Working Mom – Award Winning Photographer – Traveling Nurse

 

 

 

“It is kind of similar to intentionality.

 

It’s being thoughtful and mindful to the decisions you’re making and how they’re impacting you

 

and how they’re impacting the people around you.”

 

 

 

A Passion for Missions Work: Nursing

 

 

Meg is a mom, a photographer and a nurse who spent part of her 20s volunteering with Mercy Ships providing free healthcare for those who have none.

 

But before that began, “I never knew exactly what I wanted to do or even what I liked to do. I knew I liked helping people. I knew I wanted to do some sort of mission work. I’m a very practical, hands-on sort of a person, so, if I was going to do mission work, I liked the idea of bringing a very practical skill to people.”

 

 In high school, Meg volunteered at CHOP and was “blown away by how incredible they were. I got to hang out with a two-year-old running around with an IV pole. It breaks your heart. You think, ‘Wow. Thank goodness there are people doing this because it’s important.’ That was one of the first experiences where I was like, ‘Maybe I should try nursing.’” 

 

Meg went to nursing school at a community college to stay out of debt. Then, right as she was about to start her job at CHOP, Meg heard about Mercy Ships.

 

Mercy Ships is a ship of volunteers from surgeons to photographers.

According to their site, Mercy Ships delivers a “state-of-the-art hospital to regions where clean water, electricity,

medical facilities and personnel is limited or nonexistent.”

According to Meg, “They’ll have local surgeons train with surgeons on the ship and teach them. It’s creating sustainability.

Mercy Ships is not just coming to meet some immediate needs. It’s trying to develop the infrastructure within the communities.

Ultimately, the goal is these communities have their own medical infrastructure.”

 

 

To be a nurse for the ship, however, Meg needed experience. She worked at CHOP’s PICU for two years. 

 

“It’s an incredible place,” Meg said, “but working there was extremely difficult mentally, physically and emotionally. Nursing is such a difficult job. People have no idea what nurses do.”

  

After two years, at age 24, Meg went to Liberia with Mercy Ships for a year. 

 

During that time, “Liberia was four years post-civil war. There was still a huge UN presence. It was stable but cautiously stable. They went from being a country with some level of affluence to everything being destroyed. The capital didn’t have an electric grid when I was there. There was no sewer system. There were sewers, but they didn’t work because it had all gotten destroyed.”

 

In helping people, Meg was able to get to know the patients and hear their stories. “So many of them just had horrible, horrible stories.”

  

“You had this one woman who her husband got mad at and threw oil and burnt her entire body. So, they (the ship) would do amazing repairs, and it was incredible to be a part of that — to watch people not just heal physically but also the emotional healing of just finding a community, finding people who are like them and everyone just being there together.”

  

Meg went on, “What they’re doing is incredible. It’s tangible. The whole mission of Mercy Ships is trying to live out the model of Jesus. He healed the sick, and He loved people.” 

 

The ship had 80 hospital beds, three ORs, a cat scan lab and so on. “They took tumors off people’s faces, did cleft lip palate repairs, VBF repairs. When we were in Liberia, there was no medical care – nothing.” 

 

During her time there, Meg also wrote a series about her experiences for the Philadelphia Inquirer. This began Meg’s interest in communications and photography. 

 

“I would take pictures to illustrate my stories, and when I was in Liberia I got my first DSLR camera.” 

 

Meg took a year-long break after Liberia and reflected.

  

“Being a part of the community on the ship was just incredible. You’re with all these other people from all walks of life — different ages, different stages of life, different continents, different socio-economic backgrounds — and you’re all there for the same mission. It’s this amazing opportunity to see what’s normal for other people and to think, ‘Well, why do I believe what I believe? What of my own culture has influenced the way I think, the way I see myself and the way I see the world?’

 

“You’re pulled out of it (your culture). You see this common theme of, basically, everyone loves Jesus and that’s why they’re paying to serve. They just want to show God’s love to other people. It was very eye opening for me.”

 

 After a year at home, Meg went with Mercy Ships to Benin as part of the communications department in 2009. Meg’s job was to write two patients’ stories a month. “That would involve getting to know patients and taking pictures.”

 

Meg would also write about events on the ship. She remembered hearing the president of Liberia and Noble Peace Prize winner, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, speak.

