Following Jesus in Nursing

Christy Secor, Director of Professional Ministries for NCF, shares personal stories of finding connection and community with God and others during times of hardship and challenge. One of the best tools for combating compassion-fatigue is being part of community!

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Produced by InterVarsity Nurses Christian Fellowship USA
Hosted by Lara Kay Kaiser
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Creators & Guests

Guest
Christy Secor, RN, DPN, CDWF
I serve as the Director of NCF Professional Ministries. I am married and live in northeastern Wisconsin. We have two sons, a daughter-in-law, five grandchildren, two cats, and an adorable Morkie who keeps us all in line. It brings me joy to experience the beauty of nature through the songs of birds, a fallen pinecone, or a shiny rock. My windowsills are filled with these treasures! Through my ministry with the Daring Way™, I speak and encourage people in small groups and communities to live from a place of courage and authenticity. 2020 has been a year for me to practice both these values. I had the privilege of caring for my Daddy for seven weeks while he was on hospice until his death in August. The grief has left me raw and exposed. But God has shown great mercy and comfort during the months since my Daddy's death through the prayers and encouragement of others. It's been a beautiful example of the body of Christ responding to provide presence and support. Education and Degrees BSN: University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill (1983) MSN: Nursing Education – Indiana Wesleyan University (2009) DNP: St. Catherine University (2015) Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator (2017)

What is Following Jesus in Nursing?

Educators, nurses, and students, Nurses Christian Fellowship is here for you as you follow Jesus in nursing! It’s a struggle to stay spiritually grounded with a heavy and stressful workload. What does it look like to be cared for by Jesus in a job full of daily challenges where you can also be surrounded by all kinds of trauma? Maybe you’ve wondered how to offer spiritual care to patients or how to face an ethical challenge. We will be hearing inspiring stories from nurses and students and getting sound, faithful advice from experts on these topics and more.

This podcast is produced by InterVarsity’s Nurses Christian Fellowship and hosted by Lara Kay Kaiser, Associate Director of NCF Student Ministries. Join us as we share new episodes with you each month!

Lara:

Welcome to Following Jesus in Nursing, a podcast for nurses and students produced by InterVarsity's Nurses Christian Fellowship. I'm your host, Lara K. Kiser, and together, we'll be inspired by our guests' stories, tackle big questions with experts in the field, and walk together in following Jesus at the intersection of faith and nursing.

Christy:

My nurse practitioner said, you know, you care for everyone else. Give me this time to care for you.

Lara:

Hey, y'all, and welcome back for our second episode of Following Jesus in Nursing. Today we'll be sharing one of the key elements in combating compassion fatigue with our guest, Christy Secor. One of my favorite things about Christy is that she is incredibly generous in sharing her stories with authenticity. And God has really given her so many rich stories and lessons to share with us today. I'm just going to briefly introduce her now because, as you'll hear in a moment, we waste no time in our call, diving right into the deep end.

Lara:

So Christy and her husband live in northeastern Wisconsin where she enjoys time in nature and time with family. They have 2 sons, a daughter-in-law, 5 grandchildren, 2 cats, and 1 dog. Christy's doctoral work focused on strategies for reducing compassion fatigue among nurses, and she's also a certified Daring Way facilitator. We have been honored to have had Christy on our NCF staff team since 2018 as our Director of Professional Ministries. And now let's get into our story.

Lara:

Welcome, Christy. I'm so grateful for you being on this podcast with me today. Last time we spoke, I just really enjoyed our conversation. I learned so much from you and so much about the world of nursing and following Jesus in nursing. So I'm excited to hear more of your story today. So could you just start with telling us a little bit about yourself, about your background in both nursing and faith?

Christy:

Oh, yes. So I'm really excited to be here. Thank you for the invitation. And in terms of how I got started in nursing, I look at two situations that happened within my childhood. I had a grandfather that I really, really loved, and he died very early at the age of 53 after five different heart attacks. Just seeing how he struggled made me want to help address that pain. And I think even more so than than that situation was my mama. She dealt with chronic pain her entire life. She had chronic migraines from the time she was in high school throughout all of her adult life. And back then, physicians would throw any and every kind of medication at her. She was opioid dependent for most of her life, and she operated out of these cycles where there would be a big blow up in the house, and then she would pull back to emotionally protect herself.

