The Valley of Vision - Part I

I came across a book titled The Valley of Vision a few months ago when my roomie, Hannah, brought it out and read a snippet of it to me during breakfast one morning. The book is a collection of prayers and devotions by some well-known Puritans (ie. John Bunyan, Philip Doddridge, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, etc.). Hannah only read one poem and I fell in love. These guys have a way with words, that's for sure!

One poem in particular has stuck with me aptly called "The Valley of Vision." Perhaps it's because I was in a valley of sorts not so long ago... but that story is for next time. For now, I'll leave you with the poem.

The Valley of Vision

LORD, HIGH AND HOLY, MEEK AND LOWLY,
Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision,

   where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights;

   hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold thy glory.

Let me learn by paradox
   that the way down is the way up,
   that to be low is to be high,
   that the broken heart is the healed heart,
   that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
   that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
   that to have nothing is to possess all,
   that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
   that to give is to receive,
   that the valley is the place of vision.

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells,
   and the deeper the wells the brighter thy stars shine;
Let me find thy light in my darkness,
   thy life in my death,
   thy joy in my sorrow,
   thy grace in my sin,
   thy riches in my poverty,
   thy glory in my valley.

A Milestone... Maybe?

I just realized my last post was my 100th. Pretty impressive considering the fact that when I first started this I didn't think I'd keep it up for long. I guess I like sharing my thoughts over the web more than I thought would :P

So if the last post was the 100th, this post would make it Post #101 (duh) and 101 reminds me of "One Hundred and One Dalmations." I think the last time I watched this movie I was like 6 years old. Wow, that was a long time ago... Anyway...

One can find anything on YouTube these days, and to my delight even "One Hundred and One Dalmations" so I just started watching it again and oh the nostalgia! It's crazy how Disney movies have transformed over the years. To an extent I like the old school animation better compared to the box-i-ness of say "The Emperor's New Groove." But the stories nowadays are pretty entertaining.

Sorry, I'm tangenting all over the place. You can blame it on my lack of sleep due to night shift.

To celebrate (?) my perseverance in blogging (ha) I present to you Part 1 of ... *drum roll*

"One Hundred and One Dalmations!" (You can find the other parts on YouTube if you care to watch the rest of it.)

Remembering the weekend that completely changed everything...

Easter weekend is always a mixture of emotions for me.


Friday is a day of mourning. 
A day to wonder what it must've been like for Jesus to go through everything prior to and including his death upon that cross.
A day to recognize the severity of our sins and the weight of his sacrifice.
A day to somberly remember what a wretched creature I am, that I am no better than anyone else, fallen completely short of the glory of God.


But Sunday is a day of celebration.
A day to wonder and be in awe of God's mighty and awesome power in raising Jesus from the dead.
A day to recognize what it means for Jesus to be in heaven interceding on our behalf.
A day to joyously remember that my sins are no more and I am free, truly free to live a life that is pleasing to God without worrying if I'm good enough.

John Mark Mcmillan wrote a beautiful song of Easter. If you're interested in learning more about why he chose the words that he did, you can read about it in his blog here.

Work ^ Ridiculous

I love being a nurse. Since getting into nursing school I've definitely felt it's my calling, at least for now anyway. I think it fits with who I am pretty well so I'm psyched to be working in an area that I enjoy.

However like everything else in this world, nothing is perfect even if it is something you love.

Before I get into details, here is some background info on nursing that will be helpful for you to know:

• On my ward, there are a total of 6 nurses (4 RNs, 2 LPNs) and the LPNs usually have the more stable patients while the RNs take on the more acute patients. Each nurse has 4 patients, occasionally 5. 
• We work in teams which means when 1 nurse is on break, the other looks after their patients as well. Essentially, we have to look after at least 8 patients when our partner is on break.
• Patients are given a "rating" on their level of acuity (PASS) as well as their level of care needed (CASS). PASS of 1 = low acuity (stable) whereas 3 = very acute (unstable). CASS of 1 = patient is independent whereas 3 = total care (we have to do everything for them, ie. feed, change, wash, reposition so that they don't get bed sores, etc.).
• A set of shifts typically consists of 2 days (from 7:30AM to 7:30PM) and 2 nights (7:30PM to 7:30AM) back-to-back (ie. Day 1 = day, Day 2 = day, Day 3 = night, Day 4 = night). I get 5 days off in between each set of shifts.
• Night shifts are generally more quiet than day shifts because patients are asleep (usually) and there are less people (ie. docs, visitors, etc) on the ward.
• There are 2 types of bugs that are resistant to antibiotics which is an issue in the hospital - MRSA and VRE. When a patient has either/or of these, they are put on isolation precaution. This means that any person providing care has to don a fresh gown and gloves every time they come in contact with the patient. This is to prevent us from spreading the bugs to the other patients.
• When patients have tests (eg. X-rays, CT scans, ultrasound, etc), we have to put them on a wheelchair or stretcher and have them ready for the porter to take them. Once the porter brings them back to the ward, we have to put the patients back in bed. Unfortunately, we aren't often told what time the patient has to go down for their test - usually there's a phone call saying they need the patient now. We also usually don't know when the patients are back from their tests.
• If a patient is immobile, we have to use various equipment to transfer our patient to the stretcher (ie. slings, sliding boards, mechanical lifts, etc.). The heavier the patient, the more difficult and time consuming the transfer.
• When patients are admitted to the ward, there's a whole whackload of stuff we need to do. A set of vital signs (blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate, blood oxygen levels, temperature), a thorough head-to-toe assessment, multiple lists of questions, etc. Usually this takes at least 30 minutes to complete.
• Giving patients their medication is not as simple as you think. We have a "checklist" to go through for each medication to maintain patient safety. If the patient only has 1 or 2 medications, it's not that bad. However most patients have a lot and which are also given at the same time. For example, if you have 4 patients who have 10 medications each that need to be given at 9AM, that's 40 medications that we need to check to be given at that time. As you can imagine, this takes up a huge chunk of time.
• LPNs aren't allowed to administer IV medications so if they have patients that have IV meds, we (RNs) have to do it for them.
• St. Paul's is a teaching hospital so we get a lot of nursing students. They vary in their ability depending on how far along they are in their program. Though they can be a huge help, to an extent it does mean more work for us because we have to check everything they've done because ultimately, we are the ones responsible for our patients.

