A New Respect
A New Respect
My younger sister has been a registered nurse for the last fifteen years or so. She’s an incredible nurse—and truly an incredible person. She’s always been one of my biggest cheerleaders, and we’ve always been close. So when she was in nursing school and asked me to help her study for an exam, it was a no-brainer.
Now, I like to think of myself as a smart person. I’m a licensed elementary teacher. I have a reading endorsement on that license. I even took a class focused purely on phonics—relearning them myself and learning how to teach them to others.
But the moment I started reading over those medical terms with her? All that confidence flew out the window. I couldn’t pronounce half of the words. I was stumbling and second-guessing everything, nearly in tears from how overwhelmed I felt.
It was humbling, to say the least.
I kept thinking, “These words don’t follow any rules!” And honestly, why isn’t medical jargon its own language, like Spanish or French? I knew how to sound out words, but this wasn’t sounding out. This was something else entirely.
That moment gave me a whole new level of respect for my sister’s calling. What she does every day isn’t just hard—it’s full of complex language, emotional decisions, and people who need compassion and strength in their most vulnerable moments.
And here’s what hit me: just because you know how to do something doesn’t mean you actually can do it without help, growth, or grace.
That truth isn’t just about careers or medical terminology—it’s about life and faith too. How many times have we thought we had it all figured out, only to be humbled by something we didn’t see coming? A challenge we didn’t expect. A moment that revealed our limits. It’s in those moments God teaches us humility, and reminds us we’re all still learning.
The next time you’re sitting in a doctor’s office, take a moment to thank the medical staff. They not only navigate words that make zero sense phonetically—they navigate the hearts and hurts of people, too.
And more than anything, let’s remember that God gives each of us our own calling and gifting. We’re not meant to be good at everything—but we are called to honor and support one another in the work we’re uniquely made to do.
“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”
—Romans 12:4–5 (NIV)