Christy:

She would then come out of it, and there would be this good phase, and then there'd be another blow up. And I learned as a child how to perform and how to present what she wanted to see. I also learned to dread the good things, because I knew when something good was happening, that meant another explosion was about to take place. But all of these led me into people that are dealing with pain, chronic pain issues. And then just from my own experience, the personal pain that I know that each of us carries, all of that has driven me to where I am. My nursing experience is both here and there. I have worked in med surg, oncology. And back then, I mean, that was before really hospice got to be as predominant as it is, and so we would have, you know, people that would come up for chemo, and then eventually they would come up to the floor to pass away. So I've dealt with that. I've worked in utilization review.

Christy:

I've been in civilian hospice hospitals, military hospitals, and, taught in higher ed, both pre-licensure nursing students and RN to BSN students. And then my last role before coming on staff here with Nurses Christian Fellowship was working in quality and regulatory. So I got into not only those components, but also patient experience. I became the ethics chair of our hospital and worked with a wonderful team called the Bounce Back Project. We experienced two different traumas in our facility. One was the loss of a physician who died in a very freak motorcycle accident, and then the second was a physician who took his life in our hospital spiritual center. And our staff found him and were not able to revive him. And that that really led to what is the pain that we each are carrying that we're not addressing? Why don't we have courage? Why do we feel like we have to put on this face? And then I understood all of that because of what I had experienced with my mama, and so I became a part of this team.

Christy:

It's what led me to complete my doctoral work and then also to complete the work as a certified Daring Way facilitator. And that's based off of the work of Dr. Brene Brown, and she really focuses on courage and shame, resilience, living with authentic authenticity. And so yeah. I went from my elbow to get to my thumb to answer your question, but, yeah. God has used all of these things to bring me to where I am, and it has given me an ability, whether it's a nursing student or a nurse in multiple different areas of practice. I mean, it's given me a connection point.

Lara:

Yes. Of course. You have experienced a lot of trauma, if I can say that, in your life. A lot of very difficult things. What's always struck me about you is that you're a very joyful person. How do you hold these things in tension, Christy? I mean, you have experienced a lot of hard things. Some people would look at that and say, Oh, well, God doesn't care or, you know, why would God do this to my me or to the people that I love? Why would he take away my grandfather at such a young age? You know, why would he send doctors who would, you know, put my mom into this?

Christy:

Yes. That's the southern accent.

Lara:

Yes. I love it. I love it. It's so wonderful that you always say the 'go around your elbow to get to your thumb.'

Christy:

Elbow to get to my thumb. That's another Southern saying.

Lara:

It is. I'm gonna use that because I do that, too. But you've experienced all these things. It'd be so easy to say, Why, God? But yet you follow Jesus. Your love, the joy of the Lord comes through so clearly in your life and in the way you speak with people. How how have you gotten there? How have you integrated your faith with all these things that you've experienced?

Christy:

It hasn't been easy. My daddy always said I have learned best with a two-by-four. And so there's been a lot of questioning of God, anger at God, telling God when I was younger, You did not keep your end of the bargain. You know, I have met all of these you know, I'm presenting this image of a young Christian woman and young Christian nurse, and life is still messed up around me.

Christy:

So, yes, not blessing. I'm gonna take control and do things my own way. And you can imagine how that went. I just fell flat on my face. And coming from those kinds of places, experiencing forgiveness you know, in my own personal relationship with God, but also in my relationship with my parents and and with others, it all has led to me a place of of deeper trust.

Christy:

And there's been several different, I would almost call them pivot points of me looking and turning. Most recently, back in 2020 as the pandemic was going on, my daddy developed sepsis and was hospitalized. And at that point in the pandemic, families were not allowed to be with patients. And so, thank goodness, I as a palliative care provider got involved in his care and started asking him questions in terms of what he wanted. Did he want to be resuscitated if something happened?

Christy:

And and he said, Well, I'm okay for that so that. Christy and Alan, my brother, both of us live out of state so that we could get there and be there. And I just told told them. I said, Daddy, you don't want to be resuscitated. You don't want CPR just for that. I said, I wouldn't want to put you through that.

Christy:

And, I said, what is it that you really want? And he said, I really just wanna go home. And so, I mean, they were able to get more of the sepsis cleared up, but he was very, very weak. And so I told him, I'm heading for Minnesota. I'm heading down, and I drove through the night.

