Dear new nurse, new grad, and anyone else who feels like they don't quite measure up

I called my first RRT last week.

An RRT, or Rapid Response Team, is the set of people paged to your patient's room when they start to crash but haven't yet coded (for the few readers who may not know, I'm a nurse).  This particular night, they were paged to the room of a man who had been completely fine during my assessment less than two hours ago who was now gasping for air, the crackling of fluid in his lungs audible from across the room, sweating, shaking, terrified, because flash pulmonary edema, I imagine, feels a lot like drowning.

He and I, we were in that room drowning together.

I could rattle you off the textbook answer of what needed to be done, and the textbook came to life as we first intervened and then transferred him safely to the ICU (albeit with an incident, now humorous, that involved me sprinting down the hall from the elevator, throwing off my stethoscope as I ran to keep it from repeatedly smacking me in the face, and yelling for a bag to manually ventilate the patient, all while my pants fought valiantly to stay up).

But the textbook can't tell you -- and even tells you it can't tell you -- what it feels like the first time you realize that the person in front of you who is actively dying, who will die unless you do something, is just that: a person. 

You know it intellectually of course. You spouted it in your interviews and pontificated on it in your nursing school "reflection" essays. It's not a diagnosis. It's not a room number. It's not even really a patient. It's a person. 

But knowing that and actually experiencing that are two very, very different things. 

And that is where the drowning comes in. 

The drowning of every newly-moved-away-from-home young adult realizing they don't know what to do in a fender bender or how to get a credit card, and where on earth do you find peanut butter in the grocery store? (It's frequently with the chocolate syrup, by the way.) 

The drowning of every fresh young professional who has to dress like an adult and act like an adult and carry the responsibilities of an adult, but who still feels deeply unqualified, terrified that someday, somebody is going to look at them and see the truth: that inside, they still feel like a child playing dress-up. 

The drowning of every new grad nurse who knows what to do but is momentarily crippled by the overwhelming humanity and reality of life and death hanging in the palm of their hands. 

The drowning of every new mom, newly married, newly moved, newly anything and do you get it yet that you are not at all alone?

Will there always be those few admirable peers who we kind of want to be like -- who are unfazed by the newness, who handle their first patient crash with grace and aplomb and not a single tear, who actually look like adults in their suits and ties, who have a dozen friends within a month of moving to a new place, and who laugh everything off with a joke? Of course, but if you are not that person, it doesn't mean there is something wrong with you.

It doesn't mean you're not admirable, too. 

Maybe you have to be a little more brave, because you're a little more afraid. 

Maybe you have to be a little more resilient, because you feel a little more deeply.  

Maybe you have to fight a little harder because you're not as strong yet, and maybe that fight is carrying you closer to who you'll be -- and closer to Christ at the same time.

"For in the day of trouble, He will keep me safe in His dwelling; He will hide me in the shelter of His tabernacle and set me high upon a rock" (Psalm 27:14).

"Brandish spear and javelin against those who pursue me.  Say to my soul, 'I am your salvation'" (Psalm 35:3).

"Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from Him.  He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress, I will not be shaken.  My salvation and my honor depend on God; He is my mighty rock, my refuge.  Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to Him, for God is our refuge" (Psalm 62:5-8).

That's only a cursory flip through a few pages of the Psalms, but it's woven all through Scripture: When trouble is close, Jesus is closer.

When the world fights and claws at you, fight and claw back and tell it, "But my God has overcome the world."

"If I go to the east, He is not there," laments Job; "if I go to the west, I do not find Him.  When He is at work in the north, I do not see Him; when He turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of Him.

"But He knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I will come forth as gold" (Job 23:8-10).

I cannot find Him, Job says, as so many might at this moment in time; but He finds me.

It might feel like drowning, brave heart, but you will not go down.  Your God dives in the river with you and ensures it does not sweep over you.  Your God walks through fire with you so that you come out whole and unharmed.

One day, what is new now will be as comfortable as tying your shoes.  Something else new will come along to stir up your life.

But whatever is new in your life, every morning, so is the Lord's mercy; and great is His faithfulness.

Do It Afraid.

Bravery and fearlessness are not the same thing.

