Joy

I’ve never given my testimony before. I’m not sure where to start, or what all I should and shouldn’t write for fear of rambling. I don’t know where to begin.

This much I am certain of as I start things off; that my joy will always be found in Jesus.

When I think of telling people how I became a nurse,  I’ve realized that I can’t do it unless I tell them my testimony at the same time. The saying goes that hindsight is 20/20, but when I look back on my life, even in moments of deep hurt, and struggling and depression, there isn’t a single moment where God had not been there.

On suggestion from my sister, she really wanted me to start this off with, “My name is Carmen and I grew up a’ farmin'”. Which, as incredibly silly as it sounds, I did grow up on a beef farm in Southern Ontario. I have an older brother (Craig) and a younger sister (Amy) and a younger brother (Sam). I was brought up in a Christian home and I’ve gone to church for as long as I can remember. I was baptized when I was about thirteen, and made the decision to give my heart to God, not because that it was expected of me, but because I felt called to do so.

If you ask my parents or any relatives to tell you stories about me when I was little, they’ll often comment on the full head of curly brown hair atop a very, very stubborn little girl. When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I was known to reply with, “A kid”, and I’d like to think now that little me was onto something. I was always two hands and two feet into any mud puddle you could find, and if a calf was being delivered in the barn, you can bet I was leaned over the gate to watch, or being pushed out of the way by the vet because I was too close. If we were filleting a fish, my Dad had to cut open the stomach so I could see what was inside it. If someone got hurt, I wanted to see the wound. I don’t know when I officially decided I wanted to be a nurse, it was just always there. After one of my Mom’s miscarriages, she was sitting on the front steps of our house, feeling depressed about what had happened. Around this time, my Dad had also broken his leg, and was in a cast. I was about three, and after watching my Mom sit on the steps, I disappeared inside and returned with a roll of toilet paper and proceeded to wrap her leg. If my Dad was hurt and a cast on his leg ‘fixed’ him, somehow I reasoned that if Mum was hurting, she needed a cast too.

I was never a straight-A student, always just average. Except when it comes to math. Math, no matter what grade I was in, was, and still remains to be an arch-nemesis of mine. Give me books to read, spelling or historical events, but please, please do not give me math. I remember my grade 9 teacher saying to me, “If you can’t do this math, you’ll never go anywhere in life”. When I think of being a teenager, the word ‘joy’ isn’t something that comes to mind, and in this moment, makes this feel so much harder to write. When I think of being in high school and things other than math, I think of being on the bus. I can still see the faces of the boys who kicked my seat, hit me, ripped my books out of my hands, and tormented me with the cruelest names. They saw my weight and nothing beyond that. While much of being a teenager for me wasn’t all rosy and sunshine, the friends I had, at school and in youth group at church, remain some of my closest friends today.  If I wouldn’t have had those friendships as a teenager, I’m not sure what I would’ve done. And looking back, I’m so incredibly thankful for each one of those friendships where my worth to them was not based on my weight or my successes in math.

Half way through Grade 10, my Dad moved part of my family to I, ON. While I was thrilled at the idea of an adventure and starting fresh, that happiness was very quick to turn to a state of bitterness and resentment. I didn’t have any friends. I hated going to church. I was always mad at my parents or my younger siblings, sometimes both. And since I no longer had to take math, my school work became considerably more tolerable. My classmates on the other hand, while they didn’t torment me about my weight, loved to bully me on account of being ‘the teacher’s kid’ and that the fact that I didn’t drink or alcohol or do drugs. Once again, I was an outcast. Part of me likes to think that because of the bullying in Grade 9 and the first part of Grade 10, that it’s helped prepare me for other hardships that I’ve encountered.

I’ve often heard the saying that “God carried me through that time”. And while I do believe that God most definitely does carry me at times, I can’t help but think of the visual as God being a Dad and walking along a rode with a little girl (me) alongside him. Sometimes they walk hand in hand, sometimes the Dad carries the little girl, sometimes the little girl lets go of the hand and charges ahead to do things on her own, and sometimes…well, sometimes the little girl just flops over and lets the Dad drag her along the road.