Christy:

And, my sister and I had the privilege of caring for him in the last seven weeks of his life. And so I learned so many lessons from my dad during those last seven weeks, and, we talked about letting go and holding on to things loosely. My daddy had given me permission when I was in high school to not feel that I had to stay in, you know, in North Carolina where I grew up. And that was really the expectation. I mean, you're supposed to, you know, get married and and move a half mile away. He just said, I want you to take wings and fly, and I did. It led me, I mean, to the life that I have. And he said the same thing to me during those seven weeks, and I was able to tell him, Daddy, I'm right where I should be. I know I'm right where I should be. But through that time, through the deep grief that followed, grief that was not resolved, you know, in my own heart in life, grief that led to a diagnosis of depression for myself.

Christy:

It was being connected to health care providers, my nurse practitioner who said, You know, you care for everyone else. Give me this time to care for you. And she was genuine in what she was saying, and that made such a difference. It was also during this time that we moved from Minnesota to Wisconsin to be closer to family. One of the things that I had really felt God calling us to do, because I wanted to be a part of my grandkids' life the way that I saw my daddy be a part of the lives of his grandkids, and the impact of just that generational influence. What I didn't realize at the time was that my husband, Dan, was gonna be diagnosed with multiple forms of dementia. And so he has Alzheimer's. He has frontal temporal lobe dementia with a Parkinsonian component. And so, dealing now with my depression, dealing with the grief, dealing with this diagnosis. I got connected to a therapist who was great.

Christy:

I was connected to an Alzheimer's support group that I am still a part of, and, oh my goodness, they have loved me through so much. And my the Sunday night Bible study that I lead of nurses all across the country, They have been a part of my life and they still are, and I'm a part of theirs. It just it allowed me the opportunity to heal. It allowed me to learn the spiritual discipline of lament, and it's opened up. I've learned how to hold joy and grief together and know that you can have both at the same time.

Christy:

And so being a part of all of that trauma, all of that grief, all of that sadness, it's provided me more connections with others, but it's also deepened my relationship and the intimacy that I have in my relationship. Would I wish it on anyone else? No. But would I trade it for anything else? No. I wouldn't trade it for anything else because it's brought me to where I am. And I am just so, so grateful, for what God continues to teach and to show me. Yeah.

Lara:

That's amazing. You touched on something that I think is so interesting. You were talking about grief and lament and joy, all these things coming together, but that these harder things that you faced have brought you into spaces of community and connection. And, you know, what stands out to you about some of these harder moments are this nurse practitioner who cared for you and expressed God's love and grace to you in those harder moments. I think for a lot of us and especially, in nursing, there's a tendency to want to care for others. You named this, a minute ago.

Christy:

Yes.

Lara:

So much caring for others and maybe almost a difficulty in receiving, from others and, you know, the pairing with depression and that drive to isolate. Why do you think we do this? Why do we resist receiving help from others? Why do we isolate when we need help the most? And how do we fight back against that tendency? How did you say, Yes. I will receive this help?

Christy:

Well, I mean, nurses are taught how to think, how to create a plan, how to act on that plan, and it's all about moving, you know, that other person, of course, with their input, to a place of healing or more wholeness, better health. And, I mean, for me, personally, this desire to care, to nurture, it was also connected to a need for affirmation. I mean, because that's how I was loved, and it's taken me a long time and a lot of therapy to be able to work through that. Yes. Some of it was childhood things for me, but I also think just as a culture and as a society, we are taught how to be caretakers. We are taught how to, you know, to move into places we're supposed to be self sufficient.

Christy:

We're supposed to have all this. There's even a term: grit, that is used. It's important to have grit. And I think a lot of it is just kind of this 'pull yourself up by the bootstraps' and do what you've got to do to get through the day. I would have students, you know, that would come back as graduates, and they would say, Professor Secor, you know, you taught me how to handle if a trach pops out to someone's chest. But you didn't teach me how I am not supposed to go and pee in a 12-hour shift.

Christy:

How am I supposed to not have to go to the bathroom? And, I mean, these are the things that we face as nurses, and the pandemic has just opened up the fractures that are a part of our profession with all the trauma that has taken place, even still today; the staff shortage, that faculty and nurses all across are experiencing. I had to learn that it was okay to ask for help. And again, God is so gentle in how he teaches these things. I mean, yep.

