Most years, the slogan or catchphrase for Nurses’ Week is selected and spread worldwide, and we as nurses are humbled and honored. We do love our jobs and they provide us with extreme fulfillment. But the last few years have changed things a bit for me, and I am sure for many others. And with that, I’ve written my own tribute to nurses.
Happy National Nurses’ Appreciation Week 2023. To speak of the things we have lost in years past would unfortunately press us into the oblivion of a new normalcy whereby even the worst days felt kind of okay. It’s just not normal to feel okay after those days.
We’ve worked hard to move past that season of ugly, or horror, of humanity, and of seeing the most beautiful parts in people. This year, I thank nurses for steadily and surely exhibiting confidence when your insides were wavering. I thank you for looking at your colleagues and your peers as teammates as opposed to someone who simply may be able to swap shifts. I thank you for your consistency. I can’t even think of a profession in which, despite all things, you continue to present yourselves with hearts and hands of service.
I thank you this nurses’ week for still allowing yourself to feel again--to laugh again, to cry again….to feel anything but nothing! That takes great courage, and I’m so proud of you! Happy Nurses’ Appreciation Week for figuring out and daily continuing to figure out how deep sorrow, joy, harmony, gratitude, and weariness exist in this awesome world in which we still get to serve.
I know--I do know--that serving often times feels obligatory. I also know the kinds of pumps that keep our bodies’ going, because I am one of you. I will be a nurse until I am returned to the earth from which I was brought forth. So I know that despite the hard parts, you’re here because your heart is in it, even now.
Happy Nurses’ Appreciation Week 2023 to each of you. I pray that you still feel it where I do, and still today, wouldn’t tell anyone differently that you’ve chosen the BEST profession ever.
Keri Eckhardt Wilbur, EdD, MSN, CEN, CNE, is a professor of nursing at Middle Georgia State University in Macon, Georgia. She currently teaches in the PLBSN track.
Nurses Christian Fellowship is celebrating and recognizing nurses all through the month of May. The NCF website offers a free downloadable Bible study on Hebrews 11, highlighting A History of Faith for Nursing, and the entire current issue of the Journal of Christian Nursing is free to read online through all of May.
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