T minus 10 days...

...until my life is completely changed. this chapter is almost finished and, in fact, God has already begun writing the next one. Pray for me, friends...for courage, to be outgoing and friendly...and that I will lean into the MOST everlasting Arms on the days surely to come when I will be afraid, sad, missing my friends and family, missing my unit...missing everything familiar. A lot of people haven't heard the whole story, beginning to end, so I thought I would repost an email I sent to a friend who was wondering how it all came about. Maybe it's not right to say it was "God's will" that I move to San Antonio, but as you read, I hope you can sense (as I have on many occasions) that God's hand has definitely been in this from before the beginning and believe along with me that I am pretty sure I have His blessing.

the San Antonio story

I started thinking about my next steps in my career about a year ago...I was at Lubbock Christian working on my bachelor's degree in nursing. most of my college friends were married and/or had moved away from Lubbock, and I chose to continue renting when I graduated from nursing school, not knowing what the next few years held. Around May 2008, I started tossing around the idea of moving to a bigger city. Dallas was out; it's TOO big. Houston? Too big, too close to hurricanes. I didn't want to be on the verge of evacuation for six months out of the year. San Antonio? hmm. Warm...hills...trees...gorgeous...So I toyed with the idea and did a little research.

I knew that if I moved, I wanted to work in a Christus Health System affiliated hospital. They are a system that I've heard great things about and seen great things from. They took incredible care of my Grandaddy before he died. Also, as part of a rural health trip to New Mexico for a class I took toward my bachelor's degree, we spoke to the CEO of a hospital that had recently merged with the Christus system. He went on and on about how wonderful they had been to him and to his staff and employees and how smoothly the merge had gone (you have to know...hospital mergers are usually about as peaceable as a meeting between God and Satan!). So I got online last spring and figured out that San Antonio was, indeed, home to a Christus hospital...Christus Santa Rosa, located downtown. I put the idea to the back of my head, because I had a VERY busy summer ahead of me.

Toward the end of the summer, a flyer for a pediatric conference appeared in the nurses' lounge at work. I picked it up and saw that one of the sessions was about brain cooling for a condition called HIE (hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy)...basically, it happens when, in an otherwise healthy, close to full-term pregnancy, something happens that suddenly deprives the baby of oxygen...the placenta breaks away from the uterine wall, the uterus ruptures, the umbilical cord slips down into the vaginal canal and the pressure from the baby's head prevents the flow of oxygen, etc. Anyway, lots of research has been done in the last several years and experts are finding that if we cool these babies down to 92 degrees fahrenheit for 72 hours, it seems to help prevent the death of so many brain cells from lack of oxygen and thus these kids have less (or less severe) long term complications (cerebral palsy, etc.). the hospital I am currently at has not implemented that procedure yet, but I had heard about it and was really curious about the ins and outs of it and how well it's working. Well...after I get all pumped up about going to this conference because of that, I flip over the flyer to find out where the conference is. Yup, you guessed it. San Antonio. And guess who the sponsoring hospital was for the conference? Right again. Christus Santa Rosa. Well, I have always prayed that God make things really obvious for me, because I'm not real smart...

So I booked the hotel and the flight. The brain cooling for HIE session was first. The doctor who led the discussion was a physician who works in the Christus NICU (along with several other area NICUs). At one point, he asked one of the girls I had been talking to beforehand a question about a policy, and I decided to see if I could sit with her at lunch, since she obviously worked in a hospital with this procedure in place. So when the session was over, I followed her back to her table. Shocker...she's one of the two nurse educators for the Santa Rosa NICU. I had followed her back to a table full of NICU nurses who worked in the unit I wanted to be in.

I sat next to a girl named Michelle...little chick with hair dyed so platinum it looked steel-gray, who has been a nurse for close to 10 years. She blew me away...everyone talks about their baby days in nursing when they were so excited about everything, and how it gradually dies off for everyone. Not so for my girl Michelle. Here she was almost 10 years in and still gets excited about procedures, transports...and LEARNING! The girl wants to know everything, just like me. She talked about how there's several nurses in the unit she works in that still love their jobs even after many years of nursing...who still want to learn...who don't show up just for a paycheck. So I was totally in heaven for the rest of lunch. The two of us talked nonstop about the difference in practices in our two units, etc. It was so great! I told Michelle that we were supposed to get a tour of her hospital, including the NICU, that night. She told me to get a good look around and tell her what I thought that day.

A shuttle took us up to the hospital later for our tour. We were split into groups, and then I found out that the chick who was supposed to tour the group that I was in had never even BEEN to the NICU...she was a pediatrics nurse who had never had reason to step foot in there. Dammit! So she told us we would walk through and the nurse manager had agreed to tell us a little about the place. Well, we walked through and it was a really neat place, but the nurse manager didn't go into a lot of detail or tell me anything Michelle hadn't already. Oh well.

