In Which I Become a Labor and Delivery Nurse!

Something marvelous has happened. It's been so overwhelming that I haven't even known how to adequately express the events here on my blog, but I've wanted to. It's important that I do. 

Here's the background information: 

I graduated from nursing school on April 30. 

I took the NCLEX (licensing board exams) on July 2. I found out I passed them on July 4, making me, officially, a Registered Nurse. (wahoo!)

I spent two weeks putting together my resume with a few expert friends. 

Then I began my job hunt. 

My first choice was a hospital nearby where I did my 4th semester clinical rotations. My first choice unit was Labor and Delivery. I realized that getting my first choice of anything as a new grad was a pipe dream, but I submitted my application for their New Grad Program anyway, on July 24. It was the first application I submitted. 

I submitted many, many more. My goal was one per day. And as the days wore on into weeks and months, I felt very discouraged. Nobody was calling. Nobody wants new grads. Everyone I talked to said it takes about a year to get the first job. And it will probably be in a nursing home. 

I knew people at several hospitals, even in L&D at the hospital I wanted to work in. It didn't seem to be helping. There wasn't a position open for a new grad. 

But then, something miraculous happened. 

The hospital I love called me for an interview! They told me I'd been very highly recommended and that though they are in the market for experienced nurses, they take recommendations very seriously. They asked me what my first choice unit was and when I told the recruiter Labor and Delivery, she set up an interview with the entire Maternity team for the next week for me. (Oh, there are so many details I'm leaving out, but you can imagine the magnitude of this blessing!)

When I hung up the phone I was in absolute shock. I went to my knees to offer a tearful prayer of the utmost gratitude and humility. 

I have come to believe that it wasn't so much my first choice as it was God placing that desire within me because it was right for me. It was where I was supposed to be. I had just come to sync up with His will for me. And He opened a position for a new grad to be considered.

I called Adam with the unbelievable news. He immediately offered to bring me a celebratory Chick-fil-A lunch. 

This would be my very first interview. And it was a huge one. I really wanted to be prepared. I read possible questions and reviewed my nursing notes from L&D and read my textbook, and prayed. Adam took Conor out one day and came home with the most glorious roses and a card that read,

"During these next few days before your interview, I hope that every time you look at these flowers you can remember how beautiful you are. Love, Everyone Around You."

I bought some nice resume paper and printed up packets with my clinical rotations, references, certifications, and whatever else any nursing website said I should be prepared with.

I contacted each of my professors and asked if they'd be a reference for me. They were all so over-the-top excited and supportive of me.

I bought a new suit and pair of shoes for the interview.

I dropped the kids off at school on Thursday morning and drove over to the hospital. One of my shoes kept slipping off my heel (darned pantyhose!) so I went into the bathroom and stuffed the toe with toilet paper. I met the woman who had called me in Human Resources, and she walked me over to the Maternity Unit of the hospital. I was in a state of wonder at my blessings and good fortune. I kept thinking, "Look at me! I am officially a big girl!" and "What on earth is happening to me right now? It feels huge!" I felt jitters of excitement, and yet also this surreal calm that whispered that this job was already mine. It was already done. I was just going through necessary motions.

I sat in the room with the four directors and head nurses. I answered their questions the best that I could. I asked my own. The interview lasted for an hour and ten minutes.

When I left, the nerves were gone. Whatever will be, will be, I thought. If this is my job, then it is mine. I was told I'd hear by the next day.

And so, when the phone rang around 11:30 the next morning, and I heard the Director tell me that it had been the consensus of the team that I join them, I felt this peace wash through me. I was being offered not just a job, but my dream job in my top-choice hospital, as a new grad with no experience. It was the first job I'd applied for and the only one I'd interviewed for, and it didn't take a year. (In fact, the recruiter apologized to me and told me that she'd been supposed to call me a month and a half ago, but had been very distracted with some personal business, but that the Director just kept coming in and asking about me.) It doesn't matter. The timing is perfect. It is how it was meant to be. I needed the experiences I went through during that time.

When I hung up, there was another sobbing prayer of gratitude. Maybe it's hard for anyone to understand the journey I've been on making this dream a reality. I started taking classes 21 years ago, not knowing they would count towards this goal. Then I put my education aside while I birthed four children and spent my days being their mother and teacher. I made the decision to become a nurse 5 years ago and it was the hardest thing I've ever accomplished. I kept my promises to the Lord and He's kept His to me.

He always does.

New grads are not getting jobs. It's just the reality of the economic climate we're in. Most of my classmates do not have jobs. The few that do are not working in hospitals. It is really desperate drudgery combing those job sites day after day. I'm so grateful that I was lifted from that.

Adam is so proud of me. My children are so proud of me. We all feel so very blessed and happy that a new phase is beginning. My Facebook page was filled with posts of congratulations, love, and support. I feel like the luckiest woman alive right now. Or, at least the luckiest new grad nurse!

Adam took me to Outback to celebrate. It was one of the best times we've had together in a long time.

Now, I am a Labor and Delivery Nurse! Good things come to those who work super hard, and put their faith in God. I will do my best to be worthy of such fortune.

(I will have 12 weeks of training, beginning on Oct. 21st. Stay tuned!)

The End Will Be Better Than the Beginning

Yesterday I was alone again.

Lyndsay left to have lunch with a friend, spend time with her boyfriend, and then head to work. Conor left with his dad around 2pm.

I don't mind being by myself, don't misunderstand. I'm perfectly content to be in my home with no one else here. My books alone provide me great companionship and escape.