Didn't we learn that from The Princess Diaries?  You know, that inspiring scene where Mia's dad does a voiceover and tells her that courage is not the absence of fear, but the determination that something else is more important?

I know that.  Shoot, I've watched that movie more times than Frozen, and I can't even tell you how many times I've seen Frozen.

Then why did I spend more than two years of my life trying to make bravery and fearlessness synonymous?

Can I tell you something hard and real?

A year ago at this time, I was afraid to walk across a parking lot.  Just getting to class required an internal pep talk and deep breathing.  Going to the store was even worse.  Going to clinicals was nigh-crippling.  Fortunately, I was more afraid of failing nursing school than I was of the walk across the parking lot or a day of clinicals.  I tried to stay away from stores; if I had to go, I tried to keep a friend in sight at all times.

And so I convinced myself that if I was afraid just to walk across a parking lot, then I was not brave.  I was a coward.  I was pathetic.

Those are the lies that anxiety whispers to you when you're wondering why you're nervous to do normal things like shower or check your mail.

But here's the real truth.

If you're afraid to walk across the parking lot, and you do it anyway, you did a brave thing.

If you're terrified to shower and you shower anyway, you did a brave thing.

It doesn't matter how small the thing is that you're afraid of; if you do it anyway, that was brave.  And so if you're afraid of absolutely everything, and you keep on living anyway, you're one of the bravest people out there -- because people are sitting in their comfortable lives never doing anything scary, and you're doing scary brave things every time you take a breath.

Don't ever think that being afraid makes you pathetic or weak.  And don't ever think that you haven't won victory if your heart is pounding and your head is spinning.  The victory lies in doing it afraid.  

Don't wait until you're not afraid; only then would the fear win.  Do it afraid, and you win.  Every time.  I don't care if you had a panic attack in the middle; you did it, and you won.  Don't give up.  Don't hate yourself for your fear.  Just do it afraid.

And one day…not right away, perhaps eons down the road, then maybe… just maybe ...doing it afraid will turn into just doing it.  I'm not afraid to walk across parking lots anymore.  I go to the store without a hint of trepidation.  I have very normal anxiety levels on clinical days.

But before all that happened, I faced hundreds of days where I had to do "it" -- getting up, doing normal people things, living -- afraid.  And even if I were still doing it afraid, that would be okay.  The more fear shouting and pulling and crippling, the taller your Brave stands, fighting through the lies and daring to live anyway.

So next time you're doing something with shaking hands and a disproportionate amount of adrenaline, don't tell yourself you're a coward.  Tell yourself the truth: you're doing big and brave things (you're doing it!!), and no one has ever been less of a coward.

My hands grip things tight.

They aren't fluid, my fingers.  They grasp, and they hold -- fierce and unrelenting, until contractures start forming and they couldn't be pried open, even if I wanted them to be.

A person.  A thing.  A place.  A season.

Those leave and they end, but the hand still holds tight, gripping as though I have the power to make seasons last and people stay -- but no matter the strength of the grip, they still leave and they still end, and my weary, contracted hand finds that it's violently clinging to dust and air and a whole lot of nothing.

We are made to hold, to cling, to refuse to let go.

But we hold and cling and never let go of the wrong things.

This generation has an obsession with throwing yourself into life, feeling everything to the nth degree, and that kind of emotional roller coaster will drive you right insane.

Unless you have a Rock.

Unless the thing we hold onto the fiercest, the sanctuary of our souls, our "happy place," our source of identity and joy will never, ever leave or end, happen what may to the rest of our world, we will constantly be rewriting ourselves after the latest thing we've been holding onto is gone.

Everything ends.  Seasons change -- cliché, but true, and none the less painful for being such a routine part of being human.

Everything ends.

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End" (Rev. 22:13).

Well then…perhaps not everything.

"But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord's love is with those who fear Him" (Ps. 103:17).

The only rest, the only peace, the only pure joy can ever come from holding onto the only One who can hold us right back.

Bring the scraps and the broken with you -- when He's holding you tighter than you could ever hold anything, all is redeemed, and nothing is wasted.  When He is your constant, the endings cannot crush you and the beginnings cannot faze you, because no matter where you are in life, you are always right in the middle of Him.