When I Grow Up

Nearly every child thinks, "What do I want to be when I grow up?" For me, that question was easy; I wanted to be a nurse for years before I went to nursing school. Sure, I thought about other options along the way, but that was mostly to make other people happy. Deep down, I knew what I wanted. When I finished nursing school, I couldn't believe that I had actually almost achieved my dream. Passing the NCLEX was the final step to that goal. However, once a that goal was met, I started wondering what to do next? I am too used to working towards a goal that I don't know how to handle being there.

Now the question is: "What kind of nursing do I want to do?" I like my job on a surgical floor, but floor nursing in a hospital is not my long-term goal. How long should I work on this floor for experience? Should I transfer to another area in a year or two, go on for further schooling, or get a job elsewhere? Deadlines for graduate programs for next year are coming soon. I don't know what to do. Here are the main things I am considering for the next year or two:

1. EMT classes--I'm taking EMT-Basic now
2. Same floor--trauma/general surgery
3. Intensive care unit--learn a lot!
4. Operating room--good for foreign country work, lots of places want OR nurses
5. Float pool--float to various floors, learn a ton!
6. Emergency room
7. Family Nurse Practitioner--I like pathology
8. Emergency Nurse Practitioner--FNP plus the emergency part, which I think I would like
9. Red Cross, community nursing, or other disaster nursing organization
10. Nutrition
11. Travel nursing
12. Language training
13. Foreign country nursing/missions
14. Something other than nursing (park ranger, flight attendant...okay, maybe not)
15. Move closer to home:)
16. Move farther from home:(

With all of this, I keep asking myself, "What do I like? What do I want to do? What fits me?" Are those the right questions to be asking? Maybe it should be: "Lord, what do YOU want?" Today I came across something that I wrote down years ago from a sermon on a tape. It is an excerpt from a book called, Finding God's Will.

"When I stand at the judgment seat of Christ, and He shows me His plan for me--the plan of my life as it might have been. And I see how I checked Him here, how I stopped Him there, and I would not yield my will, will there be grief in my savior's eyes? Grief, though He loves me still.

I stand there, stripped of everything but His grace, and I bow my uncrowned head, and I look back over the past I cannot retrace now, it's gone forever. He would have be rich, but I stand there poor. Stripped of all but His grace, while memory runs like a hunted thing down the paths I cannot retrace.

Lord, of the years that are left of me, I give them to Thy hand. Take me, break me, use me, fulfill the pattern you have planned."

After reading that, it is clear that I am asking the wrong questions. People who live their lives working towards higher and higher goals often end up in emptiness and depression once the top goal possible is reached. There has to be something more than planning out the future of my life. What I do as far as the type of nursing/occupation is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether I live each moment with the Lord. That is what matters now; it is what matters at the judgment seat Christ. I have read, thought about, and even posted the two quotes below, but I do not live them.

"What we call the process, God calls the end. God's end is to enable me to see that He can walk on the chaos of my life just now. If we have a further end in view, we do not pay sufficient attention to the immediate present: if we realize that obedience is the end, then each moment as it comes is precious." ~Oswald Chambers

"The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are." ~John Burroughs