Consider God's calling: Maybe nursing is for you

On Sunday morning, Dec.2, 2022, at 2:30 a.m., I was loaded into the back of a “Life Flight” helicopter. My blood pressure was dropping rapidly from severe blood loss due to an upper GI bleed. I overheard the ER nurse saying, “We are losing him.” The ER staff looked at me and said, “The chopper is on its way. We are moving you to a more advanced facility!”

Imagine what it would feel like to lay on your bed one evening and say to yourself “Wow, I just helped save that man’s life tonight!” That’s what the young nurse who checked my vitals on Dec. 2 did after she decided, based on her training, to make the call to that Life Flight Helicopter!

That is what nurses without number do every week around the nation and the world as they pursue one of the most important careers that anyone could ever embrace, namely becoming a medical healthcare worker. As I looked at one of those nurse’s faces as she rubbed her tired eyes after a 12-hour shift, it made me appreciate the medical profession more than I ever have.

America needs more young people to pursue this vocation.

No doubt nursing is not for everyone. It takes a special skill and mindset to handle the sacrifices associated with their calling of caring for people’s most basic and humbling needs on a day-to-day basis. However, it could just be that you have known that as you matured as a young man or young woman that you somehow were not the same kind of person as everyone else. Not better, just different. When you saw someone hurting your first reaction was to try to help them. In your heart, you know that you have been born with an empathy towards hurting people and a desire to try to help them. As subtle as this might seem, it may have been an indicator that you have been born with the basic wiring of a nurse or health care professional. God Himself might have endowed you with the special gifts required to carry out this calling.

You may currently find yourself simply stumped regarding your future because following your original dreams for wealth or fame now seem vain. Those dreams may have been fostered by exciting and inspirational TV programs and movies. Many find that real fulfillment in life comes from realizing that they are doing a job that truly helps others; a job that not everyone can do.

So, if you are that young person out there who is willing to look your future straight in the eye and say, “I'm ready to do whatever it takes to become a person who can help save and maintain the lives of others,” then a career in the medical field might be waiting for you. I encourage you to step into an occupation which is so much more than collecting a paycheck. Click on this link to a national organization that can answer a lot of your potential questions.

I believe nursing for many is a heavenly calling. You need look no further than the Word of God for the blueprint of this call. Philippians 2:13 states, “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (NKJV). Maybe this verse stirs something in you. I pray that if it does you will answer God’s call.