Earlier this year, Marie Suazo kindly asked me to join her podcast for an episode. We discussed my experience as a Third Culture Kid, some of my journey with mental illness, and mostly we talked about The Life not Lived.
The podcast episode was published last month. I’ve linked it here in case you want to have a listen.
I wasn’t expecting the publishing to be so personally timely for the theme, but as these things go, it was.
This month marks a certain milestone in my own “life not lived”. It will be five years since I have worked as a nurse. Five years since my husband and I spent a year a part so he could work on his PhD and I could maintain my US Nursing License. It has been four year years since we settled into a flat after being kicked out of College Accommodation during Covid. It has been three years since the worst year of my physical health (to date).
For me, the most impactful milestone still seems to be, or rather to not be, my career as a nurse.
When we moved to the UK in 2017, I believed attaining my UK Nursing License would be easy. I took the IELTs exam, I passed the Computer Based Test easily, I submitted all my needed paperwork, background checks, recommendations, everything. And I waited.
A family friend from Johns Hopkins shared that he would be very surprised if I made it through the red tape and bureaucracy of the time. I ignored him and willed my application to pass.
I waited six months to hear whether or not they had received my paperwork before contacting them, maybe I should have done so sooner. They needed more information. I supplied it. I kept waiting.
I moved to Mississippi. My in laws graciously let me live with them. I worked in the small town ICU and met the doctor who delivered my husband. I watched patient after patient die from meth overdoses, heart attacks, COPD, and a slew of other wearisome ends.
After a year, I moved back to Cambridge to be with my husband. I waited for my UK nursing license.
It didn’t come, as you may have guessed.
There are other reasons, ones I may share in a book someday because they are too long and lengthy to write in a blog post, but the conclusion is the same. I didn’t get my UK nursing license and while waiting for it my application lapsed. I was too discouraged to keep trying so I stayed at an admin job and I watched as my dreams of being a nurse with Samaritan’s Purse or MSF eeked further out of reach.
It was a challenging season. I had to stop watching medical shows or dramas because I missed being a nurse so much. I missed the camaraderie. I missed the purpose. I missed the humbling privilege of being able to hold someone’s hand and help them during a frightening, anxious ridding moment. I missed the easy answer to “what do you do with all your time and all your potential?”
Somehow saying “I stay at home and day dream while working on financial reconciliation spreadsheets for a Cambridge University College” didn’t have the same resounding effect as:
“I’m a nurse.”
“I help people.”
“My time, my effort, my life matters.”
“I am a nurse”
Third Culture Kids have a challenging time settling in any one thing, whether it’s a place, a home, a job, a relationship. Our lives are built on motion and suddenly, as adults, we’re told to stop moving. We’re told to settled down, be stable, be content - even when we know the world continues to stretch out beyond our reaches and if we could just make it to the next thing… we might be happy. Or even better, we might be known.
I chose being a nurse. I couldn't change the way I was raised but I thought I could propel myself into some sort of stable future. Being a nurse was my identity, even when I was exhausted and uncertain about it, I loved the purpose it gave me. I loved that people could see my scrubs and know where I worked, no background questions or lengthy explanations needed.
When I could no longer say “I’m a nurse” I panicked. Every introduction became a source of anxiety. I had lost my footing and I was once again trying to clamber up to a place of belonging, a semblance of settledness, a charade of stability.
Not being a nurse filled me more time to reflect - on perceived failure, disappointments, crippling anxiety, worsening physical health, dwindling savings, the great expanse of the unknown future and finally, faith.
Faith, the cornerstone of my life from the age of nine, is what helped me survive the disappointment of not being a nurse anymore. Clinging to Christ and my identity in Him, as one of His Redeemed, helped me face day after anxious ridden day.
There are setbacks and changes of plans all throughout life. For some reason, this one came to me during a whole season of other changes and I was wildly unprepared for it. I had to beg God every day for increased faith, for a deeper understanding of His plan and His purpose.
And now, five years on, I am able to share some of that purpose.
When my discouragement peaked, I asked God to help me learn from the years of disappointment, changed plans, and personal failures. I asked for help in relinquishing the life not lived, and trust in accepting the life being lived whether I really wanted it or not.
I share some of what I’ve learned in Marie’s podcast, mostly the need to search for counselling and to find contentment in the moment while pursuing hope for the future.
Here are a few other lessons I learned along the way.
1. Failure is, as I’ve stated, often perceived. I didn’t fail out of nursing school. I didn’t have my license taken away due to malpractice. A plan just didn’t pan out the way I had expected.
I took that as personal, even moral, failure. But, there was just a different Plan, a different purpose for those years and that time. How often do we squish God’s great plans into our tiny ideas and then, when our small plans don’t work out we berate ourselves endlessly - for not working hard enough, for not being enough, for not matching everyone else’s highlight reel?
No one called me a failure. No one had to. I told myself that I was one every day and I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d had the common sense to zoom out and see that a few years detour in life isn’t detrimental (it feels like it is in your early twenties but it shouldn’t). Now, when I “fail” I reword it. I remind myself that my idea of success is not necessarily God’s plan for my life and that my identity resides in Him alone, not in a career, or a plan, or a goal, or any earthly credit whatsoever. And that my ideas of failure are not that devastating in the grand scheme of things.
2. Unfulfilled plans can make way for so much more. Since I have not been working as a nurse, I’ve been able to spend so much time doing other things that I love. I’ve been able to take several writing courses and focus simply on writing. This year I’ve been able to write over 100,000 words on various manuscripts. I’ve been able to work with TCK Training and to work with TCK Families in my own church. I was able to quit an office job when my daughter was born to stay home with her, reading “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” daily and giving countless cuddles.
I wouldn’t have had the time or energy or bandwidth for any of that if my own plans had worked out. I would also have appreciated it all a lot sooner if I’d made peace with “failure.”
3. Failure begets faith. I’m not sure how we grow if we don’t experience the intense fear and crippling doubt caused by uncertainty and our perceived failure. I certainly don’t know how my faith would have changed, deepened, and risen to such an importance in my life that all other things have grown dim when compared to living a life set aside for Christ. It wouldn’t have happened without the loss of my nursing career dreams, without the disappointment of unmet expectations, and without the countless nights of concern about the future and finances.
None of these personal lessons make loss, failure, or uncertainty enjoyable and I think there is caution to be had in sharing them. I wouldn’t say to someone in my position four years ago “Oh just look at how God will use this in the future! It will be so much better.”
That may be true, but it’s not helpful. And, it’s not the only truth in the situation.
It’s true that losing out on the life you thought you’d live is painful, heartbreaking, and spirit shattering.
It’s true that it takes time to grieve, time to agonise and cry out to God and beg for clarity.
It’s true that it takes time to heal and time to make another plan and time to look forward to something again.
It’s true it takes an immense amount of energy to pray without ceasing and give thanks in every circumstance.
It’s also true that Christ is there, in the bleakness, in the doubt, in the despair, and in the exhaustion. It’s true that He is there in the new day, in the healing, in the hope, in the infinite tomorrows.
Those are the truths I would share with an individual experiencing a change of plans, or a loss of a dream, or a perceived failure.
It’s not easy. It’s not fun.
But, it does not last forever and you are not alone.
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