Category: nursing

last post until Monday – healing

It occurred to me today that I’ve lost my focus a bit in regards to taking opportunities given to me by God. Specifically opportunities to pray for people and declare healing over them.

And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (Mark 16:17-18)

selective focus photography of child s hand on person s palm
Photo by Juan Pablo Arenas on Pexels.com

The reason it occurred to me was I’d just taken the dog out with the kids around a local reservoir and in the car park I was sat in the car, another one pulled up with a couple in it and I gave them my parking ticket because there was time left on it. I believe I then missed/did not take a God opportunity that was given me. The man was with his wife and he said at least twice, we are only here briefly to have a look around, we can’t go far because my wife has a dodgy knee. Immediately, “pray” popped into my mind, but instead there was an awkward silence and I said well it is very nice here  and then reversed out and left. Driving up the lane, I knew I should have prayed for her and I nearly went back and again didn’t….

It then occurred to me that I used to look for every opportunity to pray for people, especially for healing and that I hadn’t done this as part of my normal everyday life for quite a while – apart from at home with the children. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a self condemning, “I’m so baaaad” post, it is an observation that I believe the Holy Spirit highlighted to me and is such an opportunity.

So I am going to include any testimonies of prayer, God moving, people being prayed for or not and healings as part of this blog. I am praying and asking now for more opportunities in this area as part of our everyday lives. I love the part where the scripture says “you will lay hands on the sick and they will recover” it says they “will” recover and also it says “recover” and that means they will not always be instantaneously healed on that occasion.

Recovery is an act of restoration, something that Jesus is very good at. If you are sick today, ask him to help you. Also, myself or Chris would love to pray with you or for you. Feel free to post pray requests or message them.

If you read the New Testament there are multiple accounts of Jesus healing the sick and also in my own life since being saved by Jesus I have seen people healed including myself. I would also LOVE people to post in the comments testimonies of their own healing through God.

in my own life – I have had my womb healed and since had two babies, prior to this I had a miscarriage and I do believe there was something wrong with my womb which caused this.

My husband Chris had such a bad back he could hardly bend or move on occasions when I first met him, he was healed, suddenly, without any prayer at all. I had been talking about healing to him the day before and then his back was healed the next day.

I have a friend who was healed from extensive cancer with secondaries.

I have seen someone who could only walk with severe pain then run down the aisle and jump and clap his feet together.

But….I would like to see more…..

The greatest healing of all is actually the gift of salvation, in which healing in every way takes place and you are reunited with God through Jesus sacrifice and resurrection. However, God obviously, (when you read scripture) also wants to heal people from illness and disease. I also know that healing does not always take place, not healing that we see, but I trust God in this and it does not detract from the love and power of God, it just means we do not understand how the big picture works.

There is so much you can say on this subject, it is a massive thing and when you start looking into it there are debates about it, ways recommended of doing it, petitional prayer vs commanding the illness or whatever it is to leave, but I want to keep it simple and just be prompted by the Holy Spirit (God) on how to pray and what to pray for.

I have been fascinated by God healing people for a few years or so now, as a nurse I used to pray when I was dressing wounds, looking after people with terminal illness etc, not always with them knowing, often very quietly, occasionally with them. There was one occasion when I was dressing someone’s leg, she had very extensive skin loss/ulceration to both lower legs and her bed bound husband suddenly sat bolt upright and started singing Abide with me really well and really loudly. It was great.

I love looking at something, say a wound and knowing that God can recreate skin and flesh and make the area new, just at a word. That he can rebuild and renew people, that he can heal anything and anyone, that he can and does cure cancer. I also know (as I have already mentioned) that not everyone gets healed but that God is still good and still wants you to know him.

 

So it’s Monday again..(this post turned into one about nursing…)

Not that Monday morning makes that much difference to me, I’m a stay at home mum at the moment, so I don’t go back to work on the Monday. I have found being a stay at home mum a very hard experience in such a lot of ways, challenging! Not quite how I originally envisaged it – skipping along in fields covered in daisies etc etc.  However, I cannot express enough how grateful I am for being able to do it and how grateful I am for my children and this time with them.  The days when I was pregnant and rushing around in the morning feeling so sick and tired and then going to work as a district nursing sister with a lot of responsibility and a challenging environment (for a number of reasons, the main one being a lot of work and not enough staff) are over!  for now…

nurse

This was me! 8 years ago!

I do like challenges and I am one of those people who has always worked better under pressure and tends to get a bit lazy sometimes when there is none, but! I think (from experience) you can only sustain high levels of activity and problem solving for a while, then you need a break. If you don’t get one, you either just get tired and keep going anyway, which probably means you don’t work to the best of your ability or you burn out.

I haven’t worked in healthcare now for just over 3 1/2 years but it has been a good break.  The NHS is so good, but there are also so many things wrong with the way it works, and quite frequently in the way it treats its nurses.  Also, in the way the public often treats the nurses, in a lot of ways I found the professional capabilities and decision making skills of the nurses were undermined in favour of a demanding patient, who, for example, wanted their ears syringing and they wanted them doing “now!” even though there may not even be the capacity on that particular day/week/month to do so. Even worse, the demanding ones were quite frequently the ones who could actually make an appointment and get out to a surgery, but did not want to, often because historically they had been seen by the district nursing team. Because of public opinion of the nurses/NHS starting to matter more than the actual team and their capacity/capabilities/professional decision making it had seemed in many ways to be the ‘he who shouts loudest gets the best care service’.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved community nursing, the teams I was part of and the people I met and the patients, whatever they were like. I loved the organisation involved in being the sister in charge of the team and I actually quite often liked the people in management too. I don’t like the whole slag the managers off mentality very much. But it is hard work and when I worked there, the nurses did not have the support they needed. I think this was probably a much bigger issue than the local primary care trust, it was more a funding/national issue. It was always put to you that you could work smarter rather than have more staff and sometimes you could. But it is very hard to work smarter when you are just working fending off phone calls, dealing with low staffing levels, and quite frequently low staff morale, seeing seriously ill patients and always trying, trying, trying to give the best care possible. Exhausting.

So, you community health care professionals out there, you nurses, you doctors, you matrons, specialist nurses, OT’s, physio’s, podiatrists, managers! admin staff and anyone else I have forgotten, you are so talented, so committed, so good at what you do.  Keep on keeping on, do the best you can. You community nurses are some of the most dedicated people I have ever met and it was most definitely a gift to be part of that group, although tough. People need to know that, it is not just meandering around ‘popping’ in to see patients, just to check up on them. It is a serious, professional, skilled job, managing complex patients with various problems and with the addition of all the documentation requirements, very, very time consuming. There are so many challenges, but it is worthwhile, I learnt so much from all the different patients I met over the years, I loved that part of it, meeting them and seeing how we could help them or work with them.

This post did not set out to go on about district nursing, it just turned out like that. My sincerest love to all I have worked with and I just want you to know you are brilliant and God loves you! (had to get that in).