Embers

 

A few years ago, when I was still in graduate school, I had a quote taped in my planner that I often looked at when I needed a reminder of what all of this was for. It read, "Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire."  

Those words sounded so nice, so encouraging.  I felt like I was really doing that, being fearless in pursuing something that would lead me to a career that I was passionate about, one that set my soul on fire.  What I found on the other side of graduate school was a career and a job that I really loved. But it wasn't just my soul that was on fire; it felt as though my entire life was on fire, like everything was burning in one of those California wildfires that burns for days and weeks on end, destroying everything in sight.  It felt like people were trying to bring hoses and reinforcements to help put out the flames, but it was just endless. 

There was no time for exercise or cooking or spending time with my husband because this job that I had specifically pursued was setting my soul and everything else in its wake on fire.  There was always more work to be done, more calls to make, more charting to do. And there never seemed to be any way to get the fire to die down to a low flame, it just raged on and kept consuming all of the valuable pieces of my life. 

So I walked away, even though I loved the actual work I did and loved my every day interactions with patients and their families (there are exceptions, of course).  And I went to a new job where I really did not feel incredibly passionate about my actual work but tried to make the best of it. My soul wasn't burning anymore, but what was left were just ashes, and it was hard to put them together to make anything whole again.  So I continued to feel as frayed as my hairdryer cord when I forgot to use the correct converter in Europe, sparks flying everywhere and the smell of burning all around. 

We had a lot of life happen in between, and towards the end of my burning at my last job, I needed someone to take the ashes to make something new again, and I knew I couldn't do it while I was trying to find yet another job that "set my soul on fire." As I've written about briefly in this space before, I stepped away from my career to take some time to rest.  I needed to have true rest, what they call deep soul rest.  And I needed God to make something new of my ashes, as only He can.  

So I've done that for a few months now, and probably that could go on forever because I feel like I am constantly surrendering worries and fears and asking God to continually make things new again in the wake of this wreckage. But today I stitched together a resumè and wrote a cover letter, and I submitted an application for a job that I have the potential to really enjoy.  

I have always felt connected to death in a way that I can't really explain in ways that make sense to normal people; I felt a deep gratitude when I was a nurse caring for those who were dying, feeling like it was a privilege to hold their hand as they crossed over. I always cried when they finally passed and I had to clean their body, placing it gently in the body bag and zipping it up, rolling the cart to the morgue on the 11th floor and loading the body into the freezer (my last job as a nurse spared me this task, thank God).  But despite my tears, it was this connectedness I felt to being a part of their journey home, wherever that might be.  

As a nurse practitioner in the nursing home, I took on a different role in death. I was no longer holding the hands of the dying or preparing their bodies after their passing. I was, instead, telling someone to their face that I thought they were dying, that their body was giving up. I was talking to their families and explaining these same things, telling them that we were nearing the end.  I was writing prescriptions for medications to keep them as comfortable as I was able, checking their feet for that blue-gray mottling every time I went into the room to see them, listening for that rattling, almost jagged breath that comes at the end.  

And so it feels appropriate that the application I submitted today is for a role as a hospice nurse practitioner. I have felt this coming for a long time. 

A few weeks ago, I told our former neighbor that this is what I felt I was being called to next in my career, and whether it was the two glasses of wine that he drank or his prior experiences with death in his own family, he started to cry and hugged me.  

I am not certain that I am qualified or if I will even get an interview, but today was the first day in a while that I felt really excited about work again.  It was the first day that I didn't feel sheer panic when I thought about carrying a pager again or filling out patient charts.  I pulled out all of my books that I read for enjoyment on death and dying, on how to make someone comfortable, on the experiences of those who have lost loved ones, or those who are dying themselves.  I pulled them all out and started flipping through, feeling my soul glowing a bit, like the embers that last for hours after the blaze from a fire has gone out.

These days, I'm wondering if maybe I need embers, not wildfires.  Maybe the embers will carry me through the work I do in ways that the blazing wildfire simply can't sustain.