moving on

The leaves are just starting to turn, green and red rustling softly together in the breeze. Blue skies and the mountains behind visible just outside my apartment window, it promises to be a beautiful autumn.

After a busy summer in NH, a relaxing week with family in Virginia and one with friends in Binghamton, I stopped off briefly in Potsdam and Saranac before hightailing it off on another adventure. I also got to go hiking in the Adirondacks with a Mercy Ships friend, enjoying the gorgeous view of mountains and lakes all around at sunset from the fire tower, topped off with a long and bumpy ride along narrow unpaved roads.

Travel nursing really can be described as nothing less than a crazy adventure into the unknown. 3 weeks on ice - with not-quite job offers from 3 hospitals in the Dallas area, I started wondering if there was a hiring freeze, or if perhaps Texas was plotting to secede from the union. Then after a brief and cheerful phone interview I found myself rather dazedly accepting an offer that seemed almost ideal in a state I was already licensed in...and an ASAP start date.

I've been here just over a week. After a brief and intensive orientation I found myself on my own, ED nurse once again. It came back to me quicker than I could have hoped...the first large bore IV slid in easily, the impersonal beep of the cardiac monitor registering "NSR, we're good" in my mind, a slightly quickening pulse as the sirens get closer, a calm smile for the anxious mother, a high-five from the 6-year old who "wants to be a doctor when I grow up". It's not the glamour and adrenaline rush of another life saved...not always. It's not the desperate creativity of a nursing staff without first-world resources. We don't dance at shift change or pray as a staff for the little ones that have filled our hearts. No, it's not quite the same.

But it's still a mission field...MY mission field for the next few months until I follow my heart back to the rolling blue waves that rock me to sleep and deep brown eyes that dare to hope despite the pain they have known. I still pray for eyes to see the wounded soul behind a cursing demand for narcotic pain relief, the drunken stupor, the anxious questions, the intentional drug overdose, the look of fear at the sound of a baby's wheeze. These are hurting and in need as well, just here it comes across a little differently. America has the needy too - people in need of hope, of reassurance and love, of a sense of purpose and an understanding that material wealth and drugs cannot solve all of their problems either. Lord, give me patience and love for these ones too...