Christy:

Sometimes he does use a two-by-four, but even that two-by-four, I feel like it's padded in velvet. You know? I had a situation where, just within my church, there was a person in the homeschool group that I was a part of who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. And she did not have the strength to prepare meals for her family. And so, I mean, there was a sign up to help make these meals.

Christy:

Well, Dan at the time was out of work. And so when it was my turn to fix a meal, I mean, I was going to the grocery store and, you know, I was getting mac and cheese for us. And I was purchasing meat for her family, and I was putting it on a credit card, you know, because we just didn't have it in the bank. And I remember finally Dan was like, we can't keep doing this. And I finally went and talked to her and, you know, had that courage to be real. And she was like, oh my goodness. This is not what I would want. I don't have the strength, to make these meals, but I do have money right now. And so I will give you money if you can continue to make the meals, I'll give you money so that you can buy groceries, you know, for yourself and and and also help out my family.

Christy:

But I had to be willing to be open, to be vulnerable, and that's what I love about the communities that we have in student ministries, in professional ministries. Our groups are safe places where people can be real, where they can be vulnerable, where they can say, I'm not making it right now. I need help. And they'll find support. They'll find encouragement. They'll find people that will share similar stories. I mean, to know that you're not alone. I think it's really hard for us to have compassion for ourselves. I know I sucked at self compassion.

Christy:

So, to be able to have compassion for ourselves, and I think the enemy also loves to say to us, This is only happening to you. This is just your issue. And to know that that is a lie that he tells to many of us and how we as a community can come back and just say, Uh-uh. Not gonna happen here. Not gonna accept that one. And, I mean, just to have Scripture poured out, to ask the the Holy Spirit to come in and open up these parts of our hearts and our lives where we need healing, where, I mean, where we need him to go in and go, Oh, this is where I'm smelling something nasty behind this door. What do we have locked behind here? And, I mean, to know that you're in a place where you can do that with others.

Lara:

Absolutely. That's so well said. There's so so much in what you're saying, Christy, and I love the beauty of how, when we share our real needs or self disclose this is where I'm at. This is my reality. This is what I need, and I see your needs and would like to meet your needs.

Lara:

When we can come together and be honest about those things, I really believe that the Holy Spirit has a way of bringing people together in such a way that it's a joy and a gift and a privilege to be able to meet the need of another person, while that person is able to meet the need of another. And it just comes together in this beautiful community of interdependence, that we can't have unless people open the door with that vulnerability, that self disclosure, that honesty, and transparency. And I think that's what we're all looking for. But we, you know, sometimes don't want to take the first step. But every every time I talk with student leaders or nurses, they're looking for that kind of community and and openness in a group. They are always so grateful for the person who's willing to go first.

Christy:

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Well and that's what I experienced growing up and, I mean, I think many people can probably identify with this. I mean, my mama could be upset with me and, you know, then the phone would ring and it would be, Hello. Uh-huh. How are you? And I would just go, how in the world does she do that so quick? But there was this whole thing, and I think it's important to say, this is not what my mama wanted to be. This is not how she wanted to be.

Christy:

I mean, she was a woman of faith. She was an incredible prayer warrior. I still see the impact of her prayers, you know, carried on in generations, but she did not have the skills, she did not have that place that she could feel safe with others. And, yeah, she taught me so so much.

Christy:

I am so grateful for her, and I'm grateful for even her asking, you know, forgiveness for the the issues and the problems that we had. I've come to love her even more now that she's gone. And, as I experience, you know, new things in my life, I'm like, oh, alright. I understand what you were feeling, mama, a little bit more now. And I can because I'm coming from that place of of compassion for myself, I'm not resisting it. I can welcome it, and I can see myself walking through it. I don't stay stuck. So, yeah, she taught me a lot. I'm very grateful for that.

Lara:

And that it sounds almost like compassion for yourself produced even more empathy for others.

Christy:

It does. It does. I mean, there's research that shows that it does. And I think as nurses, when we're experiencing the trauma that we experience, when we experience the burnout, the secondary traumatic stress that we experience, I mean, all of this leads into compassion fatigue. We start building these layers around ourselves.

