Month: November 2020

The Chair

 

The life of a retail pharmacist can be daunting some days. There is much expected of our time, and it feels there is never enough time to complete all the tasks required. Many pharmacists, if asked, would express feelings of being burnt out by their job. Over my decade of working as a pharmacist, I have felt and seen a shift in the profession. The most accessible health care professional, with the desire to help patients with their medication and health needs, often now feels jaded by the job. They are losing the part of themselves that led them to become a pharmacist in the first place, their heart.

I have felt this myself, and it was getting bad before my cancer diagnosis. I was questioning if this career was where God wanted me to be. My pharmacy school entrance essay was filled with ideas for wanting to support my community and build relationships with my patients. I wanted to work in collaboration with doctors to ensure the very best care was being provided and find the best way to help patients with their health concerns. Somedays the parts of being a pharmacist I desired to create in my career feel miles away. I was rapidly losing hope in being able to provide the type of care I felt was needed for my patients. I was struggling every day to merge all the corporate expectations with the heart of why I was a pharmacist. What was I still doing all of this for? Who was I really helping day to day? Then I was diagnosed with cancer and forced to step away from my pharmacist’s life for 5 months.

The distance and time gave me the ability to reflect on what I wanted for the rest of my life. If I could change my life going forward, what would that look like? What would my best self need to do better, to love harder, and serve more? I realized I am supposed to continue on as a pharmacist for now but to dispense not only prescriptions for medicine during my days. I need to start giving prescriptions for hope. I have been surprised through this mission to be finding little moments each day to connect with people in a whole new way. The best place I have found to take a moment with someone is when they are sitting in the vaccination chair.

Flu vaccines are a big part of my days currently. With the pandemic still prevalent as we approach flu season, there have been more people than ever before wanting a flu vaccine. A flu vaccine does not take long at all, just a minute or two. In this small window of time, I have been able to have such meaningful moments with people as we sit together outside the pharmacy, near the bakery goods. That is all the time it takes to connect with someone else if we allow ourselves to be present and intentional. When you ask someone how they are doing and really take the time to be empathetic and listen, they will open and allow you to shine the light of God into their day and be a voice of hope.

While sitting in the chair, people have told me about the loss of loved ones. They have opened up about their own cancer journey. I have held hands with people as they shed tears about their health decline. I have talked about their relationship with God. More than one person has amazed me with their closeness to Him and has encouraged and inspired me to talk with God more. These moments where I am allowed to encourage someone else bring such meaning and purpose to my days in the pharmacy. I am learning my role as a pharmacist can be so much more than overseeing medication safety. It is about bringing hope to those who need it, being a source of healing for more than their body. I am not sure what the future has in store for me, but I know I want more of this.

Give God Your Backpack

There are many points of tension in our bodies. The shoulders and neck are familiar places we feel our external stress expressed within our muscles. All of us know the feeling, a stiff neck, tight shoulders, often accompanied by a dull headache. I recently lifted the backpack of a nursing student I work with and it transported me back to my days in pharmacy school, my backpack always crammed full of books, far too heavy to be carrying every day on my own. My dad was constantly lecturing me with concern to leave some of that heaviness behind, to not burden myself with so much baggage. He didn’t want me to get hurt carrying so much with me.

I am certain this is how God views our carrying around our burdens with us. We do not have visible backpacks though, these backpacks can not be seen, but are still very real. We load ourselves each day with all of our worries, stress, anxiety, and all we believe is needed to control what we may encounter. As we continue to allow stress and anxiety to rule our days, our backpacks get more full, and heavier, dragging us down, tensing our muscles, and creating an environment where it is hard to be our best selves. This is not what God has planned, He wants to help us shoulder the difficulties in our lives. Psalm 55:22 demonstrates this desire to support us in our times of need by saying “cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you”. My personal struggle with this concept is I am the type of person who likes to have control. Whenever you hand over something you are trying to manage to someone else, even if that someone is God, it means you are also giving up some or all of your control over it. Also interesting, I feel anxious whenever I have to burden someone else with my problems, also a symptom of wanting to have all of the control. The truth is, I want to be able to solve my own problems, it is not that I do not want help, it is that I have trouble with the idea of expecting or asking someone else to have to shoulder a burden I feel is mine to carry. I have trouble remembering God is infinitely powerful, always present, and desires to be close with me. I wonder if He feels insulted by my unwillingness to allow Him to help me when my backpack feels too heavy for me to carry and when I insist I am fine and can figure it out on my own.

Each day during my cancer journey, I have learned a little more about God and His willingness to help me. Cancer was a breaking point for my “carry it all yourself” attitude. It brought me to my weakest place physically, spiritually, and emotionally. I finally had to rely on God to help me carry my fears, doubts, and sickness. I couldn’t take care of myself or my family like I was accustomed to doing, I had to ask for and accept help from others. I learned to take the backpack off for a while and let someone else help me carry it. I now start the morning in prayer with God, asking for His help each step of the way, and handing over my backpack of burdens to Him before walking into the day. I am not perfect, and I have noticed that many days I end up taking back all the weight I gave to Him in the morning. It’s like throughout the day I slowly repack it back in, I take it out of God’s hands and put it back into my own until by the end of the day I am wearing the backpack full of all the stress, anxiety, worry, shame, and problems I had set down in the morning. I do believe this is a normal struggle many of us have. We are human, and with that comes free will and an instinct to feel we are in control. The ability to hand over our burdens and lose control is a skill we need to build within ourselves, it doesn’t come easy.

The goal for each of us daily should be to consciously release the heaviness we carry. To pray in the morning for the ability to allow God to enter into our day, shoulder our burdens, and help us find the solutions to the problems ahead. Giving God our backpack doesn’t make the burdens vanish immediately. Sometimes the answers take a long time to come, and the weight stays with us. What it does is allow us to breathe again. It allows God to be a part of the process of finding solutions. It helps us to ditch the anxiety and worry for a clearer mind, which frees us up to think creatively and be present in our hard situations. When we give our control over to God, He can do His best work.