Living Genuinely Episode 2: Defiant or Determined?

i straddled that thing i'm pulling it from every direction i ended up like with my arms on either side with my legs on either side pulling so hard i lost my balance and fell straight on my butt and but i got it out of the way [Music] so gonna get into something or well i guess one embarrassing story today um one of the questions um which i decided to go with because this one memory kept coming up for me and it kept really uh just making me giggle so i figured hey why not go with it um the question was what is your favorite quality about yourself um i would say my favorite quality about myself um and it's one of the most beneficial things to me um that has has helped me most in my life so far um has been that i have uh per se a uh bite me attitude sometimes and let me clarify what i'm talking about with this so um this is not talking about uh when it comes to authority figures or um in my workplace or in my relationships or anything like that um now you could probably talk to steve and he'll he'll laugh about that because uh depending on whether we're joking around i very much have that attitude um and you can ask my mother and she will say that as a kid i was the most stubborn mule you would ever meet um but you know in in my workplace i would never disrespect an authority figure um you know one of my supervisors a co-worker um you know anything like that or uh in my relationships you know i wouldn't want to hurt the people that i love by by having that attitude so when i'm when i say i have that outlook what i'm talking about is that when really difficult things have come my way and you know i've just i've had to go through a lot of hardships or when it comes to maybe situations in my family friends getting through school finding work working through finances you know any any sort of life logistics any sort of obstacles that come up i do not back down very easily um i i will admit my first go-to is to back down um i will get very defeated very quickly i will get very frustrated um i will doubt myself a lot in that in that first initial reaction of stress but i will always bounce back i will figure out a way to make it work especially if it's something that i have to do if it's a responsibility i have to carry out if it's a goal that i have set if it's something um say a commitment that i have to someone i will make it work i will find a way and and so that's what i'm talking about when i say i have that outlook i it's i'm not letting life take me down and and that has really helped me a huge amount um and we're going to get in more into that in in some more detailed stories um next month i have i have an anniversary of a of a you know a pretty significant event coming up and i'm hoping to maybe collaborate with a friend of mine who we went through the same thing during that same time so we will get much more into detail with that but yeah it's uh it's just it's something in me that really drives me and i think it's that's something that everybody needs to a certain level um you know when you're faced with any kind of situation and you have to find a solution or you have someone depending on you um or you even you're depending on yourself um or you know that it may be the outcome of your situation is going to be a large definition of your strength and your identity um it it really is a huge driving force and and you find that you can get through things that you never thought you could um and if you take it one day at a time and you go i i will just do whatever i have to do today or in this next hour or um you know for the next week or my next shift or whatever the case may be you find that you do that enough times and you're weeks months years down the road and all of a sudden you've gotten past that obstacle or you've gained a new skill or you've overcome something huge or or you've reached a goal that you thought could never be attainable and so when you don't have that you really have every reason to back down probably the biggest thing that sticks out for me is nursing school so for anybody who might be new i am a registered nurse i am kind of a i'm a baby nurse i've only been graduated for two years i was a nurse's assistant for five years before that i worked in home care and i now am a surgical rn i had a um i had a general kind of medical surgical history before that when i first graduated and so i dealt with quite a few different things i saw a lot of different a lot of different illnesses uh cases ages and it was really interesting and i like i said i now work in the surgical realm and it took me a long time to get through nursing school for various reasons took me eight years from the time i began college to the day i graduated and like i said along with my friend who i really hope to collaborate with we will get into the story as to why it took that long and all the hardships involved with that but that has been my one of my greatest achievements so far um and i cannot even tell you how many times i sat down and i planned to quit i researched other professions other things i would be happy with how many times i ranted and raved to my family to steve um gosh they have just heard it all and i'm sure every time they probably thought yeah yeah yeah you know keep get it all out you're gonna keep going or or you know just they knew i wasn't gonna quit but um i mean i there there was just so many different things and so many things that i didn't think i could do ways i didn't think physically i could keep going mentally i didn't think i could keep going i mean i i feel that i'm a i'm a normal person i'm an average intelligence individual i have a lot of common sense but i am by far not a brainiac at all that would be steve he's he's the brains of our relationship he's just incredible but um you know and and just logistics trying to balance life trying to keep a full-time job trying to manage my illnesses trying to keep up with the family trying to pay for college all the way through um trying to do it all on a timeline because if i didn't graduate in time then i wouldn't have health insurance and and just so many different stressors um and i just i i mean i can't even bring up the words to describe how defeated i felt so many times and the amount of information coming in that i struggled to retain um and just that and trying to manage that balancing act of life during that time um and if i didn't have that attitude of oh watch me do it you tell me i can't do something i'm gonna do it then i wouldn't have graduated and if i didn't have um you know my the end responsibilities at stake and and having to provide for myself at stake um of needing health insurance and needing an income