her what it was she gave me to drink as a child to settle my stomach. I had these thoughts running through my fingertips via text message to my mother about how I was pretty sure it was coke syrup the medication, and also how it's also an ingredient in coke, and yada, yada, yada, when I was about to press send... 

And then I realized it was nearly MIDNIGHT..

Erasing my message, I came to the realization that no matter where you are in life, you still need your parents. 

They carry the necessities of life  in their bones, and you only hope that you keep and remember those good traits. You tightly tuck them in the crevices of your heart wherever you go, and pull them out like love notes for the times you need to read them. They've left their mark on your heart, and it's times like this that you know their likeness must have been created by something great. 

Sometimes you call, when you're hundreds of miles away, or maybe even a few blocks, just to hear the words "I love you."

You show up on doorsteps and delight in their presence. 

Being a single girl without a family of my own, I noticed more just how much I need my parents at times. I don't have a confidant, like a husband.  It's my mom or my dad, or my siblings that give me advice, pray for me, encourage me. 

This isn't a bad thing. God designed our hearts to be protected and kept safe by our families until we leave our family to start one of our own.

I know I am in my late 20's, but I still need my parents. I know some might think that I am old enough to be less attached to them, but until I have a family of my own, they are the only home I know, and I am thankful to have them.

Forever changed

Today I was driving from Ontario to Boise on the freeway. I drove past this truck advertising car repair. The tow truck was towing some kind of extended cab truck that was unrecognizable from damage. My first thought was that the truck was beyond repair and thought it odd, but then I started examining the truck more closely. There was a motor home attached the the back of the truck, this caused me to swallow hard. Someone who was on vacation.
The damage of the truck terrified me. A lump formed in my throat, and my stomach was knots upon knots. I couldn't help but cry a little before I looked away. I knew that behind the tangled metal and crushed glass, there was a family grieving. I immediately said a prayer for healing, comfort, and protection of the family who owned that vehicle.

So many times we want to stare at all the damage that has been done, but when faced with it's reality, it is so hard to see it. There have been so many tragedies lately, ones that have hit so close to home, friends of friends, or people we know. It brings on the worst kind of ache, something that can't be fixed by time, something you'll always remember. Time does not heal all wounds. It springs up like an overwhelming fountain of tears, in the most random places:
On the free way driving, in coffee shops when you first hear the news, in churches, in homes, in streets,  in schools, and in grocery stores, we weep.
You recognize a face that reminds you of someone gone. Tears, they just happen to come with it like a badge you're wearing. You seek comfort from those who remember that person, you never want to let those people go because they connect you. You seek comfort from God. You hope for a sign from God that everything is okay. You pray for one too.

This tangle of metal, the crushing of glass, it brings the pain back that every car accident I have heard about or seen since, does. I want to look away, because it reminds me how much I miss your smile, and your cheerful voice chiming like bells. It's gone from my eardrums in a instant, but I still remember it well.
The broken pieces bring me back to sitting in the school coffee shop, staring at facebook, learning you were gone after I'd just talked to you days before.
I know though, you wouldn't want any of us to be sad. It's a bittersweet realization.
You had the brightest smile, and you loved life so much.
I don't want to think about what your last minutes might have been like, and so I won't.  I  just want to remember you escaping from my car in the summer night with your one shoe, leaving the broken one behind for me to find, something to remember you by.
I still have your shoe.

It's not like the movies.

I remember that day clearly. I remember I was writing poetry in my room while my former boyfriend sat in the living room angry at me. The fight I cannot call to mind, but it caused us to flee from wherever we were and find shelter in opposite spaces of one another.

I got the call. The important call that I would have to drop everything for, because it was about to be one of the most important moments in my life.  I remember staring at the pieces of paper with my words scattered on them, my confused thoughts, when my cell phone rang. Seeing the name flash across the screen, I had already perceived what was about to occur.
"It's time." She said.
My apathy tempered.  I left the space of indifference behind, and quickly walked out the door with the my words trailing.
"It's time. I have to go."
He knew what it meant, and I left him with the residue of whatever we hadn't worked out. It wasn't the time or place for it.

And so, there I found myself minutes later, plopped down in a hospital room, nervous.  I was unsettled and unsure. If I knew one thing about comforting someone it definitely included confidence, and not revealing any uncertainties that you might have.

