No Stess, Just Restful Waters

I am so glad that is the end of the week....more so than usual. It was midterm week, as am sure many of my fellow Behrenders know. The first part of the week was jammed pack...three days of tests, tests, tests. Ugh, no matter what way I tried to look at, it just seeemed awful and some parts of it were. For the past couple of weeks, I've regressed into some bad habits of mine: not reading my notes, skimming through chapters, just bad study habits that I don't put up with; at least for myself. But I think I needed that...I needed something to kick me in the butt, and say "Hey Wilcher! What do you think you're doin'? What do you really want to do with this Nursing Degree?" In my moments of stress, I had one complete meltdown, which I think I completely freaked out my roomie, and I somehow managed to eat two dozen chocolate chip cookies by myself.
Pushing my nausea and tears aside, I began composing an email to one of my best friends and in the middle of it all, I saw how insignificant my worries were. I recalled a moment from night shift clinical on Monday: A patient transferred from the ICU, after a cardiac bypass surgery, who had a past history of a stroke, which left his right side of his body paralyzed. He was hard to understand when he spoke and I was worried that he was going to aspirate on his secretions, that he had a hard time coughing, due to his recent intubation and the extubation. He and any other patient that I have encountered, that are critically or chronically ill are truly and inspiration. Remembering my patient, his problems were greater than mine, and my worries even though they were troublesome, would eventually go away. My friend responded today saying "Stress is a horrible thing, but it does teach us not to be so sure of the affirmation from the world. God does not created stress, just restful waters."

It's true friends, we create stress and God guides us through it, even if we don't realize it. And in those moments of stress or doubt, there is usually something unexpectedly great thrown in.