Christy:

It's a protective thing. But those layers are numb. And when you are numb, I learned this just from my own life, there was a time frame where I said, I'm just tired of feeling pain, and so I am going to cut off any feelings of pain. I'm not going to experience them. I'm not gonna go through them. And I was successful at doing that. But when you cut off one side of your emotions, you also cut off the other. You can't just go one way and say I'm just gonna cut off the negative. It cuts off, you know, joy and and happiness and gratitude. I walked through years of just living in what I refer to as my gray zone of life. And so being able to be open not only to the pain allowed me to also to be open to the things that I have that are good in my life, the things that I can be grateful for.

Lara:

Yes. That's so well said. And this whole, episode, we're just doing a little bit of that going around our elbow to get to our thumb. So let's circle back around and tell us a little bit about a lot of these terms, these buzzwords, compassion, fatigue, burnout, you know. Just exhaustion in general, and, of course, we know the pandemic multiplied that, all what was already existing in the field of nursing. So, could you just define some of these terms a little bit and explain why do so many nurses experience this?

Christy:

Yes. So, it maybe would help just to share this is the area where I was doing my doctoral work. And my doctoral work looked at strategies to reduce compassion fatigue among nurses. And part of with what I was learning in terms of definitions, you know, burnout are the things that we experience in our work environment that, you know, start to kind of sap away, wick away our strength, our energy. There are things that are very much a part of the work environment.

Christy:

The secondary traumatic stress that I refer to as nurses, we are working with people at times where they're going through potentially significant trauma. And as we're gathering histories and as we're getting to know people, I mean, we hear their stories of trauma, and then we watch their stories of trauma being lived out. Nurses also have issues that we face in our profession, workplace violence, where we are actually the victims of trauma. And so it's not only watching it. Sometimes many times we actually live it and we experience it ourselves.

Christy:

And so the burnout is that in that secondary and traumatic stress would come together. When those things come together, it leads to the compassion fatigue. Those two pieces contribute to the compassion fatigue. And once you hit that, you know, level, it's like it's an emotional part, it hits the emotional part of who we are where we're not able to care and and support others in the way that we should. And the thing that I've, you know, found in my research or in my research project that I was doing. I implemented some learning modules that, you know, talked about resilience and and strategies that we can use. And, I mean, most nurses will tell you the way we go through learning modules is just click, click, click, click because we just we want to get through because time is something that we are feel like we're always fighting. I had 2 different groups. I had the nurses as a whole within the hospital, the community hospital that I was working with, and then I had the nurse leaders that I was working with. And I did one thing different with the nurse leaders.

Christy:

We actually met together in person on a regular basis, and that's the group that showed the significant difference in how they were dealing with these things. And it really affirmed for me yes. The strategies are important. Yes. Self compassion is important.

Christy:

But when you get these things into community, boy, that's when it really, it's like all the other pieces. I mean, they really start to come together. All the puzzle pieces, they fit, and they dovetail together just so beautifully, so beautifully.

Lara:

Yes. Thank you for that description. I feel like I understand a little bit more of, you know, how and why those things come together. Earlier, you talked about numbing. And, before before this call, we were talking a little bit about the layers that people put on to protect themselves when things are hard or challenging.

Lara:

What does that look like when people are putting those layers on? What are some of those layers made of, so to speak, and how do we go about addressing the deeper struggles underneath those layers? How do we peel back the layers when once they're already there? Yep. So I think some of it sometimes is, we find ourselves, you know, triggered in a certain way where, when we are are triggered, there's really 3 different ways that we can respond. We can, you know, we try to move towards this. This is part of what I learned through Brene Brown's work. We move towards where we will try to people please. We can move back where, you know, what my mom would do. You know, she would just pull back, very much like almost like a sea anemone.

Lara:

Like withdraw.

Christy:

And if kind of just regret, she would withdraw. Or we can move against and, you know, we kinda come out and we attack. And in nursing, the way that I've seen this, I see it in terms of how we relate to people. Sometimes it comes out, you know, this attack or sometimes it comes in terms of we start to dehumanize the patients that we're working with. We start seeing them as incapable of making choices. We start blaming them for whatever that they are experiencing. And we, as nurses, feeling. We stop expressing empathy. We can stop expressing compassion. It really becomes, it really becomes, how do I describe it? Almost like it's not robotic, but it's maybe

Christy:

more automatic. Maybe it's just more hitting the dots. m On autopilot. Like, when I drive home from the grocery store, I'm not really there. I'm not present in that space. I'm just doing it, going through the motions.