So...

I just finished off a set of shifts this morning and oh my gosh, it was the most ridiculous set I've ever had so far. Somehow I ended up with some of the heaviest patients on the ward. 3 out of 4 were total care, 3 out of 4 had a PASS of 3, and all 4 patients were on isolation precautions.

On my day shifts, many of the patients had multiple tests throughout the day so I had patients leaving and returning left right center. One of them also had multiple blood transfusions throughout the day which in itself is also quite time consuming. I also had to admit a new patient under my care and she had multiple issues and complications. Additionally, the LPN I was partnered with had patients with IV medications so I had to do those as well. In addition to that, I had a couple nursing students throughout the day. One was very helpful, but the other, as wonderful of a person she is, just kept asking me questions at the wrong time (ie. when I was super busy with something else). At one point when I had multiple important things on my mind and a few different medical personnel trying to get my attention and she jumped in with a question, I almost had a meltdown but thank God He helped me not to explode because that would've been bad...

I thought my night shifts would be better but no, they too were ridiculously busy. Less busy than days... but quite busy for a night shift. I ran around for 5 hours before I finally got to sit down for a quick snack break. Two of my patients also rang the bell every hour or less until 3AM for things like a bedpan, a glass of water, and pain medications. On the last night when my partner was on break, one of her patients had a bout of confusion and wanted to leave the hospital. As I tried to convince her that she couldn't leave in the middle of the night, another one of my partner's patients had an accident and needed to be cleaned up. As soon as these two were taken care of settled back in bed, another one of her patients had to be changed and needed a whole lot of pain meds... Then one of my patients started ringing the call bell... and so on. Thankfully some of the other nurses were less busy so they helped me out a lot.

I love nursing.... but if work was like this all the time, I don't think my body nor my mind can handle it for long. My legs are sore from walking around back and forth so much. It doesn't help that I'm still a new grad because I tend to forget stuff so I'm often retracing my steps to grab something. (Apparently a new grad can walk up to 17km in a day. Crazy.) My throat is sore today so I think I caught a cold. My brain hurts from thinking so much. I'm so glad I have 5 days off to rest and recover.

To look on the bright side of things...
... I got my exercise for the week.
... I'm definitely learning how to multitask, something I feel I'm not very good at, and improving on my organizational skills.
... I work with awesome people who really care about me and are super helpful. I couldn't have survived this set without them.
... I have a 5-day weekend. How many people can say they get a 5-day weekend after a week of work?

Raising the Cup

On a night shift a couple of Thursdays ago I got sick and had to go home. At first I thought it was just indigestion caused by a number of things including what I ate during the day (not food poisoning but things that just didn't seem to sit well with my stomach), a general lack of sleep, and being a bit stressed out with life which led to my body being weaker and vulnerable. I literally laid on the couch all day Friday to get rest, felt good enough Saturday to hang out with some friends (coffee/lunch, a PhD grad party in the evening, and We Are the City concert at night), went to church Sunday and hung out with friends for lunch... then my body went haywire and I was back in bed worried that I had caught some nasty bug from work. (I'll refrain from telling you what I thought it might have been because it's not pretty.) I saw the doc on Monday and she told me to stay home from work that week and not go back to work until my lab results came back.

I was so physically weak at the beginning of the week that even walking a block made me exhausted. Mind you I hadn't eaten much all weekend due to a lack of appetite so my body was running on low to empty. I put myself on the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, apple juice, toast) and on Wednesday I finally started perking up a bit. Since then I've been getting stronger each day and the lab hasn't called me back (in this case, no news is good news and this is a huge relief for me because I don't have the bug I thought I had - phew) so I should be good to go back to work this Thursday. In short, I had a good two weeks to let my body rest and recover and this experience has taught me a lot.

