Walking in Memphis

It’s been a whirlwind of decisions these last couple of months and I just wanted to let you all know what our plans are for our near future.

As you know, this entire last semester of school, I was applying to a lot of jobs. What I really desired was to find a new graduate position on a medical/surgical floor in a hospital. Starting in February, I started applying to different hospitals. First I started just looking in California. Then I sent some applications to some other states. As time passed, I still was hearing nothing from any hospital, so I continued applying many different hospitals all over the country. After five months of applications, I ended up applying to a total of 35 hospital jobs. And still, all I ever got were rejection emails. One nurse recruiter in San Diego actually told me that they had received 2800 applicants for only 15 positions.

In the middle of all this process, I had a potential job in a cancer clinic in Memphis, Tennessee through a family connection. This was something that I just kept in the back of my mind. Like I said, I really wanted a hospital job.

We were really hoping for a job in San Diego. But all in one day, that door closed. I received three or four rejection emails in one day. It was a difficult day for me. I was really struggling with feelings of inadequacy. I was thinking, “What’s wrong with my application? What’s wrong with me?”

In addition, at the end of July, our lease in our apartment ended, and we couldn’t afford to stay in Orange County anymore, because Joe had had surgery on his knee so he could no longer work. So we quit our jobs, packed up, and moved to Mammoth to stay with my mom. It’s weird to be out of job, without a home, and no immediate plans for that to change. It’s been a great experience in growing in my trust in God. It’s so funny how I can hear messages my whole life about trusting God. And I think to myself, “I’ve got that down. I trust God.” But as soon as my life was facing a type of crisis, I realized that I really actually had a lot to learn about trusting God. I found myself praying frequently, “Lord I believe; help my unbelief.”

Throughout this entire process, the idea of Memphis continued to come up. Many different people in our lives would bring it up. And, still, it was the only job opportunity. So last week, I finally resolved to call the clinic back in Memphis.

I flew out this past weekend for an interview. The interview went well, but to be honest, I left feeling terrified. The nurse manager warned me, “You need to be thick skinned; you will need to commit to doing your homework and looking stuff up that you don’t understand when you go home; you should be willing to come to every teaching seminar and dinner we put on; you will need to be very flexible; you will need to be willing to drive to the different clinics around the city; this is going to be a very big learning curve, because I have never hired a new graduate before.” I left feeling so intimidated and overwhelmed. I felt like I would never succeed and that my whole life would be dedicated to my job for the next several years.

But after spending quite a bit of time in prayer, God really reminded me of His great love for me. His loving kindness is never ending. And because of this, I know that God would never set me up for failure. He is my rock and my strength.

So over the next couple of days, I was starting to feel a lot more peace about this whole experience. And by the time the nurse manager called me to offer me a job; I was starting to feel very excited. When she did call and offer me a job she said she is going to help make me a great nurse. She is going to work personally with me to help identify my strengths and weaknesses so she can help improve my weaknesses and make my strengths even stronger. I am going to start out working in phlebotomy to strengthen my IV skills, and I will become chemotherapy certified at the clinic, and eventually I will work as a chemotherapy infusion nurse. It was such an incredible encouragement to hear her support.

So, Joe and I are moving to Memphis! We plan to leave on August 22 and drive across the country to get there. I will hopefully be starting working very shortly after that, but a lot of it will depend on how soon my license will transfer.

So thanks so much for all your support and prayers. We are very excited to see what God has in store for us for this next season in life!