Called to Care

The past few days have been filled with readings for my January term class, Historical and Conceptual Basis for Nursing. It's okay, the class is not as difficult as the title makes it seem. It's not at all dull, which is what I thought it would be. What we have been doing thus far is going over nurses in the history of nursing who came up with legitimate theories about nursing and what nurses should do. It is really quite interesting. But since this is Messiah's nursing program I am talking about, there is another very neat aspect of the class. The relation to our walk with Yeshua!

One of the required textbooks is called Called to Care: A Christian Perspective for Nurses by Judith Shelley and Arlene Miller. It is an excellent text. One of the chapters I read related the theories that we talked about in class to Christianity and compared the usefulness of them. But the book has been doing so much more for me. There have been some very interesting quotes I have pulled from the book. I apologize, I do not have the page number since I am reading it on Kindle for PC.

“With a few exceptions, during times when the church remained faithful to Scripture and orthodox in beliefs, nursing flourished. When the church grew weak and corrupt, nursing suffered and declined.”

“Nursing is a ministry of compassionate care for the whole person, in response to God’s grace, which aims to foster optimum health (shalom) and bring comfort in suffering and death.”

And this is my favorite. We went over the nursing metaparadigm, which basically looks at four elements: person, environment, health, and nursing. The following is a combination paraphrase/quote of one section that talked about the Christian perspective on the nursing metaparadigm:

God created the world (environment). He created humans (person) and put them in the environment to live in shalom (health). This version of health “allow the person to live at peace in a God-centered human community with a sense of physical, psychosocial and spiritual well-being.” Nursing works towards shalom among the persons.

What I also really like the relation of health as shalom. Shalom is peace in Hebrew, but it has much more meaning than that. Actually, last week, I was talking with my grandmom, who is a retired nurse, about this. I was referring to how contentment was the thing to strive for, and she said that she had a slightly different take, that she knew something was right when she felt peace. Shalom is peace, but it is more than peace. It is wholeness. It is truly a remarkable thing for which we can completely praise God.

The book also talks about how the heart, mind, body, and spirit are all in conjunction with each other. We have all of those things, but we just are all of those things at once. I don't know exactly how to describe it. It was just really cool to read about the wholeness in all of those things at the same time. As a nurse, it is important to take care of the physical needs, but it is just as important to take care of the emotional and spiritual sides too.

Nursing is such a neat field. A couple of years ago, when God first told me to go into nursing, I kinda stood there in disbelief for a few months. "Really?" I asked him over and over. "Are you sure?" Every time I asked, it seemed like he laughed and said, "Sarah. I'm your Creator and Daddy. I know you better than you know yourself.  Don't you trust me?" "Well, I guess," I replied shakily. Then, with a wink and a hug, he added, "I know what I'm doing, my dear."

Well, he sure did. I questioned him so much, asking over and over for confirmation, and he continued to push me towards nursing. Well, now that I am here, I am so glad he kept pushing me. That's not to say there are still lots of things I am nervous about when it comes to the future of being a nurse. I'm no good at receiving shots or giving blood (yes... the truth come out ;-) ) but I just have to trust God. If this is really where He wants me to go, I will go, and I will step out in faith. If this is where he wants me, I am just going to have to trust that he will provide for me along the way. And so far, He has. He has encouraged me by pointing out my nurturing nature, and the desire to help other people in their hurts by ignoring my own pains.

Well! I need to get back to reading for class tomorrow, so until next time, shalom!