I know I've been busy - it's all that comes out of my mouth lately when people ask me how I am (either that or "I'm tired"). Not that being busy is always a bad thing... but I think I fair a bit on the extreme. I'm a new grad and work pretty much full-time plus it's shift work so my sleep schedule is completely off, I am involved in church, I have many friends (which is fantastic) but I'm unable to decide who to invest my time with so I end up trying to spend quality time with everybody which is impossible, I'm trying to do stuff for Haiti through GAiN, I registered to take the NCLEX (the US version of the RN exam), etc etc etc... Holy crap. This is a lot of stuff. I'm trying to do wa~y too much for the amount of time and energy that I have. No wonder I'm stressed out and am tired all the time and got sick. It's funny because being a nurse one would think that we should be good at taking care of ourselves... but sadly this is often not the case. As my doctor put it, we're so busy taking care of others that we forget about ourselves. Touché.
 
It's probably a combination of being Asian and living in North America and my personality, but I feel guilty when I'm not doing anything or being productive. Guilty - now there's the key word that helped me to realize something is wrong. Someone once said to me guilt doesn't come from God but from Satan. God convicts, but He doesn't guilt. Hmm...

Obviously I'm not very good at resting and this is something God has been repeatedly bringing up in my life over these past few years. I've been trying to learn and Mark Buchanan's book, The Rest of God, has definitely given me a better perspective on rest and what it means to keep the Sabbath. I realize though that some of the lessons haven't sunk in very well.

My roommate and beloved friend, Jess, shared something she heard in church sometime ago that was quite profound for me. The pastor was talking about the cup and how the Pharisees worked so hard at cleaning the outside but failed to clean the inside. In other words, they worked hard at having a good reputation and did everything right according to religion, but they didn't care enough about the condition of their heart which was tainted with greed, pride, envy, scorn and a whole other slough of stuff which Jesus openly pointed out (and of course, they didn't like that at all). Jesus was more concerned about the inside of the cup rather than the outside which can only be done through a relationship with him as it's impossible to do it on our own. So, the Christian life should consist of cleansing the inside of our cup (through conviction from God, confession, repentance, through the work of the Holy Spirit) as well as using our cup to serve others (re: Jesus' command to love God and people). We are also called to raise our cup in celebration of all that God has done and blessed us with.

Enjoying life as a way to worship and thank God is something that's been on my mind a lot recently. I know that God wants us to but I just haven't been able to figure out how to do that without forgetting to simultaneously keep sacrificing our lives so that others may enter the Kingdom of God too. Looking deeper though, I have issues with control (I'm not good at letting it go to God) and finding my identity in Christ which leads to me believing that I need to do do do in order to prove myself and please Him. But me doing more isn't going to change His view of me - He loves me for who I am, not for what I do. Whatever I do shouldn't be to make sure He keeps loving me, but should be out of a loving response to Him - I obey what He asks me to because I love Him. I know this in my head so now it just needs to take root in my heart.

Now that I've been sick and have had the last week and a half off being forced to rest and learning how to enjoy life as a way to worship God, I hope that my life will change. The change will probably be slow but that's ok because everything is a process and this is just a part of it. Some changes I hope to make are...
... to let myself take it easy on the couple days right after my night shift.
... to learn to say 'no' every so often instead of always immediately saying 'yes' when people ask if I want to get involved in something.
... to pray and grow closer connected with God so that I can distinguish His still and soft voice from among the noise and hopefully get better at only doing what He asks me to rather than doing more in efforts to prove myself.

So, here's to raising that cup. Thank you so much, God, that you care deeply for others AND you intimately care about us too and want us to enjoy what you've abundantly blessed us with.

How easy it is to forget...

I received an e-mail from my friend, Angelina, just a few moments ago about her missionary friends in Japan helping out with the aftermath of the tsunami. After reading it and watching the video clips, I had a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach - I had put the devastation that has occurred and continues to remain in Japan on the back burner of my heart and mind.

How easy it is to get caught up in the latest news and not even that but just with stuff in your own life. Not that things in your life aren't important... but our vision definitely narrows when we only look at ourselves.

With that said, I have been a bit stressed lately with life in general. Too many things vying for my time... and I'm not good at prioritizing and investing in the right things - I just want to do it all! But I'm not God... This is probably why I fell ill and had to take the week off from work. I still haven't gotten down a healthy balance of work and rest.

Anyway....

How do you continue to deeply care and pray for things that are deep on your heart? How do you balance living your life while continuing to be intentional about things like Japan? What is my role in all of this anyway? What does God want me to do? I don't know...

Where am I going with this post? I haven't got a clue. I guess it's more of a letting-my-thoughts-pour-out as a way to process what's going on so I'm sorry if this post is very choppy and doesn't make much sense.