Rooftop Raindrops

I was just one of those days when there should have been four nurses working in the maternity instead of two. But my coworker and I hung in there all day, even though I struggled to keep up with way too many patients and spent half my day trying to find  a blood pressure cuff when I needed it. 

This is nursing in west Africa - a nursing shortage plus a supply shortage in a resource limited environment where the government health workers are on strike so we receive all the complicated maternity patients from every surrounding hospital. 

When I was giving report that evening, I was so spent and tired that I mixed up two post-op cesarean patients, which made me kind of feel like an idiot. Then one of the oncoming nurses asked if my post-op cesarean patient had gotten up to walk, and I froze. Because, no. No, she hadn’t. I knew she was supposed to, but with the ten other sick or laboring patients that came in, I honestly just forgot. Then the aid who was making the bed behind me complained about how the lady who had just delivered there didn’t have a pad on the bed and had left the placenta in a bowl. Even though the comment wasn’t directed at me, I felt responsibility. I should have put a pad on the bed. I should have asked the family members for the pot to put the placenta in. (They all take theirs home.) I should have gotten my post-op cesarean to walk. I should be able to keep all my patients straight. 

These nurses probably think I’m totally incompetent, I thought. They probably wonder what I’ve been doing all day. If only they knew! 

And so that’s how I ended up riding my bike home feeling like a poor nurse. That’s how I ended up replaying the day in my head, trying to make me feel better about myself by counting what I did right and making it outnumber what I felt had been insufficient. The truth is, it was just a busy day and I couldn’t be everywhere at once. I would never have had that many patients in the United States. Even half that many would have been deemed “unsafe”. 

Yet I’m learning an even greater truth. Thanks to The Best Yes by Lysa Terkeurst, I’m learning that we often attribute unfortunate or unexpected circumstances to our insecurities. For example, we say “This happened because I’m a bad nurse, or because I’m not good enough or smart enough or beautiful enough.” We tend to see our insecurities as fixed things, like this is the way I am and it will never change, instead of seeing unfortunate or unexpected circumstances as opportunities to grow.  I’m summing up several chapters in one paragraph, so really you should just get the book and read the whole thing. 

But basically, I realized how easily insecurity grabs a hold of me and how much I care about what what others think. When really, this sensation of being overwhelmed and out of control is not because I’m a bad nurse, but rather because God is entrusting me with the opportunity to grow. He is allowing me to learn to manage multiple complicated patients at once and to trust him for the strength to handle more than I think I can handle. In all that, I’m learning to not be so insecure and to not let what other people think dominate over me. 

I carried these thoughts with me all the way home, and just when I was transforming all these insecurities into growth opportunities, I heard the pitter-patter of rain on the tin roof. An unusual thing - a light rain in March to cool off the stifling dry season. A small miracle. Something to make the plants grow. 

Something to make the plants grow.

The Burkinabé say the rain is a sign of God’s blessing. I know I took it that way on this night when I was feeling inadequate. It was like the Lord was saying, “I’m pleased with you and I’m helping you to grow.” 

And you know what, if at the end of the day, the worst thing that happened during this chaotic shift was that my post-op cesarean didn’t get up and walk within twelve hours of the surgery and I got blood on the bed, then I’d say that’s actually pretty stinkin’ good. 

Because we had two successful deliveries. Resuscitated a very traumatized baby. Kept a hypertensive postpartum patient from seizing. Managed everyone’s pain. Fed two premie neonates every three hours (and kept them breathing). Discharged three patients. Everybody got their antibiotics. Hypertensive preterm lady got her blood pressure under control. We drew labs, collected urines, started IVs, gave meds, answered phones, hunted down supplies, gave a ridiculous amount of progesterone injections to outpatients, and restocked shelves in thirty second intervals between doing all the rest of that stuff. And most of that (guaranteed not all of it) got documented. 

I’d say I’m growing. It’s raining. And God is washing away insecurities and putting down my roots into his grace and truth.

Since I took the risk of this sounding more like a journal entry than a blog post, I’ll add one last little bit of encouragement to you who want to see something more. Our insecurities are not fixed, unchangeable things, but rather the opposite - the fertile ground space to help us grow. And those moments when we feel overwhelmed, out of control, unable to keep up or always one step behind...those are the moments when we don’t let what others think rule our lives, but instead we look to Jesus like Peter on the water, and he will not let us sink. When you feel like a failure, listen for raindrops on the roof. God is sending rain in the dry season. He is making us grow.