So the next morning, Michelle asks how it went, and when I tell her, she's like, "bummer!". We talked some more during the opening session and then went our separate ways before lunch. During lunch, I sat with her group again, and we talked some more. Then she asked if I was catching a plane back to Lubbock right after the conference was over. I told her no; I was going to spend a few days with a friend who would be picking me up when the conference was over. "Well," she says, "I have to leave a little early because my daughter has a choir concert, but it will be done by the time the conference is over. What if I swung back by here and picked you up and took you up to my unit, and I can give you a better tour than you got last night?" I was floored. She barely knew me and here she's offering to take me up there like we're best friends or something (might I add she had started hinting the first day of conference that I should come down and work with her!). I told her I'd love to. So she picks me up and gives me like a 45 minute tour! Then she takes me back to the hotel and tells me to keep in touch.

When I got back to Lubbock, I started to do some serious praying and soul-searching. Was this what God had for me next? A million what-ifs where whirling through my head (they still are, actually)...what about making new friends? finding a church? not knowing ANYONE? how will my body handle flipping back to nights (because I don't mind working nights, but it's a whole lot easier to schedule stuff when you're working days)? I love the unit I've worked in for the last two and a half years...I started there while I was still in nursing school. The people there have raised me up in this profession so far, and it's going to be really hard for me to "cut the apron strings" with my "mamas", so to speak. I have so many great memories from there, and have built some great friendships.

At the same time...this new thing is an incredible opportunity, and I think I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't jump into the unknown with only the Father to cling to. There's a Mark Schultz song that speaks my heart perfectly. It's called "When the Mountains Fall"...it's talking more about how when your life is falling down around you, you have to have the courage to jump and trust that the Father will take care of you, but i think it's appropriate in this situation too... "...you step out in faith/it's all that you know/you jump into darkness/and hold onto hope//when the mountains fall/when the rivers rise/security crumbles before your eyes/one thing you know/in faith you'll find/something to stand on/or you will be taught to fly.."

'Round the middle of February, I decided it would be smart to get moving on this thing. I did a little more research on the town, and I had been talking since November to Michelle, learning more about the unit I might be going to...etc. I figured it would be good to go down and meet the nurse manager, introduce myself and all, and maybe get one more tour of the unit. Then I decided that was crazy...if I'm gonna be driving 400 miles, I might as well go ahead and interview! I started the online application and then, on Monday, March 2, I called up the unit to see if I could meet the nurse manager and set up an interview time. The manager told me I actually needed to talk to the director, but that she was in meetings all week. However, the manager didn't think the meetings would last all day, so she promised to give her my name and number and told me to go ahead and finish the application so that HR would have a few days to get it rolled over to Catherine (the director) so that she'd be able to review it. No problem.

So I call up Michelle and tell her the plan (since I was going to be staying with her) and she offered to toss out my name and some props to Catherine. Sweet, I say. So Michelle calls me up a day or two later and tells me that I have an interview on Friday at 1:00. I started reviewing interview questions like mad in anticipation. I wasn't sure if the interview would be just with Catherine or if it would be a peer interview, but I wanted to be ready to answer whatever. I had also been praying that, when I did have an interview, I would be able to convey my excitement and my desire to learn and just be able to show this lady that I would be a valuable asset to her team because of my willingness and excitement and desire to learn (and my all around fabulousness...just kidding! :) ). See, since I'm only two years in, I'm just barely considered competent and am probably still considered a "baby" nurse...just getting my feet wet. So it's harder to convince people to pick me, since I don't have so much experience.

So I walk into this interview and it's just Catherine and a student nurse who is following her as part of an internship. Little intimidated, but I've got a smile on my face. So she starts out by introducing herself and then says, "I'm really sorry, but your application still hasn't rolled over to me from HR, so I know NOTHING about you...could you kind of tell me about yourself?" !!!! Total answer to prayers...without having seen my application, she didn't even know how long I'd been a nurse...what kind of experience I did or did not have...she was a blank slate! Thank you Jesus! So i got to tell her about me, about what I've done, what I want to do, what my future plans are...totally let my personality shine through. THe interview only lasted 10 or 15 minutes, very informal...once I was done telling her about me, she told me some about the unit, walked me around and gave me a tour, and then...

"Well, just so you know, I can't make you an offer, but how about if we call HR and see if any of them are still there, since it's Friday after lunch? Would you have time to talk to one of them?"

!!!!!!!! HOLY CRAP!!! DO I HAVE TIME? Um...YES! So we called HR and there were, indeed, some people there, so Michelle walked me down and then told me she'd meet me in her van when I was done. HR made me an incredible offer, went over benefits, told me about the sign-on and relocation packages (I thought I'd have to ask for relocation, but she said it before I could say anything) so I'm gonna guess that, since God has flung open the doors at every juncture...this is probably my next step, and with His blessing!

Things have been going in a whirlwind since then...my boss was really good about it, and there have been some people that have said some discouraging things, but you'll get that anywhere and really, I think it was more that they're sad to see me go and just concerned for me like a mama is for her kid. I've got movers and I've got a date...May 28th. There's still a lot that I don't know and I'm definitely taking a step of faith, but I'm interested to see what happens over the next year or so. I wonder what God has for me there.