Christy:

Yes. And you can have, I mean, you can go through hoops in terms of right. I'm supposed to do this. I'm supposed to do this. I'm supposed to do this.

Christy:

But if, I mean, you miss that whole care and empathy, a part of that person's story, you miss knowing, kind of where they're coming from what is contributing to them being where they are. One of the things that I was doing, when I was working to renew my nursing license, I was shadowing in the emergency department. And I know that I would not make a good emergency department nurse because when you're in the emergency department, it's all about the one thing that brought them in. And so, I mean, there would be, I still remember this a gentleman who was a diabetic and he had a foot ulcer. And so he came in for the one thing for, you know, treatment for that ulcer.

Christy:

But I'm thinking in my head, wait. How well is his diabetes controlled? Does he need more meds? Is there something else? And, you know, the nurse that I was working with, she was very patient.

Christy:

She would just say, That's not what we do. There's others that are supposed to, you know, be able to address that. But it I felt like but yeah. But will the others gonna be in a place where they will allow themselves the time to, you know, start to hear his story and to, you know, really understand. And it wasn't that the emergency department nurse, I mean, she was doing a great job. She was showing care. She was being empathetic. But use that just as an example of when we actually have the space to learn those stories, we don't allow the opportunity for those stories to be shared. We cut off the communication.

Christy:

And so we end up. There was an a nurse that I worked with at the hospital, and, I mean, this was probably the biggest, was a significant landmark for me just in terms of with her own practice where she made the statement, and nurses have a dark sense of humor. She made the statement that, you know, rather than all this aromatherapy that they're, you know, putting into into waiting rooms, lounges, those kinds of things. If we would just use chloroform, and then you we would have no more issues. And I just went, oh, boy. Dark.

Christy:

Oh, boy. Because this is not good. I mean, if, you know, if that's where she's at in her practice and again, we say things. We use humor, that humor was really just screaming of, I'm not in a good place. I am feeling overwhelmed. I, yeah, I'm not able to provide just whole person care, and whole person care. I mean, mind, body, spirit. So yeah. So those are some of the ways that we can develop. They develop over time, And there's a lot of things that can move, into that space. Again, I mean, the issues that we're facing at work, difficult patients that we encounter, It's very hard. It's very difficult for nurses. I don't wanna sound like I'm picking on the emergency department, but they I mean, I have a lot of friends that have worked emergency departments, and it's very difficult to go from, you know, where you've had someone that you worked on, that you were in a code. Maybe it was a child.

Christy:

I mean, that it wasn't successful. And then you go to the next room over where I mean, it's someone that's angry because you did not show up with the blanket that they wanted, the warm blanket that they asked for, you know, 30 minutes ago. And nurses don't always allow themselves the time, I mean, to decompress and to actually work through some of what they are experiencing, you know, when they have these difficult things. And so again, you build layers so that you can cope, so that you can survive, so that you can get through another shift.

Lara:

Yeah. Which makes this make a lot of sense. Like you were saying, I mean, it's I don't wanna say it's, like, justified, but it's so hard that people we grasp at the best coping mechanisms that we can find to deal with what our life or our work throws at us. And, you know, we do the best that we can, the best that we know how. So it's understandable, but how do we move through this, you know, whether it's kind of stuck behind several layers unhelpful coping mechanisms that we've come up with and that, you know, we already have in place or or even speaking to nursing students who are about to, you know, start their journey into navigating these triggering waters, what are some ways that we can cope in healthier ways? You talked about decompressing. Like, what can that look like, or how how can nurses choose better ways of of coping with these challenges that they face every day?

Christy:

Yep. So I do think it's very simple, but even breath. I mean, just the importance and the power of taking a deep breath. I mean, one of the things that I would do sometimes I would have to, you know, go to the med room or go into the supply closet and just give myself time if it was to cry or if it was just to stomp my feet or if it was, you just to verbalize, this sucks. This hurts.