You have certain expectations of situations from what you've observed. You gather all those pieces, those snippets of perception, and you string them together into puzzle pieces until they fit inside your head. My expectations were completely off. First of all, I had only witnessed the birth room drama via TV sitcoms, or when it was mentioned briefly in movies like Father of the Bride part 2. I had no idea that Heather wasn't going to be biting my head off, yelling, screaming, maybe even breaking my phalanges via tight grip.

Lesson one, the movies always makes everything way more dramatic. (I witnessed one other labor, and it was also very mild compared to the movie experience.)

I knew she was in pain by way she couldn't get comfortable. We were alone in her hospital room for quite awhile. This was before my college days, and the labor and delivery nurse taught me how to read the monitor to tell when contractions were coming on so I could be prepared to help and coach.
But I was not prepared. I had no idea what in the world I was even doing there, but I knew my friend, and someone I had come to know as a sister needed me there, and I was going to give her the best that I could.

Her words grieved of pain, and all I knew to do was to pray (and of course try and get her to breathe like they do the in movies, apparently that's somewhat realistic)
I prayed aloud to her through her contractions.
We were there all night long, and I felt the morning creeping in. Through pain, sleep, slight convincing of an epidural, arrival of a grandmother to add to make our duo a trio, and then finally when the dawn peaked through the shades of the hospital windows, Olivia Anne made her debut.

I watched quietly and encouraged her when pushing. People always make the birth of a child seem like such an amazing miracle, and until I witnessed it myself,  I didn't realize how much of an understatement this was.
I felt the ache of the night, the fights, and the hopelessness all diminish into nothing.
The joy, hope, and love at the miraculousness of her birth overwhelmed me so that I could feel nothing but warmth inside. I knew nothing else mattered in that minute, but what God had done in that hospital room, in the labor and delivery unit of Saint Luke's Hospital.

I held her in my arms, breathing in her newborn baby likeness while she was swaddled in a blanket. She was a matter of minutes old, and she was the newest baby I'd ever held.

That awkward moment when...

It doesn't matter where it happens, or when it happens, but if you're in your late 20's, single with no children to speak of...And I mean none, then it's bound to come up.

It's always an awkward moment when someone asks you a question, and you reply with a response that goes against the natural progression of adolescence, then young adulthood, and then finally adulthood (at least in Idaho).

The conversation goes something like this.

Them: Are you married?

Me: Uh, No.

Them: Oh, do you have any children?

Me: Um... Nope.

Them: Oh, a boyfriend then?

Me: Hmm. No.

The last person to ask these series of questions actually interrogated me further by asking "Why".

I was caught quite off guard by her question. I didn't know her well, and my life is pretty much an open book to most people, but I wondered what's wrong with this? Why can't I be in my late 20's and single with no children? Why can't this be acceptable to someone else? Outside of small towns in rural areas, or even Idaho, this might be a normal thing.

I don't think she realized how sensitive of a topic this was for me, or she wouldn't have asked. I remember feeling very uncomfortable, but I don't recall what I told her to soothe her from asking more questions. The room was unbearably hot, and I wanted go somewhere to be alone to ask myself this very same question...Why?

 It is a thought consistently on my heart and mind since the only person I ever gave my heart to broke it years ago. I don't wish this person any ill, or hold angst for them in my heart. I know that he was not the right person for me.

I am thankful God delivered me from the situation before I had the chance to make a wrong decision.

I think a part of me is very much afraid of putting myself out there. I am not a pursuer. I know that for anything to happen God is going to have to smack me in the face with it, or give them a gift of pursing me. 

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about my hearts desire to marry and have children. I see my friends and their families, and I am so happy for them, but a part of me wishes that I could have something similar. 

When I was a child I had a plan.

This plan was to marry in my late teens or early 20's, and have four children by the time I was 30. Ha! I mock the dreams of my younger self, but not out of resentment or regret. I know that my plan wasn't the right plan for my life.  I know that God has had other plans for me. 

I look back at the last five years, and I know that I wouldn't have been able to do all of things I've been fortunate enough to do with a family of my own. My focus would have been completely theirs and rightfully so. 

Still, it doesn't stop my human heart from questioning His plan for me. 

For hoping. 

For wishing.

No, God has had other plans for me. I may not understand right now. I know the next two years of my life will be completely absorbed by the RN program. 

So I wait, and awkwardly watch my daddy try to marry me off in conversations so that he can have grandchildren before he dies... No seriously..this happens ALL the time! Love you dad!