I want to share a prayer/meditation a dear friend shared with me, right before she told me she would change career directions from Law to Medicine. This prayer/meditation, “Your Heart’s Desire” helped motivate her as she discerned moving and leaving Southern California to attend medical school in Poland. I love this prayer/poem, but neither my friend or I know who wrote it.
“Your Heart’s Desire” is inspiring and speaks to the idea that we all have a calling in life. Your “vocation” might be your occupation or profession, but per its Latin roots, your vocation is also your “calling” or your “summons” in life. I feel like this calling to become a nurse was clear for me only recently – it could have been God’s timing or perhaps my stubbornness and inability to listen – but I truly feel called and drawn to nursing after many years of working as an engineer. Maybe I needed to fulfill my calling to become a wife and mother before becoming a nurse, who knows? Either way, I hope you enjoy this prayer/meditation and that maybe it speaks to you, too:
“Already in your past life from time to time, God has whispered into your heart just that very wonderful thing, whatever it is, that He is wishing you to be, and to do, and to have. And that wonderful thing is nothing less than what is called Your Heart’s Desire. Nothing less than that. The most secret, sacred wish that lies deep down at the bottom of your heart, the wonderful thing that you hardly dare to look at, or to think about–the thing that you would rather die than have anyone else know of, because it seems to be so far beyond anything that you are, or have at the present time, that you fear that you would be cruelly ridiculed if the mere thought of it were known–that is just the very thing that God is wishing you to do or to be for Him. And the birth of that marvelous wish in your soul–the dawning of that secret dream–was the Voice of God Himself telling you to arise and come up higher because He had need of you.”
-Author Unknown
The Mature Student Nurse 