Leave Me Here

I spend a lot of time in Barnes and Noble these days, sitting in the coffee shop and reading/writing or perusing the aisles and exploring the books.  It's one of my favorite things.  I'm a total bookstore nerd.  It's been a safe little haven for me here in Greensboro, 1200 miles away from home.  I come here a lot because it's familiar.  Do you know what is pretty similar across the country?  Walmart (love/hate), bookstores, and coffee shops.  I literally spent an hour longer than I needed to in Walmart just walking around, because it's hilarious the things you'll do when you just want to find some sort of familiarity.  So I've been really thankful for Walmart, Barnes & Noble, and coffee shops.  And Jesus-thank goodness for that guy.  He's pretty constant no matter what spot on the map I occupy and I really can't tell you how comforting that is to me.    

In case you missed it, I moved.  It's only for 3 months, but I moved.  From Oklahoma to North Carolina.  If you know me and you've talked with me for any amount of time about my nursing career, I probably mentioned traveling nursing.  It's something I've wanted to do since I learned about what it was before I was even a nurse.  And for those of you who don't know, traveling nursing is where you take 13-26 week contracts at hospitals.  You're temporary staff.  You make good money.  You get one day orientation and then you're thrust into the job and expected to be great at it.  You move to wherever for 13-26 weeks.  After I explained it to someone, they said, "So basically you're going to leave home and move to places you don't know and sign up to be the new person at work every 13 weeks?" Umm yeah.  I guess.  It sounded a little more daunting when they put it that way, but still.  I was intrigued.  I've always wanted to see different parts of the country but not commit to live there forever, so this sounded perfect.  Aside from the adventure thrill, it sounded great for my career.  I feel confident and competent as a nurse, but I also started my nursing career in the same hospital I had worked at 4 years as a tech, so I started to wonder if I only felt competent because of the context I was in.  I wanted to push myself, trust myself more, make myself a better nurse.  And what better way to do that than see how other hospitals do things, be forced to be more autonomous, be pushed out of my comfort zone I had created the last 6 years at the hospital I was raised in when I had my incredible coworkers as a safety net.  

So here I am.  I took my first contract and started last Monday.  I'm literally "living the dream, " I guess.  Let me tell you what I've learned from this last week.  And for those of you who are bored with any medical talk, it has hardly anything to do with nursing/medicine (you're welcome).     

I knew what I was signing up for, as much as you can "know" what you're signing up for without actually having lived it.  

I've been the new girl.  Everywhere.  E v e r y w h e r e.  The town I live in, the place I'm working, the church I'm trying out, the gym I joined.  The town I'm living in-Eden-is super small.  People stare at me and can probably smell the city girl on me from a mile away.  Actually, I know they can, because please don't make me tell you how many times someone has said to me, "You aren't from around here are you."  They say it as a statement, because there is no question.   

I have been in a constant state of being hyper-aware.  Everything is twice as hard and takes twice as long.  Anything and everything at work: I don't know where anything is (yet) and even though nursing/medicine is the same you use different equipment at different places so no piece of equipment is familiar to me (yet).  Even trying to learn doctors' names so I can know which doctor I need to talk to about a patient takes 3 different tries.  I can't drive anywhere (yet) without using my GPS.  I'm constantly lost.  I can't just drive.  I'm always lost and turned around.  Church: there's a lot of awkward hellos and that 5 minutes between singing and the sermon where the pastor tells you to find people and say hi, I hate that part even more than I did when I was at my church back home.  (Pastors everywhere, please make this stop.  No one is going to get to know me in one handshake and it's just horribly awkward.  Everyone hates it and everyone just wants to sit down and get the show on the road).  Everything is awkward.  Do you know how to spot a new person at church?  When they sit in the middle of the deaf section which isn't marked as reserved, but if you go there regularly you know it's for deaf people so they can see the interpreter on stage.  Guess who sat smack dab in the middle of the deaf section her first Sunday?  Me.  I didn't realize it until service started, and then if you move you look like a jerk and if you stay you look awkward being the only one not signing.  But I didn't want to look like an uncomfortable jerk, so I stayed and felt awkward.  It's hard to want to get involved in a church because I'm just temporary here, but I'm also already starved for community.  I'm not good at superficial, but how deep can you get with people when you know you're temporary?  It's a weird balance to find.  

All that being explained, I made it 5 days until I cried.  5 days of being constantly confused and on-edge.  I thought I would at least make it a couple of weeks, but nope.  5 days.  I knew it was going to happen eventually--I mostly cry when I'm tired/pissed/stressed, and I figured I'd be all three of those things at the beginning of this newness.  My mom made the drive from OK to NC with me, and I didn't even cry when I dropped her off at the airport in Raleigh.  (Sidenote: She started to get teary-eyed in IHOP right before we headed to the airport, but I gave her an award-winning pep talk which sounded like, "No.  Not here in IHOP.  You are not allowed to lose it right now.  Get your shit together, Borden."  And she did.  Not one tear was shed.  You're welcome, Mom.)

