To bite off more than one can chew!

To try to do something that is too difficult. If you bite off more than you can chew, you try to do more than you are able to.

Do your best. Do whatever you can, but don't bite off more than you can chew.

It has been busy since I last wrote...a trip to Guernsey, visitors and then beginning the practical of my studies at a Nursing home nearby.

I wish I could say that I am plodding away through my practical, enduring.... but I can only share that after one week I had to terminate this initiative.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place: to "abort" my practical with all the feelings of failure etc that accompany such a decision, and or to continue working in this situation that inspired such worry and anxiety to the extent that I wasn´t eating or sleeping??? It was a case of Hobson´s Choice! What was the lesser of the 2 evils?

On May 14th I started my first day in the Nursing Home and sadly instead of being a "shadow" to a profesional I was pretty much left to sink or swim. Thrown in the deep end as it were to fulfill the tasks of an auxiliary. It was frightening to say the least!

One is not dealing with mere files or books that can be moved about with out fear of damage or rather if they do get lost or harmed; no lives are at stake. But when you are dealing with people, this prospect takes on a whole different persepective plus a tremendous weight of responsability. I found this and other experiences I encountered there to be overwhelming....

One size too big!

I realized that this was not where I wanted to be headed....just like becoming an astronaut and experiencing G force is not on my 10 things I want to do before I die list!

I want to "be" with the dear ones and interact with them & somehow bring sunshine into their day but instead I found myself on a sort of factory line moving pieces from here to there and the more you get done the better.

The pace was intense because of lack of staff. I hasten to add that although they didnt acommpany me as they should; each one of those auxiliaries deserves a medal for the way in which they fulfill their duties with the limited time and energy they have. I take my hat off to them.

I recognize that I personally had reached my limits. Do I struggle with a sense of failure? Yes I do! I like to finish what I start.

Yet, I must be big enough to see that I am not super woman and this was just one size too big for me. I guess my pride has suffered a blow. I must not confuse passion with capacity and it is important to be level headed and honest with myself about my ability to step into this role. After all it´s not every ones thing.

I am encouraged though that I gave it a fair go... To recognize ones shortcomings is not an end, but rather a new opportunity to redefine the initial dream and the way to realize that dream. I have to keep persuing the dream...and try another via....

I am finding rest and peace in the comfort and support (especially from my husband and kids) that many have given me both in my initiation to study after 20 years and now in this moment where I have had to stop the practical. Inspite of my sadness, I do not feel without hope. I say with dear Alfred Lord Tennyson:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it, when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

How do I look?

The first thing I did when I received word about my last exams was run down to Deb´s house and put on this fantastic graduation robe and mortarboard! It felt good to somehow live a long life dream to wear this wonderful ensemble of recognition of effort and reaching the finishing line!

Coming from Guernsey, where there isn´t that tradition of "graduation" after secondary school like there is in the United States, I have to agree that I find it to be both a lack and a loss in the British Educational System. Acknowledgment of completion is so valuable and vital to self esteem, personal growth and positive insertion into society (or subsequent studies) It is true though, that upon completing a degree or higher education the robe and mortarboard are used but needless to say, the majority of British citizens are left without any kind of celebration after finishing secondary school and subsequently thrust into the working world with but a smile and a promise!

So I believe that I am not alone amongst my patriots, to have dreamed about wearing this "acclaimed" attire someday and I felt like now was a justifying kind of a moment to license me to dress up!

Now, I haven´t completed any degree or anything amazing. No letters at the end of my name... which actually is a good thing because surname has enough letters to satisfy even the thirstiest of letter lovers.... but I am excited with my achievements: no matter how minor. Sadly, I do have to concede that one looks grossly overweight in one of these things, as the above picture clearly depicts!

But joking aside, I feel truly excited about wearing it even though it seems a little silly. I imagine this is how God would wish us to feel when He clothes us with the robe of sonship/daughership because we are no longer called slaves, but sons and if sons...then heirs to the living God!

I leave you with this famous quote:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. "

~Marianne Williamson,

A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles," 1992 (commonly misattributed to Nelson Mandela, 1994 inauguration speech)

Got the results back just now!

Okay... so now it´s really done!

I got my results back and I passed the very difficult test with a 9! So now all I have to do is celebrate!

For those of you who don´t know what I was studying, it was a 1 year course for auxiliary nurse to dependents and the elderly.

Yahoo... yahoo....I´m jumping for joy!

Thanks for your support

Study Crazy

No student knows his subject:
the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know.

Woodrow T. Wilson (1856-1924) Twenty-eighth President of the USA.

This weeks has been a difficult week of studying, and I have found myself lost in the world of the verterbraes, spinal cords, traffic accidents with paralasis, Parkinsons, Brain clots, Multiple Sclerosis, ALS..... I was up to my eyeballs in medical terms and had the sensation that the words were swimming across the pages, and swirling about in my head and I wasn´t grasping the half!! It´s a tremendously scary and frustrating experience. Am I alone in this phenomenon?

The very act of conscious learning
requires the willingness to suffer
an injury to one's self-esteem.
That is why young children,
before they are aware of their
own self-importance, learn so easily.

~Thomas SAS

So according to "Thomas" I guess I am not alone ....what I am suffering is an injury to my self esteem... kinda of like what you feel when you are in a room of people speaking a different language and you smile sheepishly, somehow acknowledging a conversation you understand absolutely nothing about, all the while feeling as conspicuous as an illiterate person attending a book fair. (Been there...done that!!!)

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question
and not finding it
than we do from learning the answer itself.
~Lloyd Alexander

Man, does this guy Lloyd know what he is talking about!... I have found out more looking up things in Spanish and English dictionaries and on google than in all my text books! But it all takes time and you cant rush through it.

Just like knowing God.... we have moments when we feel overwhelmed by who He is, moments when we feel the "ah ha" and understand, and moments when we think we know what we are doing and want to rush through all the lessons!

Like studying and learning something new, it takes time and God says :

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

Philippians 1:6 KJV

P.S.

A single conversation with a wise man
is better than ten years of study.
~Chinese Proverb

Anybody want to have a conversation with me about the aged and Dependants? It will take months off my studying!!!!!Ha!! Ha!