I won’t go ALL the way back to the beginning…Towards the end of 2022, I was starting to feel like something was missing. I loved my job. I treated people right. My gal-pal group had grown. I would volunteer and give back whenever I was able. Still, day in and out, the feeling would not let up. I often spent my commute listening to Gospel/Christian music. I had become more intentional about the thought seeds I was planting in my life. One particular morning, a stream of tears overflowed the banks of my lower lids, and I instinctively knew it was time to re-dedicate myself to the Lord. I began that journey by becoming a member of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship and completing the new member spiritual growth course. It resulted in my developing a more heightened awareness of people and their behaviors. I say more because I already considered myself pretty observant and intuitive. It was the people that refused to return a “good morning”, the people that walked around frowning all day, every day for seemingly no good reason, the people that cause confusion simply because there is none in that present moment, the people that assumed their role designation somehow made them “better” aka more significant than the next human being, and so many other examples I could give.

The funny thing was, this stuff wasn’t new. It happened around me all the time. I had just become more sensitive to it. I participated in the American Organization for Nursing Leadership’s Nurse Manager Fellowship in 2023. Taking several trips away from work allowed me to really sit on the complexities of what we were being taught. It also led me to do a lot more self-reflection than usual. As my daily commute transitioned into a personal worship session, giving God gratitude for all the ways he has kept me despite my unfaithfulness to Him, I realized I had no idea if I was living according to His will. In my mind, there was a quick flashback of me doing thing, after thing, after thing, for the past several years, never stopping to ask if it was the thing He wanted me to do.

At this time, I had been a nurse manager about 5 years. Right before the pandemic, I had planned to take a week of PTO quarterly to maintain work/life harmony. The term balance suggests a state of equilibrium or stability, and honestly, that really does not exist in healthcare. Introvert me plus not enough vacations meant I needed to take some time. A month was not going to be enough. That would barely allow me to finish unraveling the tangled cords of my life that I had just let do their own thing for so long. When I initially heard (what I thought was my spirit say), “You need to quit.” I was like HOLD UP! The last time I checked, there was a mortgage, living expenses, other debts, medications, no husband…Seriously, could I really afford to NOT work, at all? And in His perfect timing, the Holy Spirit chimed in, “I held you down when you were out of work before (long story). The difference is that I placed Myself there and covered you in such a way that you would know it was Me. This time, I’m giving you the opportunity to choose Me.”

So, I’ve been home y’all since December 22, 2023. There has been therapy, a lot a tearing down to rebuild, no homelessness, no hunger, and lots of PEACE! I’m going to break here and watch some videos on how to use WordPress better than I have today. Tomorrow, I will be back with a January recap. If anyone is curious about whether or not I’m worried, the answer is, I am not.

“So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” Matthew 6:34 NASB 2020.