Loving My Skills

 May 15, 2025- Thursday

The Topic is “I am Good at what I Love.  I don’t love all that I’m good at.” 

This subject is one of great conflict for me.  I spent 40 years as a Registered Nurse.  This is the profession I know God wanted me in.  I had the people skills needed to work with patients in need.  I was equipped with good critical thinking skills to respond well in emergent situations or complex situations.  As a healthcare manager, I worked as a servant leader and created positive work environments which I know was all part of my mission.  I always had very low turnover rates in my departments.  I was very good at it.  For the majority of the time, I didn’t like it. 

I hated the corporate environment and all the useless corporate games, and I could not get out of the profession fast enough. I found ways to tolerate the profession and ended up in IT which helped my tolerance, but I have not missed any part of the profession I was well equipped by God to work.

I really liked sport and more specifically, football.  My dad took that away from me and I didn’t fully realize I could have moved to baseball because I didn’t know people involved with baseball.  I wasn’t allowed to fully participate.  I really resent that.  I know I would have been very good.

Music filled my athletic gap and, using 20-20 hindsight, I know I was never as good as I thought I was.  I was given many opportunities at church and school to use my voice and music skills, and band and choir were the groups I associated.  That wasn’t where God wanted me professionally.  I didn’t want to devote myself to opera which is where my vocal professors wanted me.  I would not have been able to make a good living in music and my skills were mediocre at best. 

The other area I tried to move to in healthcare was education. I found myself repeatedly in my career being in educational situations.  I was continually finding myself in situations where I was teaching staff, patients, and other colleagues.  I actually moved into healthcare education to teach the use of the emerging electronic health record and further develop the electronic health record to make it health care professional friendly, not information technology professional friendly.

My leadership skills eventually moved me back into management, but I continued to teach.  I think I would have really enjoyed being a history teacher in college because I enjoyed history and the humanities.  Those are areas I found it easy to find the initiative to study but again, I suffered from not having any mentors or guidance to help me determine what was best for me.  I say that while saying I do know God wanted me as a nurse and I did well in that profession although I didn’t really like it. The bottom line is this; I have used the skills God gave me to do what God wanted me to do so I’m good with that.