Christy:

I mean, just to It helps to have someone else on, your unit or in your class or your department that you know you can go and be real with. This is where I think that our student groups and our professional nurse groups be of help. I mean, as you talked about our student groups, they're going through some significant things. Nurses Christian Fellowship, we provide a mentorship program for new grads in that first year where they are paired with a Christian nurse, and, you know, the goal is minimally to meet once a month. I mean, just to be able to talk through some of these things that they're experiencing. You communities. You need safe people that you can talk to. It may be it's a brother or a sister. Maybe it's a nurse within your church. And I think also it's important that we don't cut off our own spiritual support. I know my master's program and in my doctoral program, it's like when things got tight for time, piece that I cut out was my daily time with God, which makes no sense at all because, I mean, he's a source of my strength. Recognizing that I still need that, recognizing that can happen, you know, in the car where talking to him, you know, heading back and forth to work. That can be listening Christian music. That can come even in things. I posted 2 little cards inside my garage, one that said work and one that said home. And so before, you know, I would lay everything out with God in the car. And as I parked and as I came in the house, I would physically, you know, hit the home card because alright. Now I'm gonna be in home mode. Now I'm going to be present with my family. And then, you know, when I would leave the next day, I would turn around and I would hit the work mode so that I could start the day with that mindset of towards, alright. I'm going to be present with others. So Yeah. I don't know. Does that make sense. Are are those helpful?

Lara:

I think especially that I love that last example of hitting the work card or hitting the play card or the home card, which is also play sometimes. But the idea of practicing presence, of saying, you know, Jesus is here right now in this moment always. He's always right here in the present moment. And when we pause to say, am I right here in this present moment? or am I layering and sort of pushing that away, and pushing Jesus away, really? And so love that example of that physical touching that sticky note saying, I am here.

Lara:

I am present in this place where Jesus is right now. I think it's so powerful to name and to make that shift for ourselves. Well, Christy, you have shared so much wisdom with us already today. I just wanna give space. Is there any last pieces of advice that you would like to share with nurses, nursing students, or nurse educators? I think just the need to recognize we are not meant to do this alone, that we were created for community. Nurses Christian Fellowship offers numerous safe places for that. And so if there is a student, a faculty member, or a nurse out there, I would love for them to reach out. They can use ncf@intervarsity.org and just share, I'm looking for a student group. I'm looking for a professional nurse group. I would love to talk with someone 1 on 1 about what I am experiencing. These that we provide, and they make such a difference in the lives of others. Yeah. That that would be the one piece.

Christy:

Community makes such a difference. And it's been the one part that has been consistent in my own life and in my own journey, knowing this is how I'm able to stand. It's on the, you know, the shoulders and the foundation that others have have laid for me. It's based off of the prayers and the courage of of others, and it's based off of, most importantly, the love that Jesus Christ has for each of us. So yeah.

Lara:

I love that. And your sort of vision statement for Nurses Christian Fellowship for the professional groups is it's about relationship. Right? And so just that speaks to that relationship with the Lord, but also relationship with each other and community. We can't do this alone.

Christy:

Yes. So that's actually I mean, I really feel that God gave me that phrase and it moves 3 different directions. It moves, you know, the relationship that I have with myself, the relationship that I have with God, and then the relationship that I have with others. And I really feel that Nurses Christian Fellowship has been a place students, for faculty, for nurses to experience growth in each of those areas.

Lara:

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Christy. This has been a delight to talk with you today, and I've learned so much and been blessed by this conversation. So thank you so much for being on.

Christy:

Thank you, Laura. I'm grateful.

Lara:

God's design for community is interdependent, which totally goes against the grain of self sufficiency. So when Christy tested some strategies for combating compassion fatigue in nursing, she noticed that the group that met together in person experienced the most benefits. She said strategies and self compassion are important, but when you get these things into community, all the pieces fit together. So if you're not already part of a Christian community, join or start one, and then show up in those community spaces ready, not only to care for others, but also to be cared for. Your willingness to go first in sharing what you need and allowing others to support you will go a long way in opening the door to true connection and support in your community spaces.

Lara:

You can join or start a nurse or student group with NCF. And if you'd like more information on how to do that, email us at ncf@intervarsity.org or see our show notes for the connection link. And thank God that he has not designed us to go alone, but to be together and following Jesus in nursing. Hey. Thanks for joining us for another inspiring episode of Following Jesus in Nursing.

Lara:

We hope you've been encouraged and equipped in integrating your faith with your nursing practice. Be sure to check out our show notes for info about connecting with Nurses Christian Fellowship, as well as links and resources mentioned in today's episode. And remember, as you go about your work as a nurse, you are not alone. Jesus is right there with you, guiding your steps and using you to bring healing to those in need. Thanks for listening to Following Jesus in Nursing, and may your faith continue to be a light in the world of healthcare.