If being in University was paired with any of those visuals, it was most definitely the little girl charging ahead to do things on her own. I had a plan, and I was going to prove anyone who told me that I couldn’t do it, that I could. I was going to Lakehead University for the four year Bachelor of Science in Nursing program. I was going to be in school for four years and then graduate, work, get married and then buy a house. I did have some idea to go to Russia or China, and somewhere in that mix, I’d have some kids and be a fantastic Mom.

I failed my first year of University, and not for a lack of trying. That day I got those marks back, absolutely crushed me. I can remember sobbing all night and pleading with God to make it have been some awful nightmare. I was heartbroken. And then I was furious with God.  Wasn’t He suppose to be there for me? The God that protects? The God that answers? The God that loves? Where was He? Did He even listen? Why had He let me fail? Hadn’t I failed enough? Hadn’t I struggled enough? Was this not what I was suppose to be doing with my life?

When you fail courses in your first year of nursing, you get an automatic meeting with a Nursing professor, where you discuss whether or not you should continue this future in Nursing. I don’t know how many students that fail their first year decide to push on ahead with same career path, but I did. I took classes in the spring and summer time, and if I couldn’t graduate in four years, I was going to do it in five. Failing my first year was simply the first hurdle of many in University. There was classes I had to attend, clinical placements, and the dreaded math tests. With every clinical placement I did, there was a mandatory math test where you were only allowed to get one answer wrong. Given my past history with math, these tests were another focal point of dread.

I graduated and received my Bachelor of Science in Nursing in June of 2013. I worked on the nursing floor at the hospital here in SL for about a year and a half. In October of 2014, one night my Mom and I were driving from D to I. It was just getting dark and it had been snowing a little. We were about 30km from I, coming up  a slight incline on a hill, when a transport truck crossed the centre line. I swerved to miss a head on collision, and sent my Mom and I into the ditch. We rolled at least four or five times from side to side, and end over end at least once. My car was completely totalled, but my Mom and I both walked away with little more than some bruising. I was off work for a few weeks to heal both physically and mentally, and I was faced with another moment of, “God, where were you, and what were you thinking?”. Where I thought I had been content with how my life was going, it really made me realize that I wasn’t only unhappy, but that I was so tired of trying to plan every little thing in my life. Suddenly I was questioning why I was a nurse and why God had put me in SL. If this was where He wanted me, I wanted to be sure of that. After spending a lot of time in prayer, when I returned to work, I applied for three different openings in the hospital, and prayed, “God, if you want me here in SL, put me where you want me, because I’m done working on the nursing floor”. By the Friday after I’d asked, I got offered the job in the Operating room.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the last four or so years, still wondering what God is up to. And that’s probably something I’ll always think on. What I have been learning, is that God’s plans are so much better than our own and that our joy in God, is not reliant or dependant on our happiness. I know I can see a problem in front of me, and I forget all the times before where God has met my every need beyond what I could ask for. I forget the times when He’s tenderly whispered to this stubborn-girl heart of mine. I forget the times He’s met me in the midst of my loneliness and reminded me that I’m never alone. I forget the times where I’m so afraid that He’s taken my hand tightly in His own, and walked me through the valley of darkness.

Joy is a gift from God which comes to us and remains with us and undergirds us in spite of our present circumstances. Life is definitely an unfolding journey with unexpected turbulence thats sometimes so rough you’re not sure if you’re holding on to anything. Joy, as the Bible speaks of it, comes from a relationship with God. His spirit in our lives, keeps us in balance. It acts like a protective mechanism that allows us to experience joy in spite of the circumstances around us. In other words, God residing in us makes the difference. It is a the produce, or product of having our lives firmly rooted in Christ.Joy in the Lord transcends the happiness of ‘good’ life circumstances. Even when circumstances are wretched, we can still have a sense of God’s presence within us, that all will be alright.

I’m sick of Satan trying to steal my joy.

My joy is not found in my job. My house. My weight or looks. My friends. My relationship status.

My joy is found in Jesus. And I will choose to find the joy in the journey that God has set before me.