My perception of the passage of time is something that I tend to notice and focus on quite frequently. Lately, the weeks seem to fly by so quickly. I feel like I just began nursing school a few months ago, yet I am weeks away from finishing my first YEAR of this journey. I still don’t know what is next exactly, but I am content to wait and trust and know that God is there, in my future, and will be there to shepherd me to the next season. 

Recently noticed that I enjoy the operating room a lot. Watching surgeries has been one of coolest things, hands down, that I have experienced. One downside to working there (i can assume) is that you don’t get to interact with patients as closely (well, when they are conscious anyway). Hmm. The coolest thing however: Over the past month I have seen new life enter into the world for the first time! I was floored by this. I can’t describe the way I felt when I listened to a babies heart and breathing sounds mere seconds out of the womb…I still don’t have words really to explain. I was second person to ever touch this new life. It was so vibrant and wild, yet helpless and in distress…Sometimes the poetry doesn’t come so easily. And that’s okay. 

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the people of God to be revealed. For creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” Romans 8:18-22

A recurring thought I’ve had lately: Just the realization that inside the hospital, it really is a completely different world than the one I have been accustomed to. I can only project my own perceptions and thoughts upon the people outside at this point… But I know that before I came into  this season I am now in, if I drove by Dallas Presbyterian Hospital, I would have given the inside  little to no thought or reflection. Why is this so poignant to me right now? It’s hard to say exactly. But, in the past several months, I have witnessed for the first time- a level of pain, sorrow, despair, fear, sickness, helplessness; a decrepit, cancerous side of our world that I could have before, obliviously driven past- but now, have been forced to dip my cup into and take a big gulp. As I say this, I have a strong sense that I am only on the tip of an iceberg. It is sobering, eye-opening, painful, wonderful…

What is that verse… where darkness is, light much more abounds…? I believe this. But it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the pain one sees in a patients eyes, a lost insidious darkness behind a face, a hollow insincerity, a cold cynicism holding a scalpel and working a miracle… What can I do? It definitely takes some debriefing. I’m thankful to have a sincere and open heart to share these things with.