But last night, after a long day of job searching and submitting applications, followed by a few hours of reading to unwind, a very heavy feeling of despair swept over me. Total aloneness.

Sometimes I struggle with feelings of abandonment. These feelings stem from several sources: the majority of my family abandoning the faith I was raised in (being united in our religion always brought me deep feelings of security, even when more temporal affairs were shaky); my first husband leaving me, leaving the family we had created; my children growing up and making decisions that are contrary to what I have taught them; losing a second marriage and family. All of these events in my life sometimes rear their ugly heads in the quiet of my mind to say, "You are alone. Nobody wants to be with you. You are rejected. Nothing you have done has ever mattered, will ever matter."

The worst demon. The enemy of my soul. He is real, and so very convincing.

Above my bed, hang framed pencil sketches that my mother did of each of my children as babies. They are one of the greatest gifts I've ever been given, and usually they bring me such comfort.

But last night, I looked up into the eyes of my precious babies and just missed them so much. The days of Little Ones. The days before Everything. Fell. Apart. The days of homeschooling them and hearing them play, and feeling the security of our family all together. The days of bath night with three kids in the tub, and then jammies and stories, and tucking them into bed. The days of feeling like the future would only get brighter. A reward for the investment of dedicated and purposeful motherhood.

Truthfully, the days before any real agency on their part took effect.

I do realize that without the trial of the first family falling apart, that last framed picture up there of Conor would not be there. And I had garnered my faith to believe in second chances. The children were all still young and impressionable, and things seemed to still be manageable, if not ideal.

But last night, everything felt so useless, so fragmented. And I felt so good-for-nothing. So disposable, even in the lives of my children. I have such personal worries about each of them, individually. Sometimes they come crashing down upon me, and when they do, they bring with them a huge amount of guilt.

If only I had been different.

And all of this is to tell you that Heavenly Father knows my heart. And He knows yours.

I sank onto my bed last night, weeping tears of anguish. "What is the point of my life?" I wailed. "What have I done that has mattered? Will things only get sadder and more discouraging? Will my children just continue to reject all that I have taught them, offered them? I have no one! No one to lean on, no one to help me. There is opposition all around me and it seems to have much more influence than I do."

I cried for a long time. And then I fell asleep.

After my shower this morning, I had the feeling to put in a Conference talk instead of the morning news, as I usually do. I debated, really, because finding the DVDs from Conference are a bit more work than simply turning on the television. But I knew I probably needed something uplifting to start my day off right, and the feeling was insistent. The set of talks I had in my room were from 2009 and 2010. I went with 2010 and chose the talks from the Sunday session. When presented with the menu screen, I clicked over to the afternoon session, scrolled down a few talks, and selected the talk by Robert D. Hales, about parenthood being a duty to God. I went into the bathroom and applied my makeup as I listened. I'd heard it before, and it is really good. I even blocked every cynical thought and just listened.

But the next talk was what really hit me. I could swear I've played these DVDs dozens of times and yet I do not remember ever hearing this particular talk, nor could I recall even ever hearing of the member of the Seventy who gave it, Bradley D. Foster. I heard him begin with a story from his life of being raised by a single mother (because his father passed away at a young age). He spoke of the importance of motherhood, even apart from fatherhood or parenthood. He said that his mother taught her four children to follow the paths of the Lord in all things and that no matter what happened, the end would be better than the beginning.

When he said that, I felt distinctly heard and understood by my Father in Heaven, who was reaching down to encourage me. "Here is what you need to know," He said.

The end will be better than the beginning.

"Listen. This is for you," I felt. I left the bathroom and came and sat down on the bed to focus more attentively. He quoted Joseph F. Smith as saying that "The love of a true mother comes near to being like the love of God." 

He said, do not be disheartened if, for a time, one of your children should stray, and do not ever give up, because we do not know when the cares of the world will weary a soul to the point of turning around, and when that soul does turn around, he will most likely turn to mother. He quoted a poem by Elizabeth Akers Allen:

Rock Me to Sleep

BY ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN

Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,

Make me a child again just for tonight!

Mother, come back from the echoless shore,

Take me again to your heart as of yore;

Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,

Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;

Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;—      

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!

I am so weary of toil and of tears,—      

Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,—   

Take them, and give me my childhood again!

I have grown weary of dust and decay,—   

Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away;

Weary of sowing for others to reap;—   

Rock me to sleep, mother – rock me to sleep!

Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,

Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you!

Many a summer the grass has grown green,

Blossomed and faded, our faces between:

Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,

Long I tonight for your presence again.

Come from the silence so long and so deep;—   

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

Over my heart, in the days that are flown,

No love like mother-love ever has shone;

No other worship abides and endures,—      

Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours:

None like a mother can charm away pain

From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.

Slumber’s soft calms o’er my heavy lids creep;—      

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

    Again Elder Foster said, "The end will be better than the beginning." I knew that was for me. That was an answer from God to comfort my troubled heart. He didn't want me to give up. If I hang in there, I will have the glorious opportunity to see with my own eyes that my efforts, imperfect and flawed as they have been (and continue to be) will yield magnificent results in the lives of my children. I should never judge the future by the present. The end will be better.

    I have not altogether failed. Somehow, through the Lord Jesus Christ, all the wrongs will be made right.  This is a new phase of parenting for me. I have to allow my children their agency, and sit back in complete assurance that as they hear the competing voices in their heads, one of those voices will be mine. They may not pick mine every time, but at least I'm in the running! 

    And life is long.