He provides......

This past weekend I began night shifts. Heading in to a stretch of four, I was honestly feeling tired but ready to get them over with. The previous week was an exhausting one on the wards with 2 ICU patients, several crew admissions for IV fluids, and the usual ridiculous awesomeness that is working in the MaxFax ward of a hospital ship...It’s funny having come from working full time nights for 2 years that I would dislike night shifts so much. I guess once you get your body back on a normal person schedule, it gets stingy for normalcy and the switch back to the nocturnal life is just that much more difficult. As it was, I headed into night 4 knowing that we had one of our VVF ladies in the ICU. I came into the shift with my running shoes and thinking cap on, just in case. This shift started off great, just one other nurse and myself for our 10 patients. About 2am my friend Beth stopped by, just to chat--she said she was laying in her bed unable to sleep and felt like she really needed to come say hi. (She returned to the ship on the 19th, after spending about 5 weeks at home over Christmas.) We hadn’t had a proper deep stuff catch up conversation, so we spent a few minutes chatting about life. I was also asking her opinion on a sick kiddo that we have (because she is one of the most brilliant nurses I know) when all of a sudden the nurse who was on shift with me starts vomiting, everywhere. I knew that I couldn’t ask her in between her retches to stay to finish out her shift, she was miserable, but I really didn’t know what the answer was. I paged in to the on call supervisor to find out what we should do, because as much as I wanted to and would be wiling to try to, I knew that I couldn’t take care of a legit ICU patient and 9 other patients. That’s when it happened, Beth-with a smile on her face said, “I’ll just go change and be right back”. I couldn’t believe it--I asked on a scale of 0-10 how serious are you right now? “A 10, I promise!” she replied. This girl came down to talk to me about life, and ended up pulling an all night shift on no sleep and jet lag, just to help out a friend. She saved me that night, and without her I might have just sat down on the floor and cried like a big ole overwhelmed baby. The next morning as we headed into our cabin to sleep for a few hours our friends asked us how our night was, and that’s when my bunkmate and bestie Jen said--”I woke up at 3 am feeling like I needed to come check on you and it took all I had to stay in the bed.” So there it is, once again, God provides. He put me on the peoples hearts in the necessary proximity to make sure I made it through the night caring for HIS children. He didn’t leave me high and dry, but thoroughly cared for. He has constantly and blatantly taken care of me not just over these last few months but my whole life, even when I wasn’t aware of him, when he honestly wasn’t a fleeting thought on my brain, or I wasn’t even keeping him on the fringe of my daily comings and goings. He has always been there there, and will always be there-orchestrating my life, and caring for me, even at 230 am........