 

 

Business Mom

 

 

After six months in Benin, Meg returned home and married her now-husband who also worked on the ship. Back at home, she worked at Saint Chris’s Cardiac ICU but, eventually, found herself shifting gears. 

 

“I think being a nurse on the ship was probably the time I loved being a nurse the most.”

 

Meg’s desires were heading in a new direction: “I realized that my natural inclinations were more involved with storytelling and more creativity.”

 

“I started taking pictures and people started hiring me.” 

 

She officially began her photography business in 2011, “and, then, I got pregnant just a year after. So, I’ve been learning photography and doing a business while having my kids.”

 

 

 

Living Purposefully

 

 

 

Overall Meg asks herself, “What are the things you want to do? Life is so busy. You get caught up in just the stream and it keeps kind of pulling you. If you don’t stop and think about where you’re going, it could be ten years from now and you could be in the exact same place that you were ten years ago.”

  

Meg emphasized the importance of realizing the brevity of life.

 

“We’re all going to be old and die. It sounds very morbid, but it’s very true. When you think about that, you think, ‘What am I doing with my life? What is important? What really is important to me? What do I want to be doing? What do I feel called to do? How can I use my gifts and abilities that I’ve been given to help others and to ultimately glorify God?’ It’s something that is hard because I think our world is so tedious in a lot of ways and there are so many things that just kind of pull at you and so many things that you have to think about.”

 

Despite distractions, it’s important to try to be “intentional about what is the bigger picture of where are we going? What is the direction?”

 

Meg felt called to practically serve, so she studied nursing, became a nurse, and paid to go use her skill for those who may never have received it otherwise.

 

“In terms of community college, that was a very intentional decision. I knew I wanted to do volunteer work and I knew it was going to be hard to volunteer when you have student loans to pay back.” 

 

Meg fell in love with hearing stories and telling stories, so Meg changed direction with intention and started blogging and taking photographs.

 

“When I did make the decision to cut the cord with nursing, a lot of people were like, ‘Why are you doing that? That’s really stupid.’ But, I knew that we wanted to have kids, and I knew I wanted to be able to work and spend a lot of time with them. So, it was very intentional with that idea, knowing that photography would give me more flexibility.”

 

Meg had kids and realized, afresh, how short life can be. 

 

“Having kids made me more aware of how quickly time passes. There’s only so many minutes in every day. I think we have a hard time understanding that when you say ‘yes’ to one thing you’re saying ‘no’ to something else. Motherhood has made me be more intentional because I’m choosing to be home with my kids. There’s certain things I have to say ‘no’ to in order to be able to say ‘yes’ to my kids in the way I feel called to say ‘yes’ to them.”

 

“For me in this season of life I can’t do a lot of big things, but I can try to maximize what I can do. I can spend less time on social media and clear my mind of that, or, I can get up early in the morning to make the most of that hour. That’s what I always think about: How am I going to use my minutes? What are we giving our minutes too?”

 

For Meg, not being able to do big things does not mean not living purposefully. 

 

“It is about the small things. I think life is much more about the small things than the big things because the reality is, most of us, we’re going to die without being known for something per se. We live in this culture where it’s all about how many Instagram followers you have — almost obsession with celebrity — even on a small scale. It’s crept into our mindset that we all need to have this loud voice or we all need to be doing something amazing.” 

 

Meg continued, “It’s great to think about that, but realize that who we are becoming is going to lead to what we actually are able to do. It’s really more important to be someone of character and to try and live in a way that reflects what you feel called to in your ideals and your convictions. It can be very hard, but it is realizing the power of your small choices.” 

 

In building character, “Do your best, but you don’t have to be the best. We always want to do our best, but I don’t think it’s good to aim to be the best. It just creates competition, and it’s not satisfying. It’s much more satisfying to know you did your best, whatever that was, because then you see yourself progressing and then you’re able to embrace other people instead of feeling like they’re competition or you have to be better than someone. Who cares?! Let them be their best too, whatever that is. It looks so different for everyone. It depends on who you are as a person, what your situation is, where you are in life.” 

 

             ‘Living purposefully is trying to be more aware of the ‘why’ you’re doing something and then doing the things that are in front of you, whatever that is, whether it’s big or small, with purpose, and doing the best that you can.”