home.

Twenty eight days ago I sat on the roof of my Uncle's beach house in the Florida Keys looking at the ocean, towards what I imagined was Haiti, and wondered if I would ever get there. I had been signed up with three different organizations since January 14th trying to get there. They had all fallen through.

I wondered many times if it was God telling me not to go. That despite the strangely strong calling I felt towards the disaster maybe He didn't want me there. Maybe I couldn't handle it.

I don't think I ever believed that I was going to Port au Prince until our plane landed at the tiny airport. It was strange how familiar the place felt (due to my time in TZ) and how incredibly at peace I was being there. The first two days were frustrating and overwhelming as many of you have read, and I wondered what in the world I had come to do.

On the sixth and last day I got it. After loading our critically ill patient into the Land Rover turned ambulance I was finally understanding. After we got her situated with medications in hand and vital signs visible and stable I had a moment to stop and notice what I was doing. It was odd, but I knew that this was what I was meant for, this was why I had come. This was why I had changed my major from theatre to nursing, gone to summer school to catch up, failed a class my first year in the program...and not given up. This was why God had led me to extern in the emergency room for a year and a half. This was why I had stayed in Macon at a trauma center. This was why I had chosen to work in the Surgical Trauma ICU over the other four areas of critical care. I never knew why...and had often thought I may have made the wrong choice.

When beginning nursing school I never wanted to be a nurse in the United States. The last two years have been wonderful. I have loved and liked and disliked my job. I have struggled and cried and laughed and screamed. I have learned.

I attended the Urbana mission conference in 2006 hoping to find a way to do nursing overseas. I met a missionary nurse from India who told me to absolutely not go on the mission field until I knew how to be a nurse. I knew she was right, so I didn't.

Now, four years later, I know how to be a nurse. I'm not a great one yet, there is still so much to learn. But when a sat hovered over my patient speeding down the streets of Port-au-Prince, dodging people and pigs and rubble, in 100 degree heat wearing scrubs filthy and wet with sweat hoping to get a woman whose name I did not even know to a facility that could keep her alive, I knew that I was finished. Finished waiting to be ready. Finished preparing for some great unknown. Finished wondering if I could ever live and work and grow and serve in a third world country. I knew that I could.

The last twenty four hours have been full of tears and questions and longing and missing. They have also been full of hope. I realized today while driving the 1.5 hours from Atlanta to my house in Macon that there was no reason for me to be so sad. There is nothing keeping me from quitting my job, selling my possessions, and moving to Haiti or Tanzania or Honduras. There isn't a lack of education, experience or support making me insecure.

I simply have to decide. Decide through prayer and petition and council and advice, but there are no limitations on what God can do with and through me. How amazing. The God we serve is so huge and so challenging, so hopeful and so direct. He's controlling and jealous and guiding and fulfilling. He loves being glorified.

And He is. Even through destruction and death and trauma. Through earthquakes and orphans and sickness and deformity. I don't always know how, but I know that it's true. I know because I have seen it.