Monday, April 4, 2011

No Use Crying Over Spilt Meds

Come Wednesday, I read our devotional, and I am SO READY to serve, to be treated like a servant, to have no recognition. How convenient that I had my clinical day in the hospital on Thursday. I was so excited for my patient and to just serve him and spread God's love to him like crazy.
God decided to humble me like crazy on Thursday. I made the dumbest of mistakes all day. I spilt my patient's medication everywhere which went unnoticed by him but not by his extremely loving and rightfully protective wife. I accidentally threw away another medication that then had to be reordered. I could not, for the life of me, get the patient to work with me transfer him to the toilet. All day was me going to my instructor and nurse and saying, "I can't do this, I messed up on this, I need help with this."
Normally I would like to leave the hospital filled with pride for how great of a nurse I am and how much I helped someone that day. But it's not about my own skills, my own abilities (although I do want to be the best nurse I can be), it's about loving people! I certainly don't want to make mistakes that are going to hurt someone and I want my patients to be happy with my care, but I don't need glory at the end of the day. It's about letting God's love pour out of me. I got my patient's wife coffee about 20 times that day, which is not exactly what I'm going to school for. But that was what she needed, that's how I could serve and love.
I went into my clinical day hoping I would come out boasting about how much I had served. I came out humbled and extremely happy to read on Friday, "May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." What a far more worthy thing to be boasting about. As much as I'm praying to be a great nurse, I pray that in everything I am doing, it is for the glory of God, NOT me!

2 comments:

  1. Stephanie, it is so encouraging to hear of the ways God is challenging and stretching you through this blog and through life. A friend of mine spoke on a similar topic last night at our college Christian fellowship in Davis, using 2nd Corinthians 12. Your words echoed particularly with verse 10. "For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

    Christs public display of weakness through sacrificial love on the cross was in reality the most powerful moment in history. May we mimic this Godly wisdom in our daily lives.

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  2. I'm telling you, Stephanie, what God teaches me on the water almost always overlaps with what he teaches me in th hospital! Those humbling days are never fun, but hopefully at the end of it you felt drawn deeper into the thongs Jesus is about... Humility being one of them :)

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