So I made it 5 days and then called my Mom that night.  Thank God for her.  And in my exhaustion I started bawling.  I kept saying, "I knew this would be hard.  I didn't think it'd be easy.  But it's really hard. What was I thinking?  I mean, I'm so glad I'm doing this.  I really am.  But I left a job where I was so loved and knew what I was doing and I loved all of my coworkers and I left a church and a community and a group of friends that are my people and my best friends and I left my cozy little apartment that I love in a city where I always knew where I was driving and could get anywhere from any direction.  What was I thinking?  And I miss my friends and family, but I feel like I'm not allowed to miss them because I signed up for this, like I purposefully moved away.  No one forced me to do this, so I feel like I can't miss them because I did this to myself.  I knew what I was doing, and I feel like I can't be honest because when you're living something you've dreamed of doing for so long, you feel this weird pressure to be super happy and not admit that it's hard and not admit that you're tired and scared and uncomfortable.  And so many of my friends and family have told me they're proud of me this week, but I feel like they shouldn't be proud of me because I'm not super happy and this is hard."    

My Mom, in the most gracious way, said, "But Mackenzie, we are so proud of you.  I'm so proud of you.  You knew it'd be hard, you knew it wouldn't be easy, and you did it anyway.  Do you know how many people probably haven't done this or pursued something they wanted because it would have been hard?  You're doing it anyway, and I'm proud of you.  You're allowed to miss people and it's okay that this is hard."  

My personality has always been to plow through the things I think are hard/scary so that I don't prolong my suffering.  When I was a new nurse, if I hated a skill or hated taking care of a certain kind of patient, I made myself do those skills a million times or purposefully take those patients so I wouldn't hate it anymore.  If there's an awkward/hard conversation to be had, I don't want to drag it out; let's just do it and get it over with.  I've been this way all week.  Anxious to plow through this newness and get to the easy part.    

Today in church, I didn't hear one word the pastor said.  I'm trying to read the Bible in a year (and I'm about 20 days behind schedule), so instead of listening to the pastor I read part of where I was behind.  I read Job, and I read Job 11:16-18, "You will forget your misery; you will remember it as waters that have passed away.  And your life will be brighter than the noonday; its darkness will be like the morning.  And you will feel secure, because there is hope; you will look around and take your rest in security."  And I read it a million times.  I thought, "It won't always be this way.  It will get easier.  Alright Jesus, I'm ready for that easier part.  I'm ready to be done with this hard part.  Let's go.  Let's push through to the part where I can say this was hard but that it got easier."  And then I felt this tinge of pause.  I hesitated.  And I thought, "No no no, Jesus.  This is the part where I want to feel hopeful and warm and fuzzy.  LET ME FEEL WARM AND FUZZY.  I don't want to hesitate."  But still, I paused.

The plowing through can be helpful, but you can miss things.  Important things.  Hard parts are always tangled with things to learn, so I paused.  I stopped reading and started writing in my notebook that I tend to write sermon notes in.  I started writing prayers.  I started being honest.  I started to unravel the tangled parts.  

I started thanking Jesus for the ache in my heart when I miss my family and friends, because it reminds me that I have some of the best people ever cheering me on.  I miss people because I love them and they love me, and that makes me thankful for the aching I feel when I'm not with them.  The frustration I feel at work means I'm learning something new, and I'm thankful for all the brain I've had to use this week.  It's made me feel exhausted but also feel so alive.  I'm thankful for the loneliness I've felt this week, because it made me still.  Once I ran out of things to mend the loneliness, I had to sit with all the things I had been avoiding.  That was hard, but necessary, because I had a lot to sit with, including heartbreak I was trying to stifle.  But I'm thankful for that heartbreak because it means I loved someone, and that's huge.    

And then I scribbled down one of the hardest prayers I've prayed.  I didn't pray for rescue, for resolve, even though that's what I really want.  I prayed for Jesus to leave me here, in this discomfort and exhaustion, because I know my defenses are down and that's when I learn the most, and I knew it would have a lot to do with life and little do with being a nurse.  "Leave me here.  As long as it takes for me to learn whatever it is that you have for me.  Leave me undone and uncomfortable, don't let me plow through.  Sit and work, unravel, unwind.  Whatever it is you have to do in my heart that I wouldn't let you do in Oklahoma, do it here in North Carolina.  Whatever you're doing in this discomfort, I'll hate it but I'll love you for it.  So leave me here, show me what you have for me here."           

So that's where I am.  I'm uncomfortable and tired and this is hard, but I don't hate it.  And just because it's hard, doesn't mean it isn't right.  I'm doing it anyway, and I'm thankful for the hard part because it's left me tired and open.  I'll come out more stretched and whole because of it.  Yes this will get easier and yes it won't always be as hard, but I've changed my desperation from running through it to not missing what the hard things have for me, and it's made all the difference.  Sometimes the hard parts are the point, and I think this is one of those times.