because i have to um you know supply for my my medical needs and and just you know um just life as an adult basically um i i wouldn't have continued that was my driving force i knew i had to get it done um but so so that's kind of more the serious end but i mean i swear like i said you can ask my family you can ask steve uh it's any any little thing you tell me i can't do it i'm gonna figure out a way to do it and i'm gonna figure out a way to do it well um and i think that's what's really helped me be successful in um the workplace also um i like to collaborate with people if there's something we really need to get done if we have a time crunch on something i like to you know figure out a way to get it done get it done well if there's a problem you know i like to figure out how we can fix it um so that everything just runs so much more smoothly and especially for my patients i think it's been helpful when problems have come up i remember a case quite a while ago where i had a patient who um all night long i was in communication with multiple different staff members in an effort to get him seizure medication because there had just it had been a very overwhelming night and he had been in poor condition and and i mean there was no way i was leaving that shift without getting him that medication because i knew if he didn't have it what the results were going to be and how much worse he was going to be just partially from my education and partially because i've seen it in my own family and so i'm so thankful that i have that drive and that determination and and that that unwillingness to back down because in the end we were successful and we got him his medication and he was so much better so much better by the time i left and it was just so great to see him feeling so well and smiling and different things like that um and so kind of getting into the story that made me want to do this topic in the first place i think i was packing up my room i think i was moving actually i think i had already graduated nursing school and so i was moving out of my parents house and trying to get to the garage and you see if you see uh our garage area it gets crazy at times that's kind of our our stock area where everything that we want to go to goodwill that needs to go in the attic that we don't want anymore that needs to make a dump run that's where it all goes um so i'm trying to get to the garage and there's this huge mattress blocking the whole doorway and i can't get past it so i asked one of my little brothers uh i think to come and help me or to do something and and i get back there and i see this mattress and i go oh great and so i start to move it and he looks at me and he goes you can't move that and i looked at him and i said you watch me move it i guess i can and he walked away he gave up on me he walked away and was just like all right let me figure it out i sat there for probably a good five ten minutes trying to figure out how to get this stupid mattress out of the way because it actually was really heavy and i straddled that thing i'm pulling it from every direction i ended up like with my arms on either side with my legs on either side pulling so hard i lost my balance and fell straight on my butt and but i got it out of the way i finally did it i got what i needed and i put the mattress back and i did it all by myself so i just i i don't mind making a fool of myself uh to get uh get done what needs to happen um and so the main story that came up with this was way long ago um gosh how old was i think oh gosh and i just went to my parents house last night to get these pictures that i'm gonna pop up on the screen um what did the photo album say i think it was 90 99 so i was four years old um and also what brought this up is i was speaking with a patient i'm checking her in getting her ready for surgery and her poor little hands were so bruised and she was very young um a lot of times i see that and patients are on blood thinners and but they're usually very elderly and so i looked at her i said oh what happened to your poor hands and she goes i was setting up a sprinkler on the trampoline for my kids and i was like oh my gosh okay tell me the story because we had a trampoline our whole life growing up and it was the best thing ever um and that was kind of the other question that sparked this was i saw a card that said what was your favorite thing to do at recess and every single day i swear we were out in the backyard on the trampoline uh we loved that thing we would be out there with the sprinkler we would like we'd get in the pool and then dry off we'd just lay out there in the sun we would get out there in the snow especially it was so fun when it hailed and then you could bounce around and just the hail would go everywhere we would go out there sometimes with blankets and pillows and either spend the night or just watch meteor showers we could always see the fireworks on 4th of july gosh yeah we'd go out there all eight of us kids would get out on the trampoline and we had all sorts of games we made up i remember fireball was our favorite which leads into this story you know some of us would just take books and have our our quiet reading time out there it was it's the best thing for kids i swear to have a trampoline it's just amazing anyway so uh so we were talking about that and and that just brought back this memory so i'm four years old at the time 99 1999 and um we're all out on the trampoline all of us kids are out playing fireball which is this game you get a basketball throw it on the trampoline and everybody gets on and you have to stay on your hands and knees we had this rule there if you had two people um on the trampoline you could be on your feet but otherwise you had to be on your hands and knees because it would get so taut that it could really hurt you um so everybody's on their hands and knees bouncing around and if the ball touched you you died and you had to lay down for however many seconds i don't remember what it was um and so we took a break for a minute i think one of the boys had to like tie their shoe or something i of course being the stubborn mule that i am and defiant at the time if we want to call it that um decided to stand up break the rules and kind of started started bouncing around kind of started moving around a little bit and i was successful got a little too confident did a big bounce and i don't even know where my leg broke but i just remember seeing my leg fly up into my face i want to say it was below my knee i think it just snapped somewhere i don't even know but yeah so my legs snapped flew up in my face oh it hurt so go to the hospital get a cast um i don't even know what they bounded up with at first i would have to i'm actually now i'm curious i have the pictures and i want to look at them closer now that i'm a nurse and i have seen the materials before i'm like wait a second what did they bind this up with i need to ask steve because uh he worked emergency room for a long time he was a medic in the army and so he would know because he did all of that and so and some of these pictures i was just laughing last night i mean it's not even funny because this was the time i had gotten confused um i thought that one of my medication allergies had come from or this particular medication allergy i thought had come from when um i had seizures for about i think it was like six months or a year after my stroke when i was a little girl um but now that i think about it i was five years old which was a year after this um so that doesn't even make sense but so my parents just clarified last night they go no that came from this so after i left the hospital they apparently gave me an adult dose of a pain medication and i was hallucinating like crazy and so i'm sitting there and so even though it's like it's sad and of course it was dangerous for this little four-year-old to have an adult dose of pain medication these pictures are just so pathetic and i'm sitting there just sobbing and my face is bright red but i have my ice cream so i should have been a happy girl because i love my ice cream so it's just it brought back some memories that were kind of funny but they put me in a hard cast and i don't know if it was the way my knee needed to heal up or if my mom just knew what a stubborn mule i was and how determined i could be um but they they put me in a hard cast i had to be hot pink the only way it was acceptable that was bent and so so they had it bent at my knee and then also bent um at my foot so i was like you know i could only like stand on my tiptoes and now that i think about it it probably was because they only wanted me to be either non-weight-bearing or um toe touch at the most so i got this hard cast and and i i totally forgot about some of these pictures where you know i we were out golfing we were out having play dates with our friends we were having bonfires and so you know i'm so determined to go that they you know my dad's carrying me everywhere or i'm riding along in a stroller or something like that however although i was supposed to be non-weight-bearing um and so just sitting down all the time maybe i mean being a kid they probably didn't even want me touching my toe down to even go to the bathroom they probably wanted mom or dad to carry me um i very cleverly i think figured out that i could walk around and sweep the yard and go to church and weed the garden and pull my vegetables and do anything else i wanted if i put on a pair of my princess heels because it then made my leg that was in a cast level with my other foot and so my mom she will still tell the story to this day as like just the the overall summary of my stubbornness and and how crazy i am um sometimes she does tell it in a proud way in in that it kind of summarizes that like i said that kind of oh watch me bite me like if i have something i want to get done and i have a goal it's gonna happen and i'm not gonna back down um and and that makes her proud and so and so she will just always tell that story in that context but uh yeah a lot of times it's just to mock me and and talk about how crazy i was as a kid one of the other you know i was telling steve today we were talking on the phone and um i said you know i was going between two topics and one of them it was uh it was more about my workplace and my job and and the things that are very special to me and so it's kind of more that heartfelt touching kind of thing um but this i just had to share because it kept making me laugh i'm like if it makes you laugh you gotta go with it especially if it's embarrassing i mean at least for you guys maybe it was boring i don't know but who doesn't want to hear an embarrassing story that's always fun um so i hope this wasn't too boring i hope you guys enjoyed it um i enjoyed talking about it and going over old memories it's it's just you know everything from my crazy moments to our times as kids and all the things we enjoyed like i said favorite time at recess or our quote recess because we were homeschooled um again for anyone who doesn't know me i i've got to remember to keep going back and and um clarifying some of those details um all eight of us kids we were homeschooled uh but every day we did have a quote recess time um at 11 30. we took a break from our school and everybody went outside in the backyard we could either take a walk around the neighborhood or like i said if we wanted to take a book we could do that get on the swings run around the yard we had all sorts of crazy games that we made up on our own um which a bunch of the other homeschool families knew it was like i don't know it was this weird thing we had where where everybody kind of made up the same games but they were super fun um but yeah so kind of going over those memories it was great uh you know tomorrow when i go over to my parents house after church i i it's kind of sparked that desire to um dig through all the old photo albums my mom is a huge picture person she will snap a thousand pictures which i love um because you know then we have all these memories to look back on so i want to go through all those old photo albums and look through everything and i think that might even bring up some more stories for next week so i guess i should bring a notebook too so for anybody um anyone who who gets on this video please do like share subscribe um comment and if you do comment please do leave you know maybe a little story about what your favorite quality is about yourself i would love to hear that about you guys because i think for anyone who's close to me i have the things about you that are my favorite things or that i see that stand out most as your strengths um but i would love to hear what you think your greatest strength is and um and maybe even a little story behind that it would be great to hear and especially for anybody who's crazy like me and is maybe uh whether you want to call it defiant or just strong and determined you know i i would love to hear who else out there is is in that bandwagon with me and i hope to see you guys next week and hopefully have some other maybe crazy stories maybe some touching stories but we'll see what happens

Channel: Steve and Mary

Views: 328

Keywords: Mary Currall, Living Genuinely, Lifestyle, Embarrassing Story, Greatest Strength, Determined, Defiant

Id: PMd59S6YErs

Length: 25min 45sec (1545 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 13 2021