“Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” ~ Psalm 37:4

Faith . . . it can move mountains (or so they say). I’ve never personally tried it.

I struggled for years, doubting myself, listening to others who doubted me as well – struggling to:

• study for and go through the fire academy
• obtain my degree in fire science
• get my certification as a fire investigator
• get elected to the county emergency services board
• finish my Master’s degree in Emergency Services Management

All while working full-time as a nurse and supporting my kids with very little assistance from their father.

I persevered.

I worked hard.

I studied.

I prayed. Boy did I pray!!

I had a chance to work for a volunteer fire department and I LOVED it, rising to rank of Lieutenant.

I worked part-time for a paid department.

I was asked to volunteer on our county arson task force.

I was elected, not once but twice, to serve on the county emergency services board. (Without campaigning — I rather forgot to do that.)

And then . . . THEN I was invited to work as an instructor/trainer for the government in my dream job in Alabama. After hard work, rude comments, assumptions by others, backstabbing, gaslighting, and being abandoned by some who claimed to be friends . . . God blessed me with my dream job. You can read about it here.

For almost three years, I was honored to work with an elite team of instructors, teaching our country’s first responders.

But things change . . . and while God blessed me with the desires of my heart — that was not the end. It isn’t the end.

Many years ago, I promised God that I would GO wherever and DO whatever He asked or led me to do.

As that career ended, I went back to nursing full-time. I have never left it behind, just gone PRN or part-time through all of this. Shortly after I went full-time, I was assigned to work with the ER psychiatric patients. My initial reaction was one of dismay — I was not comfortable working with psychiatric patients. I was afraid I would inherently do or say something that would make their situation worse. After watching some of my fellow nurses attitudes towards those patients, I could not, in good conscience, remain quiet.

For the past 8 months or so, I have worked exclusively with the psychiatric patients. These are the undesirables of society – those with depression, schizophrenia, psychosis, suicidal and homicidal thoughts. These are the people who are unwanted, unwelcome, uninvited, and unincluded sometimes by their own families, let alone by the general public. Having felt unwanted, unwelcome, uninvited and unincluded myself – I can identify with these folks.

While I am no longer in what I thought was my dream job, I believe that God blessed me with that time to strengthen me to continue to work where He wants to put me. My patients, many of whom return at times for emergency care, have become like family members to me. My heart is touched every time I hear one of them exclaim, “Miss Karen! Miss Karen!”

I have never been happier, even in